I emailed Lowrance on Saturday for some support. It has been 2 business days since and no response. I tried calling and was on hold for like 30 minutes before giving up. I am sick of this crap. Last time I did this I got a lame response you would give a third grader....I have ran electronics on boats for 25 years. I understand there are plenty of elementary things that cause problems but in my email I clearly went over all of the things I have tried and 2 of these things were outlined in the response.

Always been a Lowrance guy, now not so sure.

Hawgey, send an e-mail to linda.colt@navico.com I would be surprised if you aren't answered within two hours or so if she is at work. I lost a map drawer this weekend, e-mailed her yesterday, and within two hours she replied and was sending me the drawer (no charge). Another person I know bought an H2O color unit off of a site from Georgia unseen. Unit was bad, he contacted Linda and recieved a new unit the next day with instructions and prepaid packaging to send the old one in. For every bad story you hear, I could turn you to people who have had stellar service from this lady. Hopefully your experience will be pleasant. There are people at Lowrance who DO care, sometimes if you don't know who it gets frustrating.

I e-mailed Lowrance about 1/2hr ago and have already received a response. Granted it is a automatic response but at least I know they received my questions.

So far so good. Will see what happens.

Okay, I did receive the automatic reply on Monday after I had sent the email on Saturday. Still nothing. I have not had the opportunity to sit on the phone for a few hours to wait for a rep...I will call the suggested support rep when I have time but I am not happy as I am going fishing tomorrow and still have no response.

Hawgeye

Linda Colt- I always get a reply from her in less than 1 business day.

I had a question about my lcx-37 (losing bottom). I emailed Linda at lowrance, and received an email within a half hour. Told her the propblem, she asked what version I had. She informed me there was an update and I had the new version within a couple of hours. Haven't checked to see if it fixed the problem or not (I'm at work), but I was very pleased at how fast I received help.

I recently had a problem with my Lowrance LCX-111C losing GPS Signal. I recieved an immediate reply from them and we are trying a few different things to see what might be the solution. The point is that they have responded and are working on a solution. Anymore fish sonars/gps units are COMPUTERS...maybe Lowrance, Humminbird, and or the rest will eventually be forced to handle them as such...i.e. selling extended support for the units. Why would any of us expect service on an old and outdated units...yea yea...when the unit is 3yrs and younger it should be serviced...but where does a person draw the line? NObody want to provide horrible service and when your the big dog in the field...you have the most product out there and therefore the most service request. I'm not sure what it should take to make things better...with all the post about Lowrance maybe someone should start a signature petition and send it too lowrance and ask them about there future mission statement of the company and of supporting the old units, the new units and the fisherman in general.

A lot of these anti-Lowrance posts are likely from people with an agenda. Use your other brand of sonar and be happy.

I've personally had a Lowrance X102c for years and it has been flawless. This sonar has been soaking wet many times, and even froze solid once, without a problem. Best sonar made in my opinion and that's the opinion that matters to me.

Also, if you make a call to customer service and simultaneously start crying on a related site like this about poor customer service, maybe that is why you become a lower priority than another customer who is a bit more likely to be and remain a loyal customer.

My .02s.

A lot of these anti-Lowrance posts are likely from people with an agenda. Use your other brand of sonar and be happy.



No agenda here Seedtree ~ I started w/a green box and a home-built Heathkit(forgot which one was 1st) & happily used lowrance products until the shabby/poor design/warr problem products of the 2000s. Your a lucky man or maybe you have a agenda *wink* :)

I still use a pair of '2001/4 lowrances for GPS use (only) plus a '2003 Raymarine recorder for plotting. I plan on purchasing new electronics the 1st of the year/2009 & I doubt it will be either of the two above that I mentioned...

Also, if you make a call to customer service and simultaneously start crying on a related site like this about poor customer service, maybe that is why you become a lower priority than another customer who is a bit more likely to be and remain a loyal customer.
.

Oh yeah, I'm sure that when he contacted lowrance, he said 'hey-this is hawgeye from walleyecentral.com.' and upon hearing such a name, they came here, tracked down anything he's ever said, and based his service upon that. You're saying that they're ignoring him because he's complaining about their service. Um, duh, he wouldn't be complaining about the service if they weren't already ignoring him first.

You've had 1 good unit, so the hundreds/thousands of people out there that are fed up with lowrance have an agenda and really don't have problems. Come on. Nobody's saying that every unit that lowrance turns out is junk. Far from it, they make some darn good units. But, as of lately, your odds of having problems are lot higher, and your odds of getting little to no cooperation from them to fix the problem are much higher than they used to be, and much higher than other companies.

when I built my new boat I was originally planning to go with Lowrance again. But the more I read, the more I just did not feel comfortable staying with them, even though I really liked the specs of the units I was looking at. I grew up dreaming of having a top line lowrance unit. Now that I was finally able to get one, I realized I no longer wanted one. Something changed with that company over the last few years. I went with another company, and i've never been happier.

Look around at any company, and you will find people who've had bad experiences with them. But, when the numbers of one in particular climb way high, something is going on other than some secret agenda. Seems to me like Lowrance has gone down the route of many other good/big name companies, devoting their resources to advertising and volume sales instead of quality and customer service.

Darn it , I hate when the cost accountants try to squeeze extra profits and the quality goes down. Hardware & Software must work in unison.:cheers:

Will see that this bad economy ( housing is in it's third year and maybe three more for the bubble to get back up :bangin: ).

These are all just portable computers with software that each company uses. It just may be time to use a Portable computer with "Fugawi Marine ENC" and a Navionic's chip for GPS , with a Mouse GPS antenna, I have a Back up unit.

Now just see if a Sonar can get attached to the computer:banghead: .


OK what Other units to top these two

Humminbird
Lowrance

I have a glogal map 4800,7200,lcx19c and a x125. I have had a total of 9 lowrance units.My lcx 19c keeps loosing bottom signal so I am in the procces of trouble shooting with lowrance. The tech said this is very common and not to worry about it.I am worried.My globalmap 4800 that I used 6 times started GPS MODUAL NOT RESPONDING so I updated the software for the unit and tried to upgrade the puck.Turns out that the puck is bad after hours of troubleshooting online and with lowrance techs.This was 7 weeks ago that the problem was found.I ordered the new puck from the tech for $112.00.I called them back 2 weeks later to ask when I would receive my lgs2000 puck.The teck looked up my RA # and said it was on a truck and heading to lowrance.I asked if it was going to have the new 1.9 software in it and he said he would put a note in my paperwork to make sure it is upgraded.Well 5 weeks later no puck.I called again waiting on hold for 25 minutes to talk to a tech and he pulls my # up and says on 9-3-08 they are going to start to build 300 of the pucks and when I called it was 9-5-08.The tech said it would be about 3-4 more weeks till I get my unit.This is not good.This is not good service at all.I also had to send in my 19c to get the screen fixed for 100.00 becouse of the bad screens that were to hard to see in the daylite.I only want good honest service a good product that works. Is that wrong

To too upgrades my screen a few years ago... took time but did it in the winter.

Also I agree that there is a problem with the GPS Antenna Pucks. I have had three go out over the years. I Went with the Lowrance Network Backbone to have three Pucks on the network.

Now working with them why the network is down ( figure it's a voltage issue or fuse ).

I understand Humminbird will come out with a new high accurate GPS antenna puck in December 2008.

Will see if Lowrance can make a more reliable puck for the boats. LGC-3000 with thr red connector and can use a dual red to ble for older units. But I dont think this is any better than LGC - 2000.

I have had the X75 sonar, and with 7 years of flawless operation it made me a true believer in Lowrance products. My up grade to the X510c wasn`t so good with shallow water freeze up issues. I sent the unit in twice then deceided to pull the plug on it and bought a Vexilar to replace it.
Anybody out there who has the older X65, X75 & X85 graphs hang on to them. Don`t upgrade to the new Lowrance stuff its nowhere as good as their older units.

I went fishing on Saturday and again, adjusted, modified, tweeked for about 2 hours trying to find the "sweet spot" so my graph could actually log into the bottom. Of course, no phone calls on my cell phone! All that being said, I installed version 1.6 and I never lost bottom for the rest of the fishing day! You cannot tell me there is not something wrong as I had the same problem with 1.7 as I did with 2.1


Lowrance just doesn't have a clue what is going on!!

I am never going to upgrade the software again....It actually works now and I will give up the software enhancements just to be able to read the bottom!!!!! WOW, guess "depth finder" is an incorrect name for my LCX25C.

Linda.colt@navico.com Email Linda Colt, I emailed her and she promtely responded. From what I have seen she is the best at getting issues taken care of and she helped me out right away.

sorry didn't read the whole thread her info was already posted DOH.

Hawgeye

The software version may be the reason for the problem you see, but not the only reason for the "losing bottom" problem several are reporting..

I'm having trouble with a 334C that would not work in shallow, weedy water, less than 7'. The screen stops scrolling and the digital depth numbers flash. Rolling the software version back from 1.7 to 1.6 made the 334C more likely to lock onto bottom in shallow, weedy water, but also more likely to lose the lock in deeper, weedy water (even 10'-12'). I've requested a replacement transducer from Lowrance, since I suspect the transducer I have is faulty (others have reported new transducers solved this problem). To Lowrance's credit, they were very responsive (20 minutes from my e-mail request to their promise to send a replacement). I'll report back on the behavior of the new transducer.

Yes, transducers wear out, or get weak after a period of time.

aoladp://MA20305370-0001/image001.gif
Linda Colt
Customer Walk in Service Department
12000 East Skelly Drive
Tulsa Oklahoma 74128
1-800-324-1356 ext 8747
Direct Line 918-438-8747
Linda.colt@navico.com

Dear Sir,
At present, to use vista the update has to be saved to the computer. Once the executable file is in the Vista computer; right click on the executable file and left click on properties. Next left click on the compatibility tab. Put a check mark next to run as windows XP service Pak 2 and a check mark next to run as administrator. Left click on apply and then ok. Then you should be able to double click on the executable file and the update should load on the MMC or SD card.


Otherwise, as far as I know, the updates have not yet been released specifically for Vista.


There is some confusion on my part. I understood that you had the LCX-113 and the LCX-37. Do you in fact have the LCX-25c? I ask because most software versions are not transferable between different units.


With the LCX-113c and the LCX-37c I prefer 2.3 version of software because in the Sonar Features I can specify Shallow Water in the Fishing Mode.
Thank you,
Steve Mullikin


So it seams that the newer units have taken care of the shallow water with a 2.3 and hardware fix in the 113 & 37.


I will continue test my units this weekend and report back.

blueicecpa, i have no doubt that transducers get weak or wear out "after a period of time". I am also sure that time is not annually and I don't know of anyone using a $250 plus thru-hull transducer who has had one wear out in the last 10 years. And these are all Airmar transducers. If your Lowrance transducers are wearing out annually i'd look at different transducers.