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From: Frank Osborne (no email)
Date: Tue Sep 02 2003 - 11:39:34 EDT
I couldn't help but add my 2 cents on the technical support that I've
received from electronic companies. For background, we bought Island Fever
, a 83' 44 Defever, 4 years ago and it had mostly older electronics on her.
Some items we have replaced and some we have tried to repair. 3 short
stories on our efforts -
1. We have an older Raymarine radar that creates static on the Icom VHF
radio's on channel 16. I posted an email on TWL about the problem and
received some ideas but nothing seemed to helped so I called Raymarine tech
support. They first denied that the radar could cause the static and after
about 30 minutes of describing the problem they finally agreed the radar
was the cause. They said that they couldn't make their radars compatible
with all electronic equipment (Icom's ?) and that the only solution was to
replace the VHF radio's. End of conversation. No help.
2. We have an older Robertson (now Simrad) AP 100 autopilot that worked
fairly well by seemed to have a mind of it's own at times and would not
track. I called Simrad tech support and the people were very helpful. They
asked that I send the compass and control unit in and they would test it.
Being only 30 miles away I took it in and spent over an hour with the tech
support guys testing the components and identifying the problem part. No
charge for the hour of troubleshooting, just the cost of the new part. Very
helpful and knowledgeable people.
3. I bought a new Standard Horizon 150 GPS unit to drive VNS on the pc. We
live in Anacortes, WA and do most of our cruising in the San Juan's and
north. The GPS worked great for nearly a year and then when we were on a
cruise in Puget Sound it starting losing the signal. It was so unreliable
that we started using our backup Garmin GPS. When we returned to home port
I called Standard Horizon tech support and they immediately admitted there
was a problem with the early GPS antenna heads with interference from cell
phone towers, hence the problem in populated areas but not in more remote
areas, and offered to send out a new unit at no cost. I had the new unit in
less than a week.
The moral of these stories is that Simrad and Standard Horizon are high on
my list of preferred vendors for new equipment, Raymarine is low on the
list. Support counts.
Frank Osborne
Island Fever, 44 Defever
Anacortes, WA
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