GC3 won’t power up, battery tested good

artica · March 15

Has anyone encountered a GC3 not powering up and not related to the battery? Because it’s out of warranty, I decided to unscrew the bottom to pull the battery out and get it tested. Also had the charger tested and both tested fine. Quite simple to do.

My fear is sending this thing in and $900 and 3 months it’s back.

so, anyone with a similar experience and have some thoughts?

ENedo · March 18

If you're on the GSPRO/SGT Discord, you'll see a lot of posts similar to what you're describing. Usually it leads to a diagnosis and replacement of the IO board, LED board, main battery, and 3v battery, along with a $550-$900 price tag. It's a bit ridiculous and seems to happen more often than it should.

iacas · March 18

8 hours ago, ENedo said:

If you're on the GSPRO/SGT Discord, you'll see a lot of posts similar to what you're describing. Usually it leads to a diagnosis and replacement of the IO board, LED board, main battery, and 3v battery, along with a $550-$900 price tag. It's a bit ridiculous and seems to happen more often than it should.

To be fair we have no real idea how often it happens. They've sold thousands of GC3s, and people are more likely to complain when there is an issue. That said, not everyone who has that issue is on the Discord, of course, so… yeah. We just don't know.

artica · March 19

I’ll check out that thread… incredibly disappointing but I’m trying to just deal with it without being overly frustrated. I almost want to sell it and go with the Garmin R50.

DerekNP1932 · March 25

On 3/18/2025 at 10:42 PM, artica said:

I’ll check out that thread… incredibly disappointing but I’m trying to just deal with it without being overly frustrated. I almost want to sell it and go with the Garmin R50.

I’ve had it happen to mine, the battery and board needed replaced. The customer service was pretty terrible, first I thought it was the charging cable due to the cord being really loose coming out of the battery pack. After it was sent in they took a month to look at it, that happened only after I asked for an update on the product. They apologized and offered a 30% off the repairs and said they’d be done within the week, which did happen. All in all it was ~$215 to ship it there and around ~$750 for the repairs give or take a bit, the 750 was without the 30% off for reference.

I inquired about what issues it had and what caused it, they gave a run around, but eventually said it was the battery and board that went bad, and they suspect people leaving the device uncharged is what causes the problem. Obviously they wouldn’t outright say that they know that was the problem, but alluded to it. Overall, the situation was terrible, took me around 2 months to get it back after I originally sent it out. After all that I asked if I could get a refund on the new charging cable I bought on the advice from them and they said they don’t do refunds on stuff like that, which is ludicrous given they told me to buy it.

I hope your situation goes smoother, but I will never buy another product from foresight again.

Edited March 25 by DerekNP1932

artica · March 25

I did send it in, last week on Wednesday and received an email today that they had received it. During my call and in the follow up email they stated 13 days was current follow up. I’m hoping lessons learned have helped their service standards I have a different experience. Already pretty torn that this happened and it’s a close to $1k fix after only 2.25 years of owning. I’ll advise of its progress.

DerekNP1932 · March 25

Yeah, their customer service wasn’t great, idk how much of that is due to being bought and sorta partnering with Bushnell, which from my knowledge has a bad reputation for customer service in the industry as well. Mine was at like 1.33 years, which sucked so I know that feeling, they started offering the extended warranties for their products, but the price is actually insane. Hoping everything goes smoothly for you though!

artica · March 26

Here is their response and findings to the issues:

To bring this device back to working order we must replace the following items:

IO Board
LED Board
Battery
Coin Cell 3V

The total cost for this repair comes to $937.40

That's really painful to have to pay $1k to fix it, I almost want to ask them if they have a buy back program and move to R50 from Garmin. I'm honestly conflicted with it's quality in parts and this potentially happening again. My immediate response was an inquiry to the root cause? hoping they can answer why this would happen to these parts and how if it all it can be prevented.

j0nesy · March 26

I've never opened a GC3, but I have experience fixing all sorts of electronics. If it were me, I would tear it apart and try to determine what is failing. It might be as simple as replacing something on the main board.

artica · March 26

I have no idea how to even look at a main board or what a main board looks like. That scares me to further ruin it honestly, and i'm usually a self fixer with most things.

kekoa · June 3

This really sucks and I hope to never have to deal with it. I think our unit is about 3 years now and only issue is that damn battery calibration, which takes forever and needs to be done every few months. Not sure why the GC3 has this issue, but not the quad.