experience with Gulf Coast Aero?

good or bad experience with Gulf Coast Aero?

Let me start off - all my avionics have been purchased - so I'm writing this from a after sales support point of view...


So I go to power up my brand new SL-30 last night and it turns on but I get "communications failure". To make a long story short, the Nav side is getting power but the Comm side is not (checked continuity then hooked up power directly to pins 1 & 9).

Anyway, I call Gulf Coast Aero (where I purchased brand new back in June) and they seem very ho-hum, send it in, we'll see what we find. They give no time line, no sense of care.

Just wanted to see if anyone had similar experiences. I also bought a reported to be brand new GMA-340 from them but when I received it, it was yellow tagged! (they said a customer bought it for an install but never went through with it - but Garmin clearly overhauled it a year earlier!)

Before I send my unit to them, I just wanted to check to see if anyone has dealt with their service department... wondering if I'll ever see my SL-30 from them.

Thanks for info

I am sorry I can not help you, but your info is helping me. I still have to order my FULL panel duel efis,dual coms, 327xp, 340audio panel and more. Was really considering gulf coast as one of my top options but will watch your situation before i order. Customer service is VERY IMPORTANT to me when spending $10K+ on plane stuff. Thanks for the info good or bad.

jeff
austin tx

Try this...

I recently upgraded from an SL-40 to a brand new SL-30. Upon powering the SL-30, I found that just 'breathing' on the small Khz knob changed frequency.

I called the company that sold it to me and they said, "You can send it back to us but we're just going to send it to the factory so go ahead and call the factory directly".

I called the Garmin folks in Oregon, 800.525.6726, explained the problem and they said "Send it in with a copy of your receipt". I did, they fixed it under warranty, and it was back to me in a week.

I suggest you bypass Gulf Aero and call Oregon Rosie

Avionics

I just finished buying all my stuff from Stark Avionics. The best prices I could find and great service. I went with the Approach Systems hub so I didn't get his harnesses.

I think Steinair will be in the same ballpark ast Stark. These guys depend on customer service to survive. They are good at it.

DArwin N. Barrie
Chandler AZ

Follow up: Called Garmin AT out in Oregon. Nice folks. They said send it back, no problem, no worries.

They did advise me that if you are going to test the comm side only, both comm and nav have to be grounded at the same time. Mine was because that's how my harness is set up. So I guess I still have to send it to Orgeon. Would much rather do that than send it back to GCA.

The only reason I got it from GCA at the time because they had a good price around OSH timeframe (even though I didn't make it to OSH this year).