GarminReviews of forums.garmin.com

Poor quality and very post support. New watch with glitches. Losing time. Not pairing with phone. ‘Support’ offered solutions which do not with and now will not reply. Useless

After installing a new update for Maps my Garmin GPS is not functioning properly. I called customer service and requested the original map and they refused and said it’s not available. They said they would give me a 30% discount on a new GPS. I said before the update it was working perfectly and I requested a new GPS since they won’t repair my old one. I requested for a manager to call me, and never received a phone call. I stated that with the new update my GPS doesn’t work now so why didn’t you put a warning before I updated it. No answer. They said too bad.

I was very pleased to receive my Garmin Watch 10 days or so ago and had no difficulty getting it all set up with Phone App etc. I went on to order an Index Scale which was delivered, from Amazon, yesterday. I cannot get it set up and neither can others more competent in these matters than I. We have followed trouble shooting videos, the manual etc etc to no avail. I have today called the helpline - twice. Both times, despite phoning the number being given for the helpline, I am asked if I am a customer or a business then promptly transferred. Both times, I have waited for 20 minutes with no pick up. So sorry understand your frustration etc but doesn't make any difference. Pretty poor.

Apparently Garmin can’t use a telephone to contact their courier (UPS) who is yet to deliver (lost) the Garmin products I ordered. They have to email UPS which will take them 2 to 3 days to write and then they have to wait for UPS to reply before they can update me. Garmin suggested I contact UPS directly which I did but UPS said I needed to contact Garmin. 🤬🙈 They may as well not have a customer care team - they are useless. Very disappointed with their arrogance and attitude. If you don’t need a Garmin product, I suggest you buy from a competitor. I will be from now on as this is not the first time Garmin has let me down.

First time i have ever written review. Very poor support with Garmin. Called and talked to manager about watch which had been used very little. I just wanted a battery and they don’t support battery or watch anymore .Fenix 3.. They would not even sell me an upgrade to fenix 3 refurbished… Extremly poor customer satisfaction. It doesn’t take much to keep a happy customer and Garmin does not know how to do that …

If you're going to spend $300, just buy a legit smartwatch not this really poorly thrown together stupidwatch. Everything about this watch is limited and unreliable. I've read that the Garmin app store is so extremely limited is because they don't want to relinquish control to actual app developers because they want to micromanage everything to try to maintain a longer battery life on their products. But this thing still doesn't get a great battery life for the cost of not having any useful apps on it and a ridiculously short proprietary cable I have to remember to bring everywhere. I had to get rid of one of my market standard USBC cables on my nightstand used for various USBC electronics just to make room for this proprietary cable that's only good for one device. It is so short, it can't reach from the AC adapter behind my nightstand to my nightstand so I actually have to use an extension cord with the outlet housing ON THE NIGHTSTAND so it reaches which looks ridiculously tacky. Not even the workouts which Garmin claims this watch is geared towards are accurate. It never picks up my activities like it advertises. My Google health app on my phone picks up my activities on its own that this thing constantly misses and there's no syncing it with Google health or anything useful, because again, Garmin wants to micromanage everything that goes into this useless little watch. I have it set to automatically log activities. I just got back from an intense power walk around the mountain that was several hours long. I had an almost impossible time trying to locate where records of things like that are even stored because the user interface is so counterintuitive. After several convoluted menus on the phone app, I found previous walks: but nothing within the last 3 days when I was working out the most! I just checked Google health and everything is stored there accurately but there's no way I can sync that correct activity information to the watch or to Garmin's app in their sandboxed little ecosystem. Don't trust it for tracking your sleep either! It's 3:22AM right now and I've been up, literally sitting up, on caffeine after a busy day. My wrist just buzzed with, “Good morning!” and my "morning" report. I just found out I slept for 1 hr 38 mins while I worked! Deep, continuous sleep with my eyes wide open and awake typing. Good to know not even the sleep stats are real. They're just making guesses to make you feel like you paid $300+ for something useful. You can't turn their sleep mode off which turns the "always on" display off meaning you can't just glance at your wrist if you wake up at 4AM to see what time it is. You have to jostle around and wake your partner tapping at your wrist for those hours. I found a workaround so it's scheduled from 4:00-4:01AM every night so if I can't see what time it is on my own watch, at least I know it's 4AM. This thing really seems like it was thrown together by somebody who really did not know what they were doing or what it's like living with and relying on a watch. The whole convoluted attempt at an interface, all the counterintuitive coding, all the unreliable hardware: this is all so extremely sloppy and unworkable that I cannot believe these things have sold at all. One example, from the few nonworking apps available that I downloaded: Garmin makes its own proprietary to do list app. I need my to do list on my wrist to tick off tasks as I work. I use ticktick for this but Garmin's strange task syncing app is literally the only option in their tiny app store. It *does* actually advertise syncing with Google tasks, which I don't use, but as soon as you open the app it errors out and locks you out of the device with the error " IQ! " Another maddening bug with this poorly designed watch is it wakes me up at random times if I wear it to bed! Do not disturb is on my phone with no apps set to circumvent it. A notification will buzz on my wrist to a reoccurring event that isn't until TOMORROW EVENING AT 5PM when its only notification is set for the time of the event tomorrow. I've used this exact setting for years and this never happened before the watch. I've used a lot of tech over the years and regretfully worked for Apple for many as well and this thing honestly feels like some kid threw it together in their garage and is trying to maintain a '90s forum like app store out of their mother's basement with a sketchy payment systems that often require you to go to random basement developers' 3rd party websites with your credit card information to try to arrange for payments and unlocking keys for full versions of things.

I am to my detriment a loyal Garmin customer, and to be fair they were in the past quite helpful, however, in recent years they will do anything other than either admit there is a fault or help you as a customer out, I purchased a pair of Power Pedals at a cost of £990 they failed to calibrate, Garmin replaced them within the warranty period, but the second pair also failed to calibrate, but after the warranty period, they were only used for 5K miles, I reached out to Garmin for help, their solution is "trade in trade up", where I send in my faulty £990 Pedals and receive a 30% discount on a new pair, negating the fact that the pedal bodies I'll be returning are worth more than the discount, this fact seemed to be lost on Customer Service, that was the end of the conversation, no more help was forthcoming.

I have been a loyal Garmin user for many years however my recent £350 watch has failed unreasonably early and they refused a repair or refurbished replacement (because the item was discontinued as though their choice was my fault) the best they offered me was a 30% discount on a new product (not compatible with any other offer so quite a poor discount overall) i suspect they are a once great brand coasting on prior trust and brand loyalty while they sharply drop the quality of their products keeping the high price tag obviously and I'm not convinced this isn't against consumer rights law.