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Garmin GPSMap 64s Price Drop


BikeBill

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I've been watching the price of the Garmin 64 series with interest as it hasn't seemed to have come down a penny since it was introduced. I have an Oregon 600 that I'm not really pleased with and was considering a 64S if it would ever come down in price. So I got an email from GPS City about a sale and thought I'd check their site. The 64s dropped from $400 to $300. So I checked Amazon and found the same price. Also the 64st is down to $350. Thought I'd spread the holiday joy!

Edited by BikeBill
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I checked Amazon today and they had raised the price of the 64s to $340 (and an even bigger hike on the 64st). I thought I better get moving so I ordered a 64s from GPS City for $300 (Where I bought my Oregon 600 - free shipping and no tax). Amazon's price hike may not be a trend as their prices can be volatile, but I thought I'd grab a 64s for the $300 price just in case.

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I checked Amazon today and they had raised the price of the 64s to $340 (and an even bigger hike on the 64st). I thought I better get moving so I ordered a 64s from GPS City for $300 (Where I bought my Oregon 600 - free shipping and no tax). Amazon's price hike may not be a trend as their prices can be volatile, but I thought I'd grab a 64s for the $300 price just in case.

Garmin's site is still showing the new lower prices that appeared last week ($250 for the 64, $300 for the 64S, etc.). I'm guessing it's a permanent change... I'm just waiting for REI to catch on, so I can get the 10% dividend plus a 5% bonus for paying with their Visa card.

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Occasional freeze-ups that make me pop the batteries. Sometimes I have to pull the batteries and then wait about 5-10 minutes for the thing to start working again. Also, the accuracy is really mediocre, not as good as two friends' Etrex's or my venerable 60CSx. It often has me walk past the cache by about 30 feet, then stabilizes and has me walk back.

 

I'm thinking it needs a good firmware upgrade to work out the bugs but this hasn't happened yet (I'm on the latest version).

 

More information here: http://garminoregon6xx.wikispaces.com/page/messages/home

 

Great screen and overall concept; it just needs to be refined.

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I haven't gotten my 64s yet, either. I contacted GPS City today and asked why a GPS ordered on the 2nd hadn't been shipped yet by the 8th. After a while the guy comes back and says they had a 'stocking error'. I asked if this meant they were out of them and he said yes. Now it was listed as 'in stock' when I ordered and for several days afterward. Just today I saw it wasn't to be in stock until the 10th. Maybe the people who ordered expedited shipping got theirs first or maybe they just goofed. Perhaps with the price drop they had a run on them.

 

In the meantime, Amazon has raised the price of the 64s to $393! They have the 64st with maps and more memory for $370. That would be an easy decision!

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I haven't gotten my 64s yet, either. I contacted GPS City today and asked why a GPS ordered on the 2nd hadn't been shipped yet by the 8th. After a while the guy comes back and says they had a 'stocking error'. I asked if this meant they were out of them and he said yes. Now it was listed as 'in stock' when I ordered and for several days afterward. Just today I saw it wasn't to be in stock until the 10th. Maybe the people who ordered expedited shipping got theirs first or maybe they just goofed. Perhaps with the price drop they had a run on them.

 

In the meantime, Amazon has raised the price of the 64s to $393! They have the 64st with maps and more memory for $370. That would be an easy decision!

 

*Sigh* I ask you how you liked the 64s and I find out that there was a problem.

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I wasn't aware that Garmin ships free. I wonder if I'd get hit for sales tax? Anyway, if GPS City doesn't come through (And I've had good luck with them in the past) that gives me an option. With REI I'd be paying sales tax for sure as they have stores in PA.

But, if you have an REI membership, you'll get 10% back as a dividend at the end of the year. (Plus, you can take it back if anything ever goes wrong with it.)

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Amazon, in their quest of constantly changing prices, now has the 64s and the 64st back at $300 and $350 respectively.

 

BTW, I don't have anything against REI except their nearest store is nearly an hour away. I realize that there are advantages to dealing with them but I've never made the plunge of joining. There's something that bothers me about their dividend system. I'd probably forget to spend it. Plus with the 6% sales tax subtracted from the 10% dividend, I'd be netting $12 savings (if I remembered to spend it) and it costs more than that in gas to get there.

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Amazon, in their quest of constantly changing prices, now has the 64s and the 64st back at $300 and $350 respectively.

Not when I looked. $398 when sold by Amazon, $300 when sold by "Star Lite International, LLC".

 

64st is $350 when sold by Amazon.

 

Amazon has some strange algorithm for matching the prices of other sellers. I've seen freak occurrences in the past where price for a book would continue to climb because seller A would peg his price to that of seller B + small mark-up, and seller B does the same with seller A's price. Amazon has put in code to check for such situations since then.

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I saw that it was being 'outsourced' to Star Lite, but since the shipping is free and it's on the Amazon site, I figured it's from Amazon, even though it's technically not. When I searched for a 64s on Amazon, that's what pops up first.

 

You are right, Amazon's pricing can be strange. A couple years ago they had a woodworking tool priced way high compared to other places I could find it. I contacted them figuring they'd do a price reduction or maybe source that item from elsewhere, but I got a reply that basically told me that their price was what it was.

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GPS City tends to be out of stock a lot while advertising specials which leads me to believe they have a cash flow problem, and not buying stock until they get enough customers paying up front for the product.

 

Amazon finally is matching garmin's MSRP on those 64 units, which means they will probably be even cheaper in the next few months.

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I called GPSCity as today was when the new shipment of 64s's were to come in. They hadn't arrived. On top of that, they checked tracking and didn't know when they would be in stock so I canceled the order.

 

I was thinking of ordering from The GPS Store, which has good ratings, but remembered that Red90 said that Garmin has free shipping. So I checked to make sure there was no sales tax (there isn't for PA but there is in several other states) and went ahead and ordered. At least from Garmin I figure I'll get a nice fresh unit.

 

Garmin had a 10% off deal but that was on accessories and maps - not on the GPS. The 60s should show up by UPS in about a week (maybe longer - isn't Garmin way out west somewhere?).

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I called GPSCity as today was when the new shipment of 64s's were to come in. They hadn't arrived. On top of that, they checked tracking and didn't know when they would be in stock so I canceled the order.

 

I was thinking of ordering from The GPS Store, which has good ratings, but remembered that Red90 said that Garmin has free shipping. So I checked to make sure there was no sales tax (there isn't for PA but there is in several other states) and went ahead and ordered. At least from Garmin I figure I'll get a nice fresh unit.

 

Garmin had a 10% off deal but that was on accessories and maps - not on the GPS. The 60s should show up by UPS in about a week (maybe longer - isn't Garmin way out west somewhere?).

 

Tell us when you get it. I'm interested in how you like it.

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<<Maybe you can tell us (where it ships from) once you have a tracking number. >>

 

And I can! It shipped from Olathe, Kansas (a suburb of Kansas City) at 10:54 PM yesterday. Today it got to the DHL facility in St. Louis, MO., where I suppose it's waiting for a plane ride.

Edited by BikeBill
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This just keeps getting better. Though I called and cancelled my order with GPS City on the 10th and got an email verifying the cancellation the same day, I got another email today saying that my 64s had shipped. I checked my credit card and, of course, they never credited my account for the $299.99 (which they charged at the time I ordered, not when they shipped the unit). I'm glad I used a credit card instead of a debit card as that gives me some more protection.

 

In the meantime, the 64s I ordered from Garmin should come tomorrow, though I can't track it as when DHL handed it off to USPS, the USPS tracking number doesn't work.

 

This is screwed up!

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This just keeps getting better. Though I called and cancelled my order with GPS City on the 10th and got an email verifying the cancellation the same day, I got another email today saying that my 64s had shipped. I checked my credit card and, of course, they never credited my account for the $299.99 (which they charged at the time I ordered, not when they shipped the unit). I'm glad I used a credit card instead of a debit card as that gives me some more protection.

 

This is ONE reason I stopped using GPS City. They charge immediately on out of stock items, which is a bad enough practice. What really got me mad was that if you have one backordered item in a large order, they do not hold the other items for you. By the time the backordered item comes in stock, one of the other items goes out of stock and it just goes around and around and you wait forever until they ship. All the while they charged you on day one...

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So, I contacted GPS City and they agreed I had cancelled the order (I spoke to a guy named Willy, who said he had been the one I had called before regarding the cancellation). So he said that when the order is delivered to me, to mark it refused and 'return to sender'. Then my credit card will be refunded the $300 when they get the GPS back.

 

I'm glad they acknowledged their error (again - the first error was saying that the 64s was in stock when it wasn't) but it might be a while until I get my $300 back.

 

In the meantime, USPS texted me that the 64s I ordered from Garmin is to be delivered today. AND the mail-maiden came as I was writing this and the 64s is in hand!!

 

Now I have to figure out how this thing works!

Edited by BikeBill
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Well, so far I can tell you it works. It takes some set-up for caching. It has much more in common with the Oregon 600 than my look-a-like 60CSx as far as it's functions are concerned. For example, it wouldn't show any geocaches unless I would zoom way in. I had to set the zoom levels out to 5 miles to get a healthy number of caches to show up, just like the 600. The 600 has a nicer screen, of course, but the 64s's is plenty bright.

 

I dumped all the preloaded ggz files and loaded my own local caches. I had to tell GSAK that it's an Oregon 600 as the 64s wasn't listed as an option. That worked, though. When I load an individual cache via a Geocaching cache page, it recognizes that it's a 64s just fine.

 

It seems to boot fast. Similar to the 600, you tap the power button to get the screen that shows battery level, backlight brightness, etc. I haven't done ay caching with it yet.

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Well, so far I can tell you it works. It takes some set-up for caching. It has much more in common with the Oregon 600 than my look-a-like 60CSx as far as it's functions are concerned. For example, it wouldn't show any geocaches unless I would zoom way in. I had to set the zoom levels out to 5 miles to get a healthy number of caches to show up, just like the 600. The 600 has a nicer screen, of course, but the 64s's is plenty bright.

 

I dumped all the preloaded ggz files and loaded my own local caches. I had to tell GSAK that it's an Oregon 600 as the 64s wasn't listed as an option. That worked, though. When I load an individual cache via a Geocaching cache page, it recognizes that it's a 64s just fine.

 

It seems to boot fast. Similar to the 600, you tap the power button to get the screen that shows battery level, backlight brightness, etc. I haven't done ay caching with it yet.

 

EDIT: I solved the problem of GSAK not listing the 64s. It turns out I had a version of GSAK with a bug that prevented it from upgrading itself to a newer version. I manually downloaded a new version, updated it and now it lets me select the 64s.

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After fiddling with the 64s some more, I'm finding it's programing (menus and all) are very similar to the Oregon 600, so it's easier for me to figure out than if I'd just moved up from the 60CSx. Though the 64s looks similar to my older 60CSx, and they both have the same mediocre display, the two units don't work at all the same.

 

I was disappointed with the 64s's 'jaggies' on map lines at first. But then I replaced the Garmin Basemap with some free Topo maps (on an SD card) and now it's fine, so the Basemap must be pretty low resolution. The 64s is rocket ship fast on panning and zooming the map compared to the 60CSx. I haven't compared it side by side to the 600, but I know the 600 is also much faster than the 60CSx that I bought in '08.

 

The 64s is getting me 15' accuracy in the ground floor of my two story house and is picking up over a dozen satellites. The 600 has trouble getting much satellite reception at all in the same spot.

 

I'll try to keep you guys updated as to my experience with the 64s as I know at least GrayHawk is interested.

Edited by BikeBill
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Good to hear you are liking the 64 so far. B)

 

There are still a few kinks to be worked out here and there with the firmware, but overall, it's a great unit. Yeah, the "basemap" (if you want to call it that) is nothing to write home about. Heck, the old eTrex Legend had a better basemap!

 

I keep getting drawn to the Oregon 600 for the higher-resolution screen, but honestly, the firmware lockups would probably drive me nuts. Have not had a single crash or lockup with the 64S.

Edited by Pacific NW
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