Oh, Garmin… please don’t leave me
Friday, August 10th, 2007This wasn’t supposed to happen, I’m pretty sure… So far I’ve been lucky buying electronics off of eBay, realizing that the compromise I make to get good price was the warranty. Nevertheless, I bought my DELL 2001WFP monitor four years ago on ebay, my floor standing speakers - the great Infinity Alpha 40’s, lots of PC components, cell phones, laptops - never had any issues, never regretted the fact that I didn’t have the warranty. This time it happened…
Half a year ago when Toys-R-US began featuring plastic replicas of GPS units for kids to play with (you know those, similar to the fake “cell phone” toys), I finally decided to catch up with the progress and bought myself an adult version of the gadget, the real deal - Garmin Nuvi 350. It was one of those impulsive purchases when I didn’t really do much research, simply went to a Circuit City store and looked at units they had on display.
I rejected Tom-Tom right away - the name just didn’t sound serious enough… Lowrance, as I heard, was a fine unit but packed lots of extra features which might only confuse a novice rather than help (and which, I’m sure, I now wish that my Nuvi had)… So that narrowed down my options to Magellan and Garmin. Since Garmin’s aesthetics appealed more to me than Magellan’s, when I came home and googled for Garmin vs Magellan I primarily concentrated on pros of the Nuvi model and cons of the Roadmate. As a result, the Nuvi 350 came out as a clear winner :)
| Next, I had to decide whether I wanted to pay close to $500 for this device at my local Circuit City store, contributing to the future prosperity of my neighborhood’s retail… or get a refurbished version of it on eBay for $350… and by doing that show my support to the entire world-wide community of entrepreneurs. Obviously, I’ve chosen to spread the wealth :) Few days later I was holding in my hands this marvel of todays electronics, which kept talking to itself with quite distinct British accent, and yet had hard time figuring out what was it that I meant when asked for directions to “Piccadilly Circus” :) Honestly, I must admin, I didn’t do a very good job researching the prices around… Only few months later a friend of mine bought a brand new version of this very same unit on Amazon for less than the amount what I paid for a refurbished. But oh well, I only wanted what was best for our economy… ;-) |
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Few months went by, and I was very happy with the purchase. So far the Nuvi 350 have performed quite well. I primarily used it in my car and on few occasions took it with me on business trips. That’s where it really proved to be an invaluable. It’s one thing cruising around in your hometown, purposefully deviating from your “usual” route to work just to see how It would react or what It would say… :) and totally different when you’re driving in an unknown city, looking for a client’s office, or your hotel, or simply a place to eat. That’s when you appreciate having GPS the most. |
Things were going great and I couldn’t be happier with my new “assistant”. However, a week ago, something terrible happened…. All of a sudden the Nuvi would not power on or off. It looked like the only button it had - the Power switch - simply stopped responding. I could still power the unit on by hitting the Reset button (a tiny “bump” hidden behind Nuvi’s GPS antenna) and it would boot up and function as if everything was alright. But then later I could not power it off. Although, I finally did figure out a workaround - if I hooked it up to an external power source, and then disconnected it, Nuvi would detect primary power source loss and automatically shut itself down in 30 seconds unless it was commanded otherwise. So, again, it looked like its “brains” remained intact, the screen, its memory and whatever else was inside it worked just fine. It was just the power button that malfunctioned. Technically, I could still use the device, but it was extremely inconvenient.
And right away I knew I was in trouble. Having purchased this Nuvi on ebay meant I most likely did not have any kind of protection (manufacturers warranty or anything like that). However, after careful inspection of all the paperwork that came with it I discovered that unlike most of the manufacturers of other electronic devices which I have purchased on ebay during last few years, Garmin doesn’t specifically state (in their warranty booklet) that units sold on “online auctions” are exempt from the warranty. So, there was hope. Nevertheless, their rules posted on customer support web site were pretty clear about one thing - “online auction receipts are NOT considered as valid proof of the date when the product was purchased”. To me, that almost sounded that I was out of luck. Fortunately though, in addition to the online auction receipt I also had paypal transfer confirmation with the product name on it as well as my AmEx statement, confirming the payment and the amount along with the date when it happened.
Armed with every piece of evidence relevant to my Nuvi’s acquisition I could find I called Garmin’s tech support. First question they asked me was whether or not my unit was registered with them. Thanks God I did that the very first day I got it - I went online and registered it. That turned out to be a sufficient evidence for them as far as my date of purchase goes… second and last piece of information they needed was the serial number of my unit and next thing I know - I’m writing down an RMA number and being told that my unit will be exchanged to a brand new one under manufacturer’s 1 year warranty. Way to go Garmin! That very same day I shipped my Nuvi to the address they gave me and now I’m keeping my fingers crossed they don’t change their mind and goes thru :)
