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Buyers beware!
Two years ago I purchased a Magellan Meridian Gold GPS unit to help with exploring abandoned railroads. It was an older model at the time so I got a good deal on it. I have since added the memory card and purchased the mapsend software for the street level and POI information. This unit has and still performs flawless. This past year in April Sam's club had a special deal on the newer Explorist model including the memory card and software for a price I couldn't buy the unit alone for. I figured for the price it would be good to have a spare unit just in case. (I have already ruined a camera exploring) My brother also purchased one as a spare. Thankfully I haven't actually needed the unit because it started locking up only after a few days of use. So I called Magellan and sent it back. It came back a few weeks later saying it was fixed. Within a few days it was locking up again. I sent it back in August. In the meantime my brother's unit does the same thing. so Now I sent both units back. I didn't hear anything for two months. I called and they said their repair center was really busy but they will work on it. Called a month later and my brother's unit comes back. So far that one seems ok. My unit did not come back yet. Called again and they said they would replace it but at the time were out of stock with replacements. Finally after two more weeks my unit comes back. but lo and behold its my OLD unit with the SAME problem! Now were getting into December, I called complaining I was supposed to get a new unit so they said yes their in stock and will ship me one. I had to call THREE more times for them to realize they didn't ship the unit because I didn't give a credit card number to insure I send the old one back! I was also told a return shipping label will come with it to send the old unit back. Sure enough I get the unit but no label. Again I called an additional two more times concerning the shipping label but again nothing. On my last call I just told them to forget the label and give me the address to send it back and a RMA#. (Im assured I will still get that label) I am just going to ship it back at my expense to just be (hopefully) over and done with it. Two weeks after I shipped the old unit back I got in the mail the shipping label I was supposed to get. Turns out the RMA# on the label was different then the one they provided when I shipped the old unit back at my expense. So I had to call them to insure that they did get the old unit (I had it delivery confirmed) and to make sure they matched up the RMA numbers so they would know it was returned and therefore I would not be charged for the replacement unit. So far the replacement unit is working fine but if it fails I think I will just save the hassle and toss it out and look elsewhere.

So with all that all I can say is the product works great and interfaces with mapping software with ease. However if you have a problem with the unit your going to be in for a rough ride to get it resolved. So far I have been testing this new unit on routine stuff since I do not trust it for a real exploring. (The unit gave no warning of failure before) If it fails again I think I am better to just eat the loss and toss it out. Then when my Meridian Gold fails I will be probably looking at a Garmin. AT least I already checked and my software will interface to a Garmin.