6th colorado lasted 2 days ...Garmin's making junk

[snomchfun]

Unreal, I've used it for 6 hours and it's done. It won't turn on, battery reset doesn't work, it won't even hard reset. My 4th and 5th had the same problem but lasted up to ....wow 30 days. Garmin says all I can do is get a replacement but I have to pay for shipping, I've owned electronics all my life and I've never seen such garbage and to make it worse the company is going drain my bank account shipping there crap back to them.

[+RonFisk]

I'm on my fifth Colorado and it's just now starting to cause me problems. The biggest problem seems to be with the drift. I've spent as long as 30 minutes trying to get it to settle out on a cache that I knew was only 10 feet away and the Colorado showed it almost 150 feet off. My old Quest led me right to it. The big problem is what to replace it with that does paperless caching. I hear the Oregon isn't much better. Both my Quest and 60CSx are superior instruments but I sure like the paperless capability...

[+Team CowboyPapa]

I'm on my fifth Colorado and it's just now starting to cause me problems. The biggest problem seems to be with the drift. I've spent as long as 30 minutes trying to get it to settle out on a cache that I knew was only 10 feet away and the Colorado showed it almost 150 feet off. My old Quest led me right to it. The big problem is what to replace it with that does paperless caching. I hear the Oregon isn't much better. Both my Quest and 60CSx are superior instruments but I sure like the paperless capability...

The current DeLorme PN-20 and the soon to be released PN-40 will both do paperless geocaching.

[+Team CowboyPapa]

Unreal, I've used it for 6 hours and it's done. It won't turn on, battery reset doesn't work, it won't even hard reset. My 4th and 5th had the same problem but lasted up to ....wow 30 days. Garmin says all I can do is get a replacement but I have to pay for shipping, I've owned electronics all my life and I've never seen such garbage and to make it worse the company is going drain my bank account shipping there crap back to them.

There is only one way that I buy things anymore and that is with a credit card that has a dispute feature for unsatisfactory merchandise. If it dies that fast and they won't send you a prepaid shipping label, keep the product and dispute the charge.

Until then, do not ship the product back. You cannot dispute that charge as it is not a charge by the original seller.

[+Ratsneve]

Unreal, I've used it for 6 hours and it's done. It won't turn on, battery reset doesn't work, it won't even hard reset. My 4th and 5th had the same problem but lasted up to ....wow 30 days. Garmin says all I can do is get a replacement but I have to pay for shipping, I've owned electronics all my life and I've never seen such garbage and to make it worse the company is going drain my bank account shipping there crap back to them.

I would press them for a prepaid UPS label. Time before last I asked for a full refund of the Colorado. They refused that because I didn't buy it from them but a dealer. I told Garmin that that dealer didn't have any return policy on their GPSr and mine had all these problems. They still refused so I asked if I could upgrade for the price difference to an Oregon. The tech got this authorized and proceded to give me the address to send my bad Colorado to. I said wait a second, I'm not paying for shipping for defective units that are your fault to begin with. The guy checked with his supervisor and they agreed to the prepaid UPS label. Garmin is throwing money away with all these exchanges so there is no reason why they can't pay postage both ways. If it was your or my fault or partly our fault I'd agree to pay one-way but when we are beta testing their problems I wouldn't give an inch on this shipping issue--period.

 

[i don't know where it is written, if anywhere, but in my book an "honest" company cannot refuse a full refund (for what you paid--receipts) infefinitely if they cannot fix a problem. How long they get though I suspect you'd have to take them to court to determine. I figure in the end Garmin will get rich off of the great in field testing we have given the CO and OR. I was a fool to buy the CO when I did and from the online store with no return policy--a total fool. The only thing that keeps me going is how much I enjoy playing with these units--the technology. ]

 

Next time I'm going to pay a little more but still get it under list price from REI or the like that has an unlimited no questions asked (as near as I can tell) return policy. It's funny how the guy at REI, as expert at GPSing as he may be, isn't aware of 75% of the problems we have been "beta testing" on these CO and ORs. Sigh...

Edited September 24, 2008 by Ratsneve

[snomchfun]

Unreal, I've used it for 6 hours and it's done. It won't turn on, battery reset doesn't work, it won't even hard reset. My 4th and 5th had the same problem but lasted up to ....wow 30 days. Garmin says all I can do is get a replacement but I have to pay for shipping, I've owned electronics all my life and I've never seen such garbage and to make it worse the company is going drain my bank account shipping there crap back to them.

I would press them for a prepaid UPS label. Time before last I asked for a full refund of the Colorado. They refused that because I didn't buy it from them but a dealer. I told Garmin that that dealer didn't have any return policy on their GPSr and mine had all these problems. They still refused so I asked if I could upgrade for the price difference to an Oregon. The tech got this authorized and proceded to give me the address to send my bad Colorado to. I said wait a second, I'm not paying for shipping for defective units that are your fault to begin with. The guy checked with his supervisor and they agreed to the prepaid UPS label. Garmin is throwing money away with all these exchanges so there is no reason why they can't pay postage both ways. If it was your or my fault or partly our fault I'd agree to pay one-way but when we are beta testing their problems I wouldn't give an inch on this shipping issue--period.

 

Next time I'm going to pay a little more but still get it under list price from REI or the like that has an unlimited no questions asked (as near as I can tell) return policy. It's funny how the guy at REI, as expert at GPSing as he may be, isn't aware of 75% of the problems we have been "beta testing" on these CO and ORs. Sigh...

how did the oregon work out?

[+Ratsneve]

How did the oregon work out?

Great! It likes to drift off course but if I wait long enough it finds itself. If I can't wait I cycle the power and it is back on track. WAAS sucks--takes way to much time to appear and anyway, I never have seen on the CO or the OR any accuracy improvement in Oregon (the state of). Charting barometric pressure when turned off produces spikes when turned on where the pressure settles to a new level--so I can see the pressure trend when turned off but I haven't a clue as to what the real pressue is. If the pressure returned to the approximate same level it was recording when the unit was off then the spiking might not be noteworthy. I like the touch screen but it is just as hard to see out in daylight depending on the angle of things as the Colorado. I don't wear gloves or go out playing much in cold weather. I "accidentally" submerged the OR in 13" of water for around 5 minutes--no leaks at all. I was just about ready to call Garmin on all the drifts I was seeing--had several of over 60, 100, and 200 feet when I replaced a set of batteries to see if the drifting was going to stop or not on fully charged cells. A battery compartment tab broke and went flying off. That's that--it's being exchanged and I should get the new one next Thursday. I paid my shipping this time because I may have inadvertently stressed the tab. I'm glad I have unlimited calling because I'll have to get to Garmin's software department now for the third time to get my new registration and City Navigator working on the new unit. I'm hoping the new unit won't go off drifting as much as the old one. The drifting/wandering problem was cured once before when exchanging Colorados. I love to guess things out and think Garmin's BIGGEST problem is quality control and corrective action.

Edited September 24, 2008 by Ratsneve

[+benh57]

The big problem is what to replace it with that does paperless caching. I hear the Oregon isn't much better.

 

You hear wrong.

[+hogrod]

The big problem is what to replace it with that does paperless caching. I hear the Oregon isn't much better.

 

You hear wrong.

 

Depends on who you ask, I have heard allot of people happy with the Oregon when they switched from the Colorado.

I've heard the Oregon screen is very hard to see in sunlight compared to the Colorado, and being a touch screen I would think you would end up finger smudges making it even worse.

[+amazingted]

I'll weigh in here with my experience:

 

I purchased a CO from REI basically on a whim (a little birthday windfall). I didn't research it any further than briefly checking out a caching friend's unit but I really wanted the paperless caching and Wherigo functionality. At first I was pleased but very soon I started to find annoying problems. That's when I started researching forums and discovered all the problems I was having had been documented elsewhere. Very soon after that I became very discontent but rather than take it back immediately, I decided to bite the bullet and purchase an OR and do my own side-by-side comparison.

 

From the get-go the contest wasn't even close. While the screen on the OR is quite dim I didn't find it noticeably worse than the CO and the GPS performance seems to be much more stable. Even though the unit rarely reports accuracy less than 30' (and I've never seen it acquire WAAS) it seems to be at least as accurate as my 60Cx.

 

The touch screen interface is vastly better in my opinion than the "Rock & Roller" which is sufficient for most uses but TOTALLY SUCKS for text input.

 

The menus on the OR are organized differently as well. For example: on the CO you can view cache information directly from the navigation screen while on the OR you must back out and page over to the "Geocaching" tab. This is more of a transitional issue than anything else though. Once one gets used to the way things are structured navigating around is pretty straightforward

 

As far as I can tell, neither unit's compass is worth a hill of beans when mounted on a steel bicycle. What's worse is that the units can't seem to realize there is a massive discrepancy between the velocity being reported by the GPS and the heading being reported by the compass. The units default to the compass with the result that directional navigation guidance is not accurate. It is best to just turn off the compass and let the GPS take over. Additionally, I am not thrilled with the 2D compass on the OR and CO. The unit must be held level in order to accurately report direction. My 60Cx doesn't have a compass so I don't know if these issues are shared with earlier units that have compasses.

 

I returned the CO after about two weeks of head-to-head comparison and so far I don't regret it in the least

[Didjerrydo]

Unreal, I've used it for 6 hours and it's done. It won't turn on, battery reset doesn't work, it won't even hard reset. My 4th and 5th had the same problem but lasted up to ....wow 30 days. Garmin says all I can do is get a replacement but I have to pay for shipping, I've owned electronics all my life and I've never seen such garbage and to make it worse the company is going drain my bank account shipping there crap back to them.

Yep, Garmin totally dropped the ball I'm afraid with the ill-fated Colorado. The 60CSx/Cx rode the wave for 3 years or so because they were solid, problem free units, for the most part. But the Colorado, which was touted as Garmin's great new top handheld units lasted about six months before being bumped by the Oregons. Does that tell you something about the Colorado's? My experiences with them as a dealer has been a total nightmare!

[+Tequila]

After 3 defective CO's. Garmin gave me an Oregon.

[+DustyWalker]

With all the problems others are having it looks like I will be sticking with my trusty CSx for the time being.