Minn Kota trolling motors, less than impressed.

[10-Ring]

I broke down and bought myself a new Minn Kota trolling motor for my boat last week.  It replaced a Motorguide that came with the boat and had certainly seen better days.  I did some research before my purchase and found people had a lot of bad things to say about each brand and not a whole lot of good things to say about either one as well.  It seems that Minn Kota and Motorguide are the two big players in the trolling motor game so I went with the Minn Kota because it was a little less expensive and I've had decent luck with them before, though it's been a while and things may have changed. 

 

So I mount up the new motor and commence a weekend of fishing.  For those familiar with the hand controlled Minn Kotas many, including mine have a handle that tilts.  This was an important feature to me because I keep it tilted all of the way up and use a handle extension because I prefer o stand when I fish.  Right off the bat I notice that the motor is extremely weak in reverse and not that impressive in forward, though every now and then it seems to hit "high" gear but not consistently.  It doesn't always turn off when the handle is in the off position either.   So this afternoon I call Minn Kota customer service, I'm told that this is a known problem when the handle is tilted all the way up.  WTH?  What kind of company puts a feature on a product and then lets it out the door knowing that something simple for them to fix, yet complicated for the customer to fix doesn't work as it should? 

 

Seeing as I've already thrown the packaging away I don't see returning it as an option, however I don't believe that I will be buying any of their products in the future.  Just thought I'd share to keep any of you guys from running into the same problem.