Just thought i would share my current drama so as hopefully someone will avoid what I'm going through.
I decided my first detector was going to be a whites GMT have heard amazing things about them with the best story being 33 ounces(300 bits) near Dunolly in a weekend where the gpx 4500 went right over.
So after doing some research the price on a used unit still in warranty was around $650 I found three units in SA around the same price I contacted the listed from Gumtree asked all the right questions (so i thought) and the next day he sent it off to me COD through Australia post. Well I was so exited to get out there once it arrived so i spent the rest of the day in creswick over some spots i knew there were gold and rubbish. to my surprise I was only getting signals from iron... after waving the thing over my stainless steel pick without a response I went home pretty disappointed.
After spending some time checking through the web about settings etc i went out again only to realize that my detector was a dud, I was unable to get the Gain above 3.5 even right out in the bush whilst holding the thing up in the air. furthermore every little bump or rock i touched was giving a signal driving me mental.
So I went home and contacted Gold Search Australia the whites distributor for Australia, and I was told that before they could help me i'd have to prove it was a genuine whites..... what why wouldn't it be genuine i said.... apparently there's plenty of fakes around and I had no idea.
Anyway so I was told to put my serial number into the whites site under "is my whites genuine?" tab, funnily enough i had two serial numbers..... one one the unit and one on the sales card not one of them worked. Now bear in mind everything here looks 100% legit i got the sales registration, warranty, dvd's catalog of other products they provide so I couldn't believe this was happening.
So I called whites, had to get up a bit early got the factory first who put me through to head office, finally got to speak with someone in authority who got me to check the coil and there was another mark/number there that he said determined that it was a genuine whites and under warranty(I wont tell you what or where for obvious reasons but PM me and happy to explain where to look). i asked about the serial number search and he said don't worry about that... the chinese are even reproducing real serial numbers now so the feature doesn't work.
So bit of good news with some bad, basically they told me that the company "Detectabizz"(BEWARE) that was selling these in SA was grey importing them so as they are a whites detector they will be covered under warranty, i asked his to put that in writing, so he did.
I got back in touch with gold search this time spoke with Peter who's an absolute champion bloke if you've ever had the delight to meet him and as expected super helpful straight onto whites to get verified that he could fix it, well they came back with a statement that "these numbers are not correct and detectabizz is not a authorized reseller therefore it is not covered..... ahhgghhgg
back to the drawing board, Peter has now sent off the email that came form the top to the distributor to try to override, now just waiting to hear back from Peter...
All the while the bloke who sold it too me had no idea he has offered to refund my purchase if it turns out to be a dud.
Be very careful people, apparently another way to check the GMT as being genuine is to turn the unit on and compare the black sand numbers to the ground numbers if they are both crystal clear you should be right.
Hoping Peter will call me today and say bring it down, downside is i will have to spend some time in Dunolly ............dammit