Next message: G. Gliksman: "Re: T&T: Insurance Question"
We installed Skymate in April 04 and have been pleased with the unit's capabilities. It provided email, position reporting to family and friends, and some weather info. A couple of glitches including some difficulty in getting the unit to "see" the gps input were finally resolved. I have to say the tech support has been less than totally responsive, but eventually get around to responding to voice mail messages. Most recently while travelling down the coast from BC to Southern California, a request for one bouy report resulted in 15 duplicate responses. Keeping in mind that like all satellite communication systems the use pays for ALL bytes transmitted to/from the unit, I was alarmed to think that I was to be charged for the duplicates. My call and messages to Skymate tech support went unanswered. Eventually I contacted customer service and discovered that their system had a glitch (obviously!) and that users are not charged for duplicate messages. My subsequent bill
reflected my normal charges. I am on the 'Gold' plan which gives us 20000 characters/month and two daily positions reports. That has proven to be sufficient for us the last 18 months of use. And we do put the unit in 'Drydock' at $5/month when not cruising. One of the neat features of the system is the ability to send messages to any telephone by simply typing in the area code, number, and text. The Skymate server digitizes the message and the computerized voice is quite intelligible to the receiver. It's handy when I need to send a relatively quick message to someone who may not have immediate email access. Bottom line, would I purchase and install it again? Absolutely.
Earl Fields
Sea Lark
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