So frustrated with C-Map customer service

[iyamwhatiyam]

I registered for the C-MAP Club Subscription back on 2/25/2017. For charts NA-M027, Central America and Caribbean. Every year since then I have received an updated chip in the late spring. According to my subscription, from looking up the app subscription on my iPad, the current subscription is good through Feb 2022. The chip is for my Standard Horizon CP/180 GPS Chart Plotter.

This spring, I have yet to receive the updated chip. I have been emailing C-Map about this and their response is for me to send them the order number. True, so far I have not been able to find the most recent order, but I have the original subscription invoice and also for the year prior to this one. Yet, they seem to have no order history whatsoever for my account and so far have been completely uninterested in resolving this issue. I’m sure my account is current based what the app tells me and also the fact that I can download charts all day onto my iPad. It’s pretty clear to me that they have been sold, merged and so forth with the result being that at one or more steps along the way the customer data migration failed. Navico and Lowrance seem to be the culprits.

Why the rant? Can I please get recommendations for another digital chart vendor that is compatible with the Std Horizon CP180 chart plotter? And that also provides some decent level of customer support? I can’t begin to imagine a situation like this with aviation approach plates. Is this a service Jeppesen can provide? Many thanks.

[carstenb]

Originally Posted by iyamwhatiyam

I registered for the C-MAP Club Subscription back on 2/25/2017. For charts NA-M027, Central America and Caribbean. Every year since then I have received an updated chip in the late spring. According to my subscription, from looking up the app subscription on my iPad, the current subscription is good through Feb 2022. The chip is for my Standard Horizon CP/180 GPS Chart Plotter.

This spring, I have yet to receive the updated chip. I have been emailing C-Map about this and their response is for me to send them the order number. True, so far I have not been able to find the most recent order, but I have the original subscription invoice and also for the year prior to this one. Yet, they seem to have no order history whatsoever for my account and so far have been completely uninterested in resolving this issue. I’m sure my account is current based what the app tells me and also the fact that I can download charts all day onto my iPad. It’s pretty clear to me that they have been sold, merged and so forth with the result being that at one or more steps along the way the customer data migration failed. Navico and Lowrance seem to be the culprits.

Why the rant? Can I please get recommendations for another digital chart vendor that is compatible with the Std Horizon CP180 chart plotter? And that also provides some decent level of customer support? I can’t begin to imagine a situation like this with aviation approach plates. Is this a service Jeppesen can provide? Many thanks.

Unfortunately I've found that Navionics Customer Service is no better.

[GordMay]

Dec 2020:
Lloyd's Register (LR) has reached an agreement to acquire Navico Group’s C-MAP commercial marine business, a leading provider of commercial marine cartography and digital publications, shore-side and shipside voyage optimization, cloud-based fleet management and fleet analytics software.
The acquisition will be integrated with the i4 Insight platform, strengthening the existing performance platform ecosystem.
More ➥ https://www.lr.org/en/latest-news/lr...-navico-group/

[iyamwhatiyam]

OK. Navico/Lowrance has provided me with a link where I can pay for my subscription, (at a 50% discount for my troubles), and download the charts to my PC running Windows 10. (I have an iPad with the C-MAP app I can download to but I need to get the chart files onto a C-MAP C-CARD for use in my old Standard Horizon CP180i chart plotter.)

So my new question is: Where can I find a C-CARD BURNER, (not a reader, I need to write to the C-Card so I can pop it into my chart plotter.) West Marine used to have these in the old days, I know that they exist, but when I search I only find C-Card Readers.

I can buy a new C-CARD from Landfall Navigation but the cost is prohibitive at $279. I may as well put that money towards a new chart plotter, Garmin anyone? Or just use my iPad, although even with a battery pack it runs down in a very short amount of time.

[Marathon1150]

Two things. C-Map was at one point in its history owned by Jeppeson. Their customer service back then was equally terrible compared to now. And I agree, it remains terrible.

The C-Map reader can transfer data to SD cards. Presumably it can transfer the entire chart package to an SD card from your computer but before buying one (they are not cheap) it would be worthwhile confirming that. I bought one from Binnacle.ca and they have been quite helpful and seem to have a magic way of contacting C-Map for technical questions.

Good luck.

[AiniA]

I bought a B&G plotter and wanted to get CMap charts for it. I talked to the B&G support people in Canada and they were very knowledgeable and helpful. I talked to the CMap people and they were hopeless and did not appear to understand or sympathize with the problems I was having.

[iyamwhatiyam]

http://https://www.marinepanservice.com/imgs/mps2k/c-map-r1ur110xx-pc-planner-grande-1.jpg

Found the Jeppesen PC Planner, well, the picture anyway.

[iyamwhatiyam]

http://ww1.jeppesen.com/documents/ma...rHandbook1.pdf

It’s a rare item, but this appears to be what I need. If anyone knows where I can buy one new or used, I would appreciate it.

I ordered a second power pack for my iPad so I can swap and charge, the C-MAP app works fine on the iPad. I could just rely on that, (yes I have paper charts), but as long as I have the chart plotter with obsolete charts, it needs to flagged INOP. I’m trying to avoid that.

http://www.binniclemate.com

[Marathon1150]

I bought a C-Map Reader from www.binnacle.ca about 3 or 4 years ago. They are no longer listing it on their site but if you send an email to info@binnacle.com, they are usually quick to respond and may be able to point you in the right direction. Good luck with this.

[iyamwhatiyam]

I think at this point the question is: If not C-MAP, then who? For instrument flight, old dino that I am, I’ve always relied on Jeppesen paper charts. When I had working airplanes on the left coast we upgraded them to Garmin GPS units, sadly by then I had relocated and never had a chance to use them myself, they did get positive feedback though. Based on that I purchased Garmin nuvii auto GPS. What a POS that thing turned out to be. Talk about bizarre routings! Instead of making a simple left turn it thought it was in New Jersey and would have me turn right, go through a residential area and pop me back out where I had initially turned right and send me across the street! So it appears that they put the hot-shot engineers on avionics and the losers on autos. So where once I would blindly choose Garmin every time for anything, like replacing my Std Horizon plotter, now I trust no one outside of their core practice. Thus the question: who do y’all recommend for electronic charts and who for chart plotters? Going back through earlier threads I see C-MAP and Jeppesen have been an issue for years!

[iyamwhatiyam]

OK. I figured out that my card is a Memory Stick Duo Card or Pro Duo. Once I got that figured out, (Thanks ebay!), I knew what to ask for. Here is what looks like the best option so far… [URL="https://www.amazon.com/SmartMedia-Reader-Universal-Adapter-Windows/dp/B07J9WQGDX[/URL]