Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

AMAZON, THIS PRODUCT ENDANGERS THE LIVES OF YOUR CUSTOMERS AND ITS SALE SHOULD BE DISCONTINUED IMMEDIATELY! I activated this device on a boating trip in Lake Powell after I struck a submerged rock, sunk my boat, and became stranded on a remote stretch of shoreline with no cell service, about 35 miles or an hour by boat from the nearest Ranger station capable of dispatching a rescue party. I hailed ‘Mayday’ on my radio and the national parks emergency service responded immediately. I was able to tell them the nature of my emergency and my last known location, but my radio died on contact with the water before I could report my exact GPS coordinates. I activated the beacon in order to transmit my location to emergency responders and waited in hypothermic conditions for nearly 3 hours until I was able to signal a passing good samaritan with a road-side flare. The two boaters took me a few miles down the lake to their houseboat where we could get a cell signal and call the rangers office to inquire about the rescue effort. To our surprise, the ranger's office indicated they had received no notice of a distress call from a personal locator beacon, but they would send a ranger to our location immediately. Almost exactly an hour later, the ranger`s boat arrived to take me back to my car. The next morning I called my family to tell them the news since, even though all of their numbers are listed in the device`s registration as emergency contacts, they had clearly never received a call about my beacon having been activated. I then noticed a voicemail on my cell phone. It was from the Air Force Rescue time stamped the night before about 45 minutes after I had activated the beacon. I have transcribed that voicemail below, word-for-word, so you may understand the reality of what will actually happen if you ever have to activate this device, and how catastrophically negligent the response will be: “Hi, good evening, this is Sergeant Littrel with the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center. I`m calling in regards to a distress beacon signal, a personal locator beacon signal that we`ve detected via satellite that appears to be on the upper Lake Powell area, if you could please call us back at your earliest convenience toll-free 1-800-851-3051 and just reference case number 3252, we're just attempting to verify if anyone is actually in distress or not, thank you.” This is the only tangible action I know of that occurred in response to my distress signal… “Call us back…if anyone is actually in distress or not….” I don`t know how I`ll ever be able to comprehend how a person could let those words fall from their mouth and think… ‘Well that's taken care of.' Over the past few weeks I’ve spoken to several ‘higher ranking' individuals at the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center, NOAA, and the US Coast Guard, and despite the deliberate attempts to confuse, complicate the details, or redirect blame to another party, I have learned the following: - My device functioned correctly and the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center and the NOAA detected the distress signal within 5 minutes and were able to successfully retrieve my device's location and registration information. - The Air Force Rescue Coordination Center left the above transcribed voicemail on my cell phone, which they claim occurred immediately but the voicemail is time stamped 44 minutes after the device was activated. - NONE of my listed emergency contacts were notified. - Both parties claim to be “ask-not-act” entities which are merely tasked with passing the distress information along to the appropriate parties but have no accountability or responsibility for coordinating a successful rescue effort. “They're doing this out of the goodness of their hearts” I cynically proposed and an operator at the NOAA essentially indicated was correct. Once they contacted the Utah Department of Emergency, their task was complete… time to go home. - The Utah Department of Emergency claims they have NO RECORD OF MY DISTRESS BEACON BEING ACTIVATED. They were aware of the initial Mayday distress call I had made with my VHF marine radio, but they never received my updated location after my radio went dead so the rangers they had dispatched spent three hours searching blindly and checking constantly for a location update, just a few miles up the lake…too far to have ever found me in time. - Neither the Air Force nor the NOAA ever followed up to confirm if there was an emergency or if it had been resolved. - Both parties acted according to policy and accept no fault or error in these policies or the way they were carried out in this instance. Long story short… if you activate this device, you'll be lucky to get a courteous sounding voicemail on your dead cell phone. As for signaling rescue? It's basically a $300 low-visibility strobe light. If you're looking for something to save your life in an emergency…you know, give you the opportunity to walk your daughter down the aisle, or bury the hatchet with that old friend you had the falling out with, or whatever else makes your life worth continuing… spend the extra $30/month for the satellite messenger that requires the active service plan, but WILL ACTUALLY SAVE YOUR LIFE when you need it. And buy some flares! There are lots of smart ways to cut costs, but this one may get you killed... One last note… If this product is so flawed, why do you think I seem to be the only person to recount an incident where it failed?