T&T: Garmin-Great Service

[Torrens, Kevin]

It is unfortunately all too common these days to receive poor customer
service and hence overlook good service. This is a story of the latter.
I purchased a Garmin radar unit a little over 2 years ago for my, new to
me, old trawler. The unit worked flawlessly for the first 2 years. One
week before leaving on a planned cruise to Block Island in early August
the unit stopped working. No image on the screen. The Admiral informed
me there would be no vacation without radar. This prompted fast action
on my part.
My understanding was the unit had a 1 year warrantee and was therefore a
year and a month out of warrantee. I contacted Garmin and was told I had
forgotten to register the unit as they did not have it on record. I told
them when I bought the unit and the person on the other end said to hold
on for a few minutes. He came back and indicated it was only a month out
of warrantee (Garmin had apparently extended the warrantee to 2 years?)
and that they would cover the unit under warrantee in any event,
including return shipping. Their flat fee for radar repair is about $600
so I was obviously very happy.
The next problem was getting the unit sent, repaired and returned in
time to maintain our original vacation plans (that also involved some
other folks). After removing the dome unit (simple) and packing (hard) I
left the item to be shipped FedEx overnight at our company's nightly
drop off spot. Of course, the normal driver was on vacation and the
pinch hitter did no see the box, although he had to trip over it to get
to the other packages that were duly taken.
After a few calls to FedEx the problem was identified to the pinch
hitter and the shipping charges waived ($120). The unit arrived at
Garmin and was shipped back the next day as I had pleaded for a fast
turnaround.
We received the unit with a day to spare and it has worked perfectly. We
only needed it twice. Once to track a mean storm that was chasing us
from Oyster Bay to Port Jeff. The storm won. The second was to track a
submarine in the Race. We were not interested in playing chicken with an
attack sub.
The entire experience cost nothing more than some angst over possibly
cancelling vacation and the shipping fiasco. At the end of the day,
Garmin went far above and beyond what was expected or their
responsibility. FedEx also came through. Thanks to Garmin's
responsiveness we had a truly great vacation and probably the best 2
weeks of weather of the summer.

Kevin

NIVEK
DeFever 41