Bad, bad Garmin!

I generally try to give a company the benefit of the doubt when there's a problem. However, my patience has been overstretched with Garmin in the past 60 days, and I feel it necessary to make a public statement of my disapproval.

Last summer, I bought a Garmin 420S combo GPS/depthfinder. We boat in the waters off Friendship, which is littered with islands and several rivers feed Muscongus Bay, making visual navigation tricky. For safety reasons, the having the GPS and a depthfinder made good sense. I used it on my Bass Tracker several times and am satisfied with the device.

This spring, I needed to move the device from the Bass Tracker to our 20' Pontoon. I got the transducer moved, set up the wiring, and went to mount the GPS when I found that the mounting bracket had corroded to the point of unusability. The long, thin screw was frozen to the nut inserted on the plastic bracket. WD40 did not help, and eventually the plastic gave out so the nut spun freely. This should not happen to a marine part.

So I set out to get a new bracket. I found Garmin's online web site, placed an order (I thought) for th part, and waited two weeks. No part. Then we went off to Indiana to help with the floods. while there, I sent an email to Garmin support, and they indicated that they had no record of my order. Hmmmm.

The email also said to call the phone order line. I tried that from Indiana, but we were working 12 hour days, and they were closed at anytime I could call.

I tried to place the order again. No luck. Both of our credit cards were rejected without explanation.

When we stopped in Ipswich for a couple days, I checked into a marine store, which had a healthy stock of Garmin stuff, but no parts. The dealer implied that Garmin parts are only available from Garmin.

When we got home, I tried the phone again. I encountered a 35 minute wait time, and while waiting, I thought about the online order problem. I realized that when Garmin was aking for my shipping and billing addresses online, they really wanted the zip code for my credit card. Though they never said than, nor did the indicate what the problem was with the card. I re-entered the order online using our Texas address for billing address, and the order went through.

The online system said the part would ship in 4-7 days, and that they would send me an email when it shipped. 10 days later, I sent another email, asking about my order, with the number. 2 days later, I got a reply indicating that my part was on backorder, with no prognosis as to when it would ship.

Needless to say, I'm upset. We're now nearly 60 days from when this started, with no end in sight. If you have to ask me, don't buy Garmin. Their quality is doubtful, and their support is near zero.