Re: Garmin tech support: "Your wait time will be over 30 minutes"

Ken wrote...
In defense of Garmin, they can't program every GPSr to meet everybody's
individual requests, desires, or preferences. All we would end up is a
nightmare of changes or choices to wade through when purchasing or
updating each individual GPSr model.

Not a question of individual desires or preferences in the case I quoted.
Simply that Garmin failed to include an option in the eTrex mapping range
that is present in other parallel ranges and without which the receiver is
almost totally useless as a mapping device when navigating within a national
park area and using the recommended MetroGuide mapping products. When
they describe the Vista package I bought as a "Hiking Companion" then I feel
that I am justified in assuming that it will work within the most popular
hiking areas! National Park green may be a perfectly acceptable background
with a colour display but not when it is interpreted as 50% grey on a
monchrome receiver!

I think I have made reasonable email requests and they have always
responded to my emails.

Well you're lucky because, as I said, they have NEVER responded to an email
from me. I now know that Garmin must have had an enormous number of
complaints about this particular known problem - at the very least it would
be more polite to return an email saying "Stuff you - we know about it and
don't care!" then at least we would know where we stood!

Not can all "bugs" be corrected, tested, and implemented on a moment's
notice. I am sure they do their testing prior to rolling out an update
and diligently test each prior to a release. However, every feature can't
possibly be tested in every possible situation that individual users may
encounter. Each programming change possibly has an impact on other
features and may require time to design and correct.



I have to believe that the designers, programmers, and owners use their
products and evaluate and update their products as necessary. Are the
designers and programmers perfect? I have my doubts, but then again, I
will not admit to being perfect either.



It's like I tell others that I work with on a daily basis: "When I am
perfect I will quit talking to you, and expect that when you are perfect,
you will quit talking to me".



I have 3 Garmin units and think they are all great! Are their better ones
on the market? Not for the money that I can afford to spend! I like what
I have and when the time comes to get a new one, it will be another Garmin
unit!



KenG


"David Lee" <davidlee_malvern@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
message news:B4SdnQrB3uwBT8zZRVnyiQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
kashe@xxxxxxxxx wrote :
so I assume that they just ignore common grouses that
they have no intention of addressing.

I think so, too. They might answer emails on subjects that they feel
like answering, and ignore the others. I know they have ignored my
emails asking them to fix that compass arrow on the auto section of the
276C - and of course they ignored my emails asking them to justify the
POI's on their maps that show gay and lesbian centers and alcoholic
rehab centers and bead shops instead of hospitals and gas stations!

Maybe you're just not their preferred audience.

Garmin support should still have replied. However my emails to them
contained no such potentially contentious subjective issues - just
reports of bugs and problems with my Vista and MapSource. One example
was the failure to include functionality to disable National Park shading
in the Vista that is included in other Garmin receivers. This is an
important fault which renders Metroguide maps almost entirely useless in
certain areas (without binary-level hacking of .img files to kill the
shading). I simply requested that they consider issuing a firmware
upgrade to fix the problem, since the original Vista is still on sale,
and twice they have simply ignored my emails. Since then, from
correspondence on this newsgroup, I have realised that this is a well
known problem that Garmin has absolutely no intention of addressing and
company policy appears to be not to reply at all to such "hopeless
cases".

I have reported other problems with the Vista and MapSource and emailed
suggestions for possible improvements and I have never received a reply
from any of them. I am starting to believe that they will only respond
to requests for service that can be solved with a specific action - such
as return for repair or purchase of unlock codes.

David





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