I did a quick check of the cheaper units problems.

NONE are reliable. Some are bad in sunlight. Last only 3 months. Transducers die.  1 of my 2 Garmin 4 strikers has had a screen & transducer fail in 6 months. The other Striker 4 is still running.

 

I will save some money & a ton of very poor /  no Customer Service aggravation. Garmin was ordered to stop all sales of down looking units & parts by the Federal Trade Commission.  Lowrance won the case.   Why people complain about Garmin service ?

Just stick your rod tip in the water and see how deep it goes.

 

Any deeper than that I got a rock tied to a string. Sure is cheaper

Sorry to hear of your unfortunate experience, but that doesn't mean all lower priced units are not reliable. I have an older Lawrance black and white display with GPS and mapping (which I rarely use) and a a HumminBird DI depth finder that have served me well for years. They get bounced around while trailering, the front unit's transducer gets dragged across the bottom in shallow water....to say I don't baby them is an understatement. 

Electronics are certainly in the "You get what you pay for", category in most cases. 

 

Sorry you've had issues with yours. I bought my Garmins when I bought my boat and when I had an issue with a transducer they swapped it out no questions asked. I had a great customer service experience but I've only needed it once because they've both worked perfectly otherwise for 4 years of heavy use now.

 

As for the whole down imaging thing, Garmin absolutely still makes lots of units with downward imaging, it's just called DownVu Scanning now. I can get on TW right now and buy one for under $200 with DownVu. I'm not sure what "people", are complaining about Garmin's service, most all my friends run Garmin and all of them are very happy. It sounds a lot like maybe you weren't happy with your experience, which is completely fine because not everyone has to like a product, but we don't allow complaining about a product/company on the forums just for complaining sake.

 

I have a dispute with 'company X'. Can I post about it here?
While we can empathize with your frustration, the best course of action is deal directly with the company. Escalate it up the ladder, file a grievance with PayPal or Ebay (if they were involved with the transaction). File a mail fraud complaint with the post office. There are other options, but attacking the company in a public forum is not appropriate nor allowed. Such posts will be removed.