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