Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

WORST EXPERIENCE. GARMIN DOES NOT STAND BEHIND ITS PRODUCTS. Bought the device 2 years ago, signed up for a plan, used it in the woods and it was just okay. Intermittent text access was better than none. Heading out to a new adventure a few weeks ago and signed up to a new premium "freedom" plan (very expensive -- $25 annual fee and $65/month). I follow the instructions and receive the "activation confirmation" screen on the device. I repeated the process twice and both times received confirmation of activation. Good to go, right? Wrong. I get out on the trail, and nothing works. NOTHING. Zero email, zero text messaging, zero. And it was almost a disaster because we have a medical emergency requiring helicopter extraction, and luckily we have a backup Satellite Phone to use. The Garmin was USELESS. Come back and call customer support. They send me to tech support to figure out why it wasn't working. It takes them an hour to discover the problem -- there was apparently a firmware update that needed to be installed, which of course the device said nothing about. Then he tells me that he wants to walk me through synching the device to computer, but acknowledges that he has no idea why it isn't working as we try over the course of the next 30 minutes. Exasperated, the Tech suggests I get a new device (!) but then he learns that I won't have another trip for another year, so tells me to go back to customer support to just get a refund of the $25 annual fee and the $65 monthly fee. It's like $95 including taxes. Then I can maybe send in the device to see if they can figure it out in the meantime. So it's annoying and a waste of too much time, but I agree to the plan. Then I get back to customer service to tell them the plan and get my refund. (I tell him that's the least they can do, since I had really needed to have text communication in the woods and didn't have it. (Thank God we had the Sat Phone.) Now for the fun part: Garmin Customer Support says that they WON'T ISSUE A REFUND! Even though the device worked NOT AT ALL for the entire trip. Why? They said I should have taken the initiative to visit the website to see if a firmware update was needed before using it again! Isn't that the kind of update that you would think they would push to a device, rather than rely on users to constantly check a firmware website???? Or maybe send an email to us about, so we would have a fair chance to get the apparently critical update? And what would it have cost Garmin to apologize for my inconvenience and simply give me a refund -- a lousy $95! I have tons of Garmin gear -- watches, monitors, navigation devices -- and they have totally alienated this customer for life. What a shame. I escalated this to more senior people in Garmin Customer Support -- same response: "device was within functioning parameters and needed to be updated. Service is non-refundable at time of activation." -- Anthony G., Billing Rep I, Garmin International, Phone: (800) 511-2459 I'm sure there are smart and capable people at Garmin who can understand how absurd this situation is, but that intelligence has not made it to their customer support team, which is their customer-facing group. This kind of thing is toxic with consumers. Sell them something that doesn't work, and then blame the frustrated customer for the failure, saying it was caused by not doing something they were never told to do (search firmware updates). Well done, Garmin. I hope you have a lot of other customers who don't care about customer service. I, for one, will never buy another one of your products. Ted