The following is a letter I sent to Eagle this morning.

I would like you to know that, after having been a repeat customer of Eagle and Lowrance for over 15 years, I will no longer do business with your company.

I just contacted your company with regards to a depthfinder, an Accura 240, serial number 10395358, that I purchased from Cabelas last fall, at the end of September, when I purchased my new boat. The unit has developed a problem with fogging.

When I contacted the customer service representative to request a return authorization, I was informed that if I had called before 7/23/02, I would have been fine, but, because of your factory ship date of 7/23/01, as of 7/23/02, I could not return the unit without an itemized sales receipt. Well, I don't have that. I would be surprised if many of your customers do have receipts for all the goods they purchased 10 months ago.

Since the unit left your factory on 7/23/01 last year to Cabelas, if one assumes a week in transit to Cabelas, the very earliest that I could have bought the unit would have been 7/30/01, or 2 days ago. In fact, I received it on about 9/24 or thereabouts. But heavens, I can't prove that, and I may be trying to steal service from you which I am not reasonably entitled to! Gosh, Katie, bar the doors!

It may well be that some of your customers are dishonest and try to cheat you out of service that they are not due. However, I am not one of those, and I am mighty pissed off from having been treated like a shoplifter at Walmart trying to get credit for stolen goods. By the way, that is exactly the example that your Customer service rep used with me.

Over the years, I have purchased a Lowrance Flasher in about 1982, a Lowrance paper chart recorder in about '85, an Eagle depth finder in about '86, an Eagle Loran in '90, an Eagle GPS in '98, and this depth finder in the fall of 2001. I have been a loyal customer, and have recommended your products widely during that time. By my reckoning, I have purchased about $2000 worth of your product over the years, with an average time between purchase of about 3 years. I was just about to order a second Eagle DF for the back end of the boat. Fortunately, we had this little encounter before I made that error.

So, here is what I am going to do. I take about 50 people a year out fishing. I am going to keep the fogged up unit in my boat, and I am going to ***** about it and tell everyone who sees the fogging the story about how Eagle made it hard for me to get a good unit.

I also participate in several fishing bulletin boards on the internet. Questions continually come up requesting advice for purchasing equipment on these boards. I will be ready and willing to share my experience there.

Think I can direct any sales to other vendors? I do, too.

You have saved the costs of repair of this unit. I hope your CFO is pleased.

I feel your pain bud.Unfortunately there is getting to be a reciept underground out there that looks for reciepts steels an item on the reciept and use the two to turn the hot goods into cash.My wife is the store manager for a major retail drug store and deals with it all the time.They steel the reciepts out of the dumpster and or where ever and come into the store,steal the items and then try to return it.She just got done with a complete inventory and her store is $80,000 short of $860,000 worth of merchandise.Her and the district manager have checked all the loop holes and are finaly having to atribute it to shrinkage(theft).Its these **** sticks that make the honest man have to prove himself.Trust me it pisses me off too!!

Silver, I agree with you and would be mad as hell if the same happend to myself. The only think I could think of was asking to talk to a customer service manager. Should not have to I agree but some times the $7.00hr emp. can't make the decissions. Good luck

Silver, I am sure you have tried this but I throw it out any way.
Have you tried to talk to Cabela's. They have a record of all purchases and maybe you can get a copy of receipt. Also I have had problems with certain products that I had purchased from Cabela's and it was a 2nd party manufacture and cabela's had replaced it under their warrenty since I bought the product from them. I had to talk to several people but it was handled.
Good luck.

What a bunch of BS, I mean, so what if the unit shipped from them to cabelas a year ago? That doesn't mean jack. Just think if it went to a small independent retail shop, it could have easily sat around for 6+ months before selling. And for a customer service rep to compare you to a criminal.....

I work in the customer service dept of a company the manufactures medical equipment. And while I have never agreed with it (hope the boss dosn't see this) we also start our warrenty from the date the unit was shipped to the vender. It is accually a pretty common way of doing it. You may have more luck contacting Cabela's. Good luck.

I agree with BW. Give Cabelas a call. They have always gone above and beyond my expectations. I had a reel that went bad last year. I couldn't get anywhere with the reel company. Then I paid $25 to the repair shop for them to tell me they couldn't fix it. The next time I ordered from Cabelas I mentioned what had happened. They asked me how much I paid to get the reel repaired, and what kind of line I had put on the reel. She told me to keep an eye on the front porch. Two days later I got a package with a new reel, an 800 yd spool of maxima, a $25 gift certicicate, and a prepaid box to ship the old reel back. How's that for customer service? SS

For all of you that suggested calling Cabela's, I plan to do just that on Monday. Thanks for the advice.

If you paid with a visa/MC, you should be able to get a copy of the statement from the company that shows the purchase or maybe you still have your statement.
I know that I can get copies of monthly statements for my visa purchases for a year back.

Posh, Eagle wouldn't take the Visa statement. The issue is that the visa statement doesn't show the item.

Hi Ho Silver, I hear you.
I too WAS a loyal LEI/Lowrance customer but no more. I have had issues (fogging, software etc.) with both my LMS-350a and my Global Map 2000. Both seemed to be simple fixes but I was told that Lowrance would not look at the units until I forwarded $249.00! Both units were literally days out of the warantee period and I felt that Lowrance was a bit unfair considering I have over Two grand invested in their gear.
Why did I feel this was unfair? Well, I write the occasional piece for STS and in one of my articals I endorsed Lowrance/Eagle electronics. This was an honest endorsement as I did not ask for, nor did I recieve any compensation whatsoever.
So, now I need a little help with my LEI products and I wrote a letter to Dennis Cole the Lowrance marketing guy...and got no response. So I called Mr. Cole...no response. I asked another source for A LEI contact and was told to call Bill Itner also from marketing...five polite calls later, you guessed it... no response.
Now If my ordeal was an isolated case, so be it but I personally know of three people -including the editor of a fishing magazine- who cannot get Lowrance to stand behind their product even to the extent of returning a phone call...pretty sad and cowardly.
I'm giving away all of my LEI crap and replacing it with JRC Electronics. (jrcamerica.com.) Good people, Great gear (Color fish finders that will blow you away!) and they have the class to return a phone call...

I have to give Eagle their due. After sending the above letter, I got the following response listed below. Good for them.

Mr. Brunette,
The following message was forwarded to my attention from our Eagle external
mailbox. You are obviously upset with the previous contact with one of our
customer service phone representatives. We would like to apologize for the
response originally obtained from one of my phone reps and would like to
request the opportunity to provide service for your Eagle Accura 240 unit.

At Eagle Electronics we not only stand behind our products but we choose to
honor not only the fine print of the warranty but the spirit of the warranty
as well. Your previous encounter with our service staff is simply not the
level of service we expect of ourselves.

Please feel free to contact me directly at the numbers provided below. You
may also call our toll free customer service number, and when answered by a
representative please ask to be transferred to extension 8710. I can be
reached between the hours of 8am and 5pm Monday thru Friday central time.

Regards,
Luke Morris
Customer Service Communications Supervisor
International Technical Coordinator.

Lowrance Electronics Inc.
12000 E. Skelly Drive, Tulsa, OK, 74128, USA
Tel: (918) 438-8710
FAX:(918) 234-1707

Good for you Hilton.
It sounds like everything will be taken care of.

SH,

Thanks for posting their reply. It shows that you are willing to give them a fair public trial. Let us know how the resolution works out.

Andy

Man, what else were they going to do after reading that letter by Silver "Tounge" Hilton? You betcha they were going to fix it if they want to stay in business. Good job SH, I may archive that one to pull out for ideas the next time I have to straighten out some nitwits over a warranty problem