I have a Garmin GPSMAP 3005C chartplotter with a serious bug. In the latest SW revisions, 3.20, 3.30, 3.40 the ability to increase the size of text and bouys have been taken away with the consequence that it is almost impossible to see them. I have been mailing Garmin Support some 10 times since early May when I bought the plotter and I have had no response what so ever so far. What is your experience with Garmin, is this the way they always behave? How can they get away with it?

Call them instead and wait the long time for them to get to the phone. It's worth it. I had a problem with mine, they gave me an RMA number, I sent it back. It came back 2 weeks later...brand new

Product Support
(for all Garmin products
except Apollo aircraft)
- Monday — Friday
- 8 a.m. — 5 p.m.
Central time (closed holidays)
- 1-800-800-1020
- 1-888-442-7646

They have been great to me. I had the memory battery go bad after a few years. They replaced the battery and updated the software, no charge. I just called them got a shipping address and they took care of it. Doug

The owner can update the unit software themselves

There is a reset procedure, I have a 3006 that had color problems, I thought I would have to send it in. They e-mailed me the procedure and it fixed it. I will try and look it up.

Note this is for a 3006C

Thank you for Contacting Garmin International. To fix that, you are going
to need to reset your unit. So, if you have any information you don't want
to lose, you will need to back it up onto a memory card.
To do the reset, turn the unit off. Push and hold the QUIT and ON buttons
at the same time. It will come up and ask if you want to reset all user
data. Highlight "Yes" and press ENTER. This should fix that.


If you have any further questions, feel free to respond to this email or
call our technical support line.


Best regards,

Matt K.
Product Support Specialist
Garmin International
P: 913-397-8448
P: 1-800-800-1020 (toll free)
Fax: 913-440-5488

Raypanic, thank you for the reset procedure, I may need it later. However, for this problem a reset will not solve it. The function has been intentionally, probably by mistake, removed. This tells two things about Garmin;

1. They lack quality assurance in their development procedures. These things do not just happen in a normal development environment.

2. Since they have not responded in four months they lack a procedure to handle customer feedback and support.

3. Since this bug makes the GPS more or less useless, they lack a process to prioritize what to correct/put into the releases.

Quite disturbing to be their customer

Hm..that was three, anyway....