Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I haven't used any TomTom products for several years owing to an unfortunate incident with their customer support, which - several years back - could be described in one word: awful. Here we are years later and I am offered the opportunity to review a TomTom GO LIVE 1535M which actually excites me. Hey, all that new technological goodness TomTom claims to have incorporated. The unit arrives today, I unpack it and read the simple illustrated instruction sheet, bring up their website as instructed, turn the unit on and - oh, oh - the touchscreen doesn't work. Fiddle with it for a while, try connecting it to the computer through a direct USB port, the unit is recognized, but communication quickly fails. Try it on another computer. Nada. Read the TomTom tech support pages on the web, looking for a way to reset the unit. Find Soft-reset instructions, which don't remedy the condition. Can't find hard-reset instructions. So I called TomTom support. The first woman is clueless, keeps asking me the same basic questions over and over, keeps putting me on hold and simply can't seem to understand that the touchscreen is inoperative. Touching the "Next" button does nothing. She seemed incapable of comprehending that simple fact. She didn't have any troubleshooting steps. She refused my request to escalate the call. She tells me I can return the unit at my expense - and then wait 10 days or more for a replacement. Wow! TomTom really cares about customer relations, don't they? Bizarre. So bizarre, in fact, that I called back in and spoke with another customer support representative. Again, I spoke with a polite, well-mannered woman who spoke English reasonably well without a difficult accent. But it was obvious that if she couldn't quickly find an answer on a script, she would put me on hold for a minute or two - and then recite a canned, usually inappropriate, response. Once again, I was asked the same question over and over. After refusing my earlier request to be escalated, she now told me that I could be escalated for further troubleshooting. I should expect to receive a call within 24 to 72 hours. Talk about abysmal customer support. I'm sitting here with a unit I had been excitedly waiting for. It doesn't work out of the box. Okay, not a big deal and such things do happen. I tried self-help without success (because there appears to be no way to hard-rest the GO LIVE 1535M without being able to reach the main menu, which I couldn't do because the touch response was inoperative). I patiently answered the same elementary questions over and over, dealing with well-mannered women who clearly knew nothing at all about the device and were merely reading from a script or asking other personnel for answers. Then they want me to return a brand-spanking new unit to them at my expense for a replacement that may take 10 days or more - and that is after waiting another 24 to 72 hours for a hope-for return call, which may or may not come. This is TomTom support. It remains what it was several years ago when I last had a TomTom product: awful. If this were an ordinary transaction, I would simply return the product for replacement or refund. But consider this: I spent an hour -wasted an hour - trying to get helpful information from their website and then with two women who are entirely unknowledgeable about the product or how to resolve the problems. And now I am waiting 24 to 72 hours for a call from TomTom customer support that may or may not come. Given that, would I be interested in getting another TomTom product - considering that someday I might need customer support again? If and when I get a working replacement, I will amend my review to include product performance (if indeed, the replacement works). But anyone considering TomTom should be wary of TomTom' just plain awful customer support. Jerry