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delawaredogfish
Guest
Long story short...... I bought a gps 498c for about $850 in may of 2006. worked fine for about 11 months. It started losing the bottom in water less than 50 feet deep. After several calls to garmin, experimenting with different settings and updating software 3 more months passed. Garmin suggested i go to my dealer and ask for a "loaner transducer" (like a dealer would give you a sensor to experiment with for free). A friend happend to have the same unit so i gave him the 498 off my boat to plug into his transducer. The same issue was happening with his transducer. Called garmin and they said my only option was to send the unit back for repair/replacement.
My cost was $30 to ship and $175 for repair/refirbed unit.
They did not want to extent the 1 year warranty in any way.
So after 3 mo of irratic operation and dealing with garmin, plus $205 i had a new refirbed 498c.
Took it out on dec 9th for some cold weather striper action and it works fine.
Caught 3 striper and 1 winter flounder.
Not happy with Garmin's reliability. Hope this unit lasts longer than 11 mo.
my season is only 5 mo long anyway. not like i live in fl and used it non stop for 11 mo.
The only issue was with the sounder. The gps, chart plotter worked fine.
hope this helps someone.
would i buy another garmin? not sure!
My cost was $30 to ship and $175 for repair/refirbed unit.
They did not want to extent the 1 year warranty in any way.
So after 3 mo of irratic operation and dealing with garmin, plus $205 i had a new refirbed 498c.
Took it out on dec 9th for some cold weather striper action and it works fine.
Caught 3 striper and 1 winter flounder.
Not happy with Garmin's reliability. Hope this unit lasts longer than 11 mo.
my season is only 5 mo long anyway. not like i live in fl and used it non stop for 11 mo.
The only issue was with the sounder. The gps, chart plotter worked fine.

hope this helps someone.
would i buy another garmin? not sure!