Author Topic: A little disappointed...  (Read 1652 times)

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Offline dan43

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    • Central Port Coquitlam, BC Weather
A little disappointed...
« on: January 09, 2015, 11:07:49 PM »
Hi all, I'm hoping someone can relieve the anguish I've had over trying to choose a new weather station.  My old weather station, an Oregon Scientific WMR968 recently bit the dust and I have been in the market for a new one ever since.  About 12 years ago give or take, I got the WMR968 at the VERY good price of $99 from Costco, a pricing error on their website, which they had to honour.  It has worked daily until about 2 months ago.

So now I have a dilemma - I've been looking at replacing my old station but I simply cannot believe the outrageous and varied prices that companies are charging for same or similar weather stations!  I really like the look of the WMR200 and the WMR300 stations, and also the Davis Vantage Vue and the Vantage Vue Pro, but cannot justify spending $350-$500 (depending on the model), and the astronomical prices for shipping charges to Canada from the US -- this would add about another hundred dollars on top of the price of the unit itself!

I went to Ambientweather.com and had a look at purchasing a station from their website, but they do not ship to Canada, so that takes care of that.  I was very disappointed in the response I got from their customer service - it was a very terse 6 word reply, "We do not ship to Canada" and that was it.  Are they like this with everyone?  Then I went to Amazon.ca, Amazon.com, ebay.ca (which displays prices in approx. US->Canadian converted prices at the current exchange rate) and discovered horrendous shipping charges to where I am near Vancouver.  Would any Canadians out there know where I an purchase either of the stations mentioned above in the Vancouver area?

This whole replacement process has me completely baffled and if you could see a picture of me, I'd have a dumbfounded look and a dozen or so question marks hanging over my head.  I need help, for anyone who is willing to help provide me with some solutions about what to look for, what to be careful about when selecting a new station, and where I can get what I'm looking for without breaking the bank.

Thank you so much to anyone who can help!

Dan

Offline dan43

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    • Central Port Coquitlam, BC Weather
Re: A little disappointed...
« Reply #1 on: January 09, 2015, 11:23:42 PM »
I might add that I also have purchased Virtual Weather Station, and ImageSalsa, so if the stations will work with these two software packages, it'll make it that much easier when I go to start viewing and transmitting data to wunderground.com.

Offline ggsteve

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Re: A little disappointed...
« Reply #2 on: January 10, 2015, 08:48:27 AM »
You mentioned that you are a fellow Costco member.  My Costco currently has an Acurite weather station with "PC Connect" at the very reasonable price of $80 here in the US.  You might check that out. 

Theoretically, with their warranty they may take back the old Oregon station that failed.  They are amazing with returns.  Personally, I would feel guilty returning a product that gave me 10 good years of service.  Then again, the last time I was in the return line at Costco the guy in front of me was returning a SEVEN YEAR OLD pillow.  Yuck.

Offline Bushman

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    • Eagle Bay Weather
Re: A little disappointed...
« Reply #3 on: January 10, 2015, 10:13:38 AM »
Ship it to Pt Roberts.  :)  In Canada you can get a deal on some Davis stuff via Binnacle.ca now that For the Birds is basically gone.
Need low cost IP monitoring?  http://wirelesstag.net/wta.aspx?link=NisJxz6FhUa4V67/cwCRWA or PM me for 50% off Wirelesstags!!

 

anything