Garmin took good care of me:

Silent_Soliloquy
Silent_Soliloquy Posts: 237 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
My 735xt had a battery failure of some kind. It would charge to 100%, and seem okay for half an hour ... but would instantly fall from 88% to 12%. Total battery life just suddenly went from 12 days to 1 hour.

I have a race saturday and really use my garmin for pacing.

Called customer service. They sent me a new one next day air.

I went from on the phone with customer support, to watch on my wrist in 26 hours.

If you're on the fence about them, this really made an impact on me...they understood how seriously i took needing my watch, and took great care of me.

Highly recommend.

Replies

  • VegasFit
    VegasFit Posts: 1,232 Member
    I agree. Garmin has great customer service. Much better than Polar in my experience.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,389 Member
    I had miserable experience with them. That was for a handheld gps in Europe. Thus experience might be different across business units and countries. Handheld gps button broke off. I asked for repair. They sent me from a to b to telling me they can't repair it. Months later I finally got someone to tell me that they used to repair it but they'd discontinued support for that unit about a month ago. Not happy. Lots of people people in Europe had the same experience.
  • tinkerbellang83
    tinkerbellang83 Posts: 9,129 Member
    They are always fairly quick to replace watches with issues in my experience, even my VAHR that is out of warranty, but that's because there are endless software issues, the only reason I stuck with them recently was because it's the only tracker that work well with rowing and built-in GPS.

    I got my VA3 Music mid-April, they bricked the Bluetooth Driver on the first software update a week later. My VAHR has been replaced twice for issues caused by firmware updates.
  • Tubbytucka
    Tubbytucka Posts: 83 Member
    I have had problems over the years with my 410 - sometimes it won't download to my PC, which can be very frustrating, other times it will take 20 min to get a satellite signal, in the exact same place it took 30 seconds the day before. That gets annoying when you are only wanting to record a 15 min commute.

    I don't think I would buy another Garmin product.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
    I have Garmin pedals on my bike. They measure torque vector and angular velocity. One of the "pods" (used to send that information) died. They got me a new one immediate and without charge, I had to send the dead one back but didn't have to wait for that to happen to get the replacement.
  • version50
    version50 Posts: 24 Member
    I've got a Garmin Fenix 3. Love the watch, but my "lap" button popped off after owning it for about 18 months. Because it was out of warranty, they refused to replace, or even send me a new button. I even offered to pay. The only thing they offered me was 20% off a new Fenix 5 ($899).

    You can really tell the quality of a company once something goes wrong OUTSIDE of the warranty period. Garmin let me down.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
    @version50

    The original Fenix 3 should cost $130 to replace (with a refurb, I think it gets a brand new battery) through their brick program.

    https://www8.garmin.com/support/outofwarranty.html
  • jjpptt2
    jjpptt2 Posts: 5,650 Member
    Good to hear. I've had mixed results/luck with Garmin products - fortunately my 935 has been pretty solid.

    #knocksonwood
  • version50
    version50 Posts: 24 Member
    NorthCascades wrote: »
    @version50

    The original Fenix 3 should cost $130 to replace (with a refurb, I think it gets a brand new battery) through their brick program.

    https://www8.garmin.com/support/outofwarranty.html

    NC - Thanks for posting this link. I love the watch enough to give this a shot. Super helpful, thanks bud.

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