A couple of months ago I was out caching and my GPS started acting up. I was getting lines across the screen. There was conversation amongst myself and the cachers I was with that perhaps the Colorado 300 needed a firmware upgrade. Luckily Northern Penguin had his laptop with him and by chance he had the latest GPSr firmware on the laptop. While standing in a parking lot at 2200 we flashed my Colorado. No joy. It was not a software problem as I had hoped.
I knew I was going to have to send the unit in for warranty repair but I was hesitant. It would take too long, it would be too much of a hassle, it would be an all around pain in the ass. I was wrong on all counts.
I contacted Garmin support to start the return process. I was informed that as a Canadian I had to send the unit to the Canadian repair depot. This would save me having to ship cross-border, twice. The Canadian repair company is Raytech Electronics. The Raytech site was very easy to use and within minutes I had received authorization to ship the unit back for repair. Their system even prepared the shipping label for me. It cost me about $9 to ship the unit to Quebec.
About a week after sending the unit in I received an email stating the unit was being returned to me. I was it afraid it was going to take upwards of 6 weeks and here I was getting my GPSr back within two weeks. My unit was toast so I was sent a replacement Colorado. The noted didn’t say for sure but I think it was a refurbished unit. I didn’t mind as it was better than having no GPSr at all. The total cost to me for the replacement was $9, the cost of postage, one-way.
The support people at Garmin provided even more help to me today. The one downside to getting a replacement unit is that I would have to reload the unit with my information, including my maps. Installing the maps was going to be a problem. I’d somehow managed to render my original disk unreadable. I could not install the maps without the disk. I called Garmin software support to see what they could do.
I’d already been in touch with Garmin on this issue once before. At that time I was told too bad, so sad but you’ll have to buy a new installation. That communication was done over email and I had the feeling that email support was outsourced. Today I actually spoke to Michael in Kansas. It took us a while but he figured out that I could buy replacement media to solve my problem. I immediately placed the order with Michael, it wasn’t Garmin’s fault I buggered up the disk. For $15 plus shipping I was going to get a replacement disk. I had to send proof that I actually owned the original disk. The was a bit of a nuisance but manageable.
I recommend you reach out to Garmin support as soon as you have a problem. I’m very happy to have my GPSr fixed and a replacement disk ordered all for less than $35. That sure beats shelling out another $500 just to replace what I already owned. Thank you Garmin Support!
teamvoyagr
I have been writing the cachemania blog since 2008. I'm interested in the development of geocaching and the many ways that people play the game.
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1 Comment until now
RayTech was good for me too. I ended up getting a refurb model of my Oregon when my screen cracked. They charged me $100, but it really wasn’t a failure on their part. When I got it, it needed a reboot but has worked well since then. Garmin support was good at walking me through the reboot process too.
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