Pay Garmin for corrupted file fix?

[Anton]

Greetings,

 

My Garmin 76MAP died - wouldn't stay on for more that 5-10 seconds. Talked to a Garmin Tech on the phone, and went through several key pressing routines to try to fix it. Nothing. He says to send it in to be fixed, but that the warranty period is passed. Sent it in. Had to pay $60, which was said to be a discount from the usual $99 repair fee. Invoice reads that the problem was a corrupted route file. They also replaced the cover. It only had a couple of very minor scratches, and I hadn't asked for a replacement.

 

So who else has had to go through this silly process, and be ripped off by Garmin? How can they charge the price they do for a high-end unit like the 76MAP, and then ask for another $99 or, even $60, to fix a problem they created with bugs in their own firmware? Sheesh-Louise. What a racket. Seems to me this kind of fix should be done at their expense. It's bad enough that Garmin owners have to go back and look for firmware upgrades all the time, but this is ridiculous. Is Magellan any better?

 

Anton - N2RUD

Syracuse, NY

[dave and jaime]

i guess what happens here is when you upgrade the firmware on your own you are tampering with the inner workings of the unit and do so at own risk, ive been luck doing upgrades as they went flawlessly. even if you firmware was corrupt there ought to have been an expert software upload mode you could have forced your unit into and redo the upload, i know there is with the magellans, doing this should have enabled you to avoid returning the unit to garmin.

 

although your experience would be enough for me not to buy garmin if this is their level of customer service. i find magellan excellant, i asked a magellan tech to guide me through the first upload process and he offered to do it free of charge at my shipping expense.

[+apersson850]

According to my experience, the policy regarding customer service at Garmin is very fair.

 

Anders

[+Scrubby]

I personally LIKE the fact that Garmin has firmware updates available for download all the time. They actually listen to users and make upgrades to the unit. I can then get those upgrades for free. I don't have to buy a whole new GPSr to get new features. I think it is a great way for them to do business.

 

Would you have felt differently about the $60 had they not told you what the problem was? I think $60 is fair to have a working GPSr when it didn't work before. Sure beats the cost of a new unit.

[+Mopar]

Actually Anton, had you posted your problem with it here, you could have saved the $60. Or even done a search, because I know its been discussed a few times. No offense to any tech support people here, but phone tech support tends to be right up there with flipping burgers on the skill and knowledge scale. There are a few good ones I'm sure, but most are just reading off the computer screen in front of them. There are a few tricks to working aroud that firmware bug in the 76 series long enough to upgrade to the newest firmware which seems to have (so far) fixed the bug. Personally, I think GArmin has been pretty good about adding features and support for a product that is several years old. What other product do you own where a year or 2 after you bought it the manufacturer says "hey we have some new features for your ________. Here, the upgrade is free".

 

Illegitimus non carborundum!

[+st_richardson]

I guess you'd say I'm a fan of Garmin.

I have a Vista. They re-glued the rubber for free.

I have the Garmin car mount & car power adapter.

My daughter has the Legend.

I've ordered a pair of Rino 120 units. (Living on the bleeding edge for this one.)

I've booked marked the Garmin update page. I even sync it to my palm so I'll know ASAP when there's an update.

I've shelled out for their map software, also.

[+Spange & Crew]

I have enjoyed the Garmin GPSMAP 76S. I have not had any trouble yet. Not sure if anyone has seen the Ver.2.03 beta version. They just increased waypoint storage from 500 to 1000. What a nice "free" feature.

 

http://www.garmin.com/products/gpsmap76s/agree_beta.html

 

Spange & Crew

[+apersson850]

My Garmin Vista has suffered now and then from stripes in the display. A rather common problem on the eTrex series, unfortunately.

 

Since it got worse and worse, and the warranty period was near expiring, I sent it to Garmin's European Service center in the UK for repair.

 

Got a new replacement back in a few days. If that's not excellent service, I don't know what to require.

 

Anders

[+Upham]

Last year I was hiking and had my Garmin Map76 on my hip in a case. I slipped and fell about 4 ft. and landed right on the case. I fell so hard that I was afraid to look at my unit. It had a 3/8 dia. gray spot in the middle of the screen but it still worked. I sent Garmin an e-mail telling the of the problem and they said it would be a flat $99.00. I didn't want to spend the money so I lived with the spot. Last week I slipped on some wet leaves and the Garmin was in my hand and I slammed it into a concrete slab I thought it would have busted into little pieces. It didn't although it did get some tough gouges across the screen and it still works. Garmin has a section on their web site where you can tell a story about your experience with a Garmin product and I wrote in about how much abuse I've put mine thru and it's still working(found a cache with it today) I got an e-mail today and they said they want to back up a great product with great service and if I send it in they will fix it under warranty.

Can't beat that!

rut

[+sbukosky]

Thats pretty strong stuff to say. You admit that the product is out of warranty. I'm curious as to how long out of warranty you feel that Garmin should honor the warranty?

 

Steve Bukosky N9BGH

Waukesha Wisconsin

[Tzan]

I happen to agree with the poster, if the route file can get corrupt on it's own, it's a bug in the firmware. They should ahve fixed it for free (actually they should just have a way of flushing all the local files (equivelent to a format).

[peter]

I don't think we have enough information to accurately diagnose the cause of the problem. Firmware problems usually show up during the warranty period and affect lots of users. But I haven't heard of other reports of Map76 owners having this particular problem and Anton apparently used his unit for quite some time before it showed up. Hardware problems, like a defective memory chip, can also result in a corrupted file and we wouldn't expect a manufacturer to fix them free of charge indefinitely past the warranty period.

 

As for Anton's complaint about having to look for firmware upgrades, I emphatically disagree. My Garmin eMap did everything the specs promised when I bought it nearly three years ago. Since then Garmin has had numerous free firmware upgrades that have close to doubled the unit's features and made it far superior to the original specs. I can't think of anything else I've bought where the manufacturer has continued to improve its features well beyond what was promised and at no charge to me. And the upgrades have all gone very smoothly - even when we had a power outage in the middle of one and when the cat pulled out my serial cable during another.