Misleading Cabela's Ad

[+Fred/Mary]

In today's newspaper is a sale ad for the Cabela's store in Buda, TX. On page 11 they show 2 GPS units on sale. The sale units are the Garmin eTrex Legend Cx and the Garmin Vista Cx. On the description of the Vista Cx they state "New SiRF receiver for better satellite routing". I've been shopping for one of these for a few months now and have educated myself pretty well on their capabilties. The Vista Cx DOES NOT have the SiRF chip. Last month I specifically wrote to Garmin to find out which units had the SiRF chip. They don't put SiRF chips into units until you get into their higher priced models. According to GPS Now - SiRF equipped models include: GPSMAP 60Cx/ 60CSx/ 76Cx/ 76CSx, StreetPilot c530/c550, entire nüvi series, zūmo 550, and Mobile 10.

 

Just a mistake by Cabela's? You be the judge. I know that when I contacted their customer service department this morning and told them about it, they wanted to transfer me around.

 

Fred

[mtbikernate]

I've seen numerous store ads claiming the etrex x series models have the sirf chip. Chalk it up partly to Garmin for making it confusing to folks who don't KNOW GPS receivers (it took me a bit to get it all straight when I first learned about the new models last year), and partly to whoever put together the ads for not reading product literature closely enough.

 

It would have made more sense to give the sirf chip feature a separate designation than the removable memory on product names, rather than making the x mean slightly different things depending on the product series you're talking about. It's made even more confusing by the car based models that do NOT have an x.

[+SUp3rFM & Cruella]

I wasn't aware of that, but it made sense that all the "x" series had the SirfIII chips. Seems the Vista Cx is left out of this... Weird.

[+Klatch]

"x"= micro SD card.

[FlagFinder]

i think you should get an exchange or refund i have a magellan 210 and one misleading thing was that in the manual in the gps it says you can recharge it with rechargable batteries. well thats a lie turns out they are using the same manual for the 400 500 and 600 which you can charge

[GreatCanadian]

The "x" is for Xpandable memory....doesn't indicate SIRF chipset...i remember reading somewhere on various GPS forums that Garmin includes sirf in their x series....and they do, but not all the x series. Garmin never did state that. I attribute the confusion to people who don't know enough enough about the Garmin GPS making the assumption that the sirf chip is in all the x series. When writing ads for a store (for example Cabelas), I would not expect someone to read about a particular product in depth prior to writing the ad. They just wouldn't have the time. More than likely Cabela's information came from a source who had already made the previously stated erroneous assumption.

[mtbikernate]

Yes, but any potential for confusion would be minimized by creating a different designation for the GPS model name indicating whether it has the sirf chip.

[+Fred/Mary]

I also realize that the SiRF chip is a pretty amazing piece of technology, but I doubt that it is capable of "routing satellites" as the ad states. I think that the U.S. Department of Defense might have a problem with that. The nimrod that wrote the ad should be held responsible.

 

Fred