Garmin GPS Quality: Why is it Slipping?

Garmin is one of the world's largest and best known producers of marine electronics. Their GPS systems are one of the easiest to use and most reliable products used by boaters. Lately though, things seem to be moving in the wrong direction.

Many captains that use Garmin products have such confidence in the quality of Garmin that they don't rush to back up the data on their GPS. That has changed. Since Garmin no longer cares to attempt to salvage coordinates on GPS devices returned for repair, negative comments on the quality of Garmin services often dominate the dock conversation. Why buy Garmin if they don't care?

The outsourcing of Garmin products seems to be responsible for a much higher failure rate than in the recent past. Garmin gets a unit built for less than ten percent of the sales price and Garmin buyers get a product only 50% as reliable as the home brewed version. I recently bought a hand held for my guide trips. After inputing a few hundred numbers manually, the GPS 72 crapped out. I have more time invested in the number input than the unit is worth. If I send it to Garmin, they will return me a new unit, that may or may not last, and I have to re-input the numbers.

If Garmin had some where-with-all, they would include a free CD with each sale and a USB cable so that users could more easily down/up load way-points. But of course, everything comes at a price. Actually, the USB cable is second sourced because Garmin never bothered to keep up with technology.

So how do you move from the premiere source of a product to the butt of a joke? Just stop listening to your customers.

This article was submitted for non-payment. AC has not reviewed and does not endorse the views of this author. Garmin doesn't care about the views of this author or the millions of its customers becoming disenfranchised. Such a shame.