I humbly apologized to B&G for buying their products.

[tanglewood]

See MVTanglewood.com. And click on “wall of shame”. Navico (B&G) is the star of the show. Never again, under any circumstances.

[Moontide]

Liked the part in the,warranty that says it is good if USED only in the territory of the original dealer or builder. WTF?

[David B]

Originally Posted by Romlea

My old B&G MHU failed two years ago.

Since we are circumnavigating, we wanted the best product we could find and bought a new B&G MHU with NMEA2000. It was bought when we were in the UK.

It failed when we were in Brazil. Although B&G's guarantee statement says that you can have your equipment inspected by a local distributor, they wanted the item back in the UK. Transportation cost back and forward on my account.

I had it inspected by B&G in Argentina, PCB was rotten due to ingress of moisture and they replaced it for more than € 300. Reclaiming at B&G UK did not lead to refunding. Instead, they insisted on sending it back to the UK for inspection and then have a new one sent back to me in Argentina. Still at my expense!
This means they have no respect for or trust their own distributors.

The only thing I could do was apologizing to them for buying their product and that I promised never to make that mistake again. No response from B&G.

It is not nice to find a once-quality firm and product to be as foul as this, but I'm not the only one. A german boat could replace after a year and another Dutch vessel replaced the PCB every two years since they bought it.

B&G in the old days was a top brand with an indestructible reputation.

As far as I'm concerned, Navico can be under the carpet.

Interesting. All I can add is that we had an issue with our AIS. In Syracuse, Sicily, we obtained the services of a recommended technician - he is across all brands. During his time on board I got to discussing the pro's and con's of the major brands. His advice was despite my disappointment with this particular AIS (Raymarine) failing, and the price of the replacement unit, in his experience Raymarine was still the best for support at least. As for the actual equipment, I am happy with our full Raymarine system.

[CAELESTIS]

Sorry to hear your experience was negative.

My B&G has been flawless. About to add the NAC3 autopilot.

Like absolutely flawless.

[AKMark]

I too am sorry to hear about other people's bad B&G experiences. I don't doubt them ... I just feel compelled to state our experience.

We are approaching 2 years since we installed a bunch of B&G equipment: Zeus3 9" chartplotter, Triton2 wind sensors, 4G radar, Triton2 instrument displays, Navico AIS transceiver. We have used the equipment quite a bit on various voyages, with Zero significant problems.

I hope I'm not cursing ourselves by saying that everything has performed flawlessly. At first there were some strange (and minor) bugs that I needed to figure out but nothing difficult.

We are happy with B&G and I hope I never have to experience Warranty work!
Cheers,
-Mark

[Matt Johnson]

It's good to hear that at least two people have had good experiences with B&G/Simrad/Lowrance. Did either of you need customer service from Navico? That is where I think the company really falls on its face.

Matt

[AKMark]

No, I haven't (knocking on wood) had to contact Navico customer service.

I should say, too, that I do almost all refits/upgrades on our boat myself - always striving for a professional looking end product. However with all the electronics I had a local company that I trust a lot (Rodgers Marine Electronics) do the complete install. They did an awesome job. They are B&G dealers and they have excellent customer service. I'm pretty sure they would help me deal with Navico if it ever came to that.

[Aswayze]

My experience with Navico mirrors Matt and Jessicas. Literally took MONTHS to answer an email and even then never got an actual answer just some cut and paste thing that left me needing to ask basically the same exact question again.

However, and this is a BIG however, when I CALLED them instead of emailing, I got very good answers very promptly from a very well informed technician. That seems to be the secret with these guys, get them on the phone and you're all set. Bummer of it is, most of us these days who deal with anything technical always prefer to send and email and get a response by email since it is easier to compose thoughts, lay out technical details, add screen shots/photos, and of course refer back to the reply at a later date but it seems that Navico does not, at this point at least, prioritize emails the same as phone calls.

Perhaps we should try sending them a Marconi-gram... Or perhaps dispatch a runner carrying papyrus scrolls! It might work even better still!

In the end, I have been pretty happy with my B&G kit. I would have just been a lot more seamless if Navico service was responsive in more of a this millennium kind of way.

[mvmojo]

I have several friends who feel like the best way to deal with Navico is at boat shows. They have gently complained to Navico reps at boat shows and received free upgrades to their autopilots, instruments, etc. Just another approach...