Garmin International

Garmin International Garmin Canada outdated Map software, lousy customer service, refusal to refund, product failure Olathe, Kansas

20th of May, 2011 by User339695

I will not be looking at Garmin ever again. A year, a few long distance calls and 25 emails later, no solution. The software has since revised up a version number but has the same errors in it for my region. The MetroGuide software can be previewed online at buy.garmin.com I believe, where you can use an interactive version of the product and zoom in to verify detail and accuracy for your area. Check your city/home location and see what is not there with this lousy, inaccurate product. I wish I knew about this before being informed by customer service where to look to check (as they were trying hard to up-sell me into buying the next version) The handheld it was to go on was the reliable, rugged GPSmap 60C, which comes out of the box with virtually no Canadian map information. It is a good handheld only for tracking accurately where you have been, not where you want to go. (one is forced buy the MetroGuide). My uses were to be many fold: geo-caching in town, geo-tagging photos, accurate location and navigation to businesses (my working customers), navigation of roads on trips in my province and nearby provinces (holiday camping, tenting, hiking, driving) and maintaining an idea where essential services are in case of need (gas stations, hospitals, grocery stores, etc.). The expensive optional software claims to be able to do this, but fails on ALL accounts. The story: I bought Garmin MetroGuide Canada v. 4.0.1 in early 2009, since v. 5.0 was not available yet. Regardless, one would think the information in a new $160 product would be no older than say, two years tops, right? Fail. Examples: In my first encounter with local problems, there is a Canada Tire store, established here over 30 years ago. Even the latest Garmin 5.0 MetroGuide omits this, and shows most of the area undeveloped. A big snub to the dozens of other smaller businesses around that area who are likewise omitted. What part of "Metro" has the MetroGuide lost track of? This is a town of almost 100,000 people. This is unacceptable. East from the Canadian Tire location (about .6 kms) is another huge omission. In the huge void shown by the Garmin software, there are several businesses not accounted for including a huge internationally-known Walmart that is atleast 10 or more years old. Two massive consumer chain stores, both ignored by DMTi Spatial, data providers of the Garmin software. Forget for a moment Garmin is selling 35 to 40 year old, out of date information for my area. In case it is an anomaly, I took it to a city of nearly 800,000. According to MetroGuide, there is only one Domo gas station to be located (there is in fact well over a dozen). The other Canada Tire by the world famous West Edmonton Mall is not registered.
Plotting a route through to 5 key shopping destinations, I was hitting an error rate of over 70% regarding present business names, locations (decades since having moved, changed or closed down), route access (missing key common roadways and byways), or just not found at all. Maybe its Alberta thats been marginalized, so I loaded up some other map grids and took the product to Saskatchewan and back. I needed a vacation anyway, and was confident that regardless of known software failure in this product, I would have a trusty paper road map as back up; this would be a travel adventure with an element of ACTUAL danger thrown in for flavour! To start I had to trust my eyes, not the software as the 4 year old completion of Anthony Henday highway is not on the GPS software... A 'road' east of Fox Valley, Sk. was in fact non existent, and for a lark I followed it as far as I could until the farmer's access path vanished in the middle of a field of wheat (the GPS says I could travel over the horizon on this wheat road). Another road had me supposedly flying through the air over the South Saskatchewan river (bridge long ago removed, dead end dirt path). Princess, AB. has not been a town for atleast 50 years from what I can see (all but erased from the earth). Same can go for small 'abandoned' air fields along the way. I was misled turn after turn in believing there were services, roads or points of interest. In fact I was a good 3 hours southeast drive from Calgary, AB and started to worry about the lack of tanked or canned fuel. In an emergency I pulled into a tiny, under-documented town and actually found gas, where the software clearly stated there was none. I could have easily not explored the small town by eye, and missed the gas outlet Garmin says didnt exist. They also had a Tim Horton's which helped jangled nerves, albeit Garmin claimed I had 3 hours to get to Calgary to get to the nearest location. After a couple thousand kilometres of driving exploration, I had ample proof both companies in question are grotesquely delinquent in product quality. They cannot possibly hide behind a 'We didn't know' excuse; this was slack, deliberate consumer scamming of a known inferior product that has a massive error rate. There is no "Metro" in MetroGuide; there is no quality of any sort; there is no benefit to the consumer at all. Need I provide Lat./Long. data of this massive list of errors to prove my point? No, but I can in a court of law if need be. I have it all archived and well documented, geotagged photographs included. That includes a year of recorded, archived lousy customer service email responses. And yet when I wrote to both DMTi Spatial and Garmin International about my findings, I was brushed off. First I was responded to as if I was incompetent about the nature of geo-locating, GPS operation, or the software function (I was a utility locator once; I know 'a thing or two' about GPS practice, theory, navigation, map reading and so on). Then I was disbelieved regarding my findings as if I was either mistaken or lying, as there could not have been such errors possible. I was finally told that I should have bought version 5.0 (which was not out when I bought 4.x nor when I started this consumer complaint with them), followed by another exchange that concluded that if I lived in America I COULD HAVE been sent the latest version 5.0 free for my troubles (even though the website clearly shows it has all the same errors, making 5.0 equally useless to me). Since I was in Canada, and supposedly shipping 'warantee repair/replace' was alien to Garmin, I would have been hit with customs/duties, so claims Garmin's Cartography Admin., Loy. Two 'reasons' why I could not take him up on his offer supposedly. Add on the huge shipping fee he claimed would be necessity, and I would be out nearly another $160 yet again... how is this "FREE"? Why he brought up the 'tempting' customer service offer, if it cant be acted upon, is beyond me, then. This was their excuse for customer service. This was their excuse for GPS software and accuracy. Regardless, I have the certifiable after-taste of being ripped off and kicked to the curb as well. The money could have gone to much better things, and I am disappointed I cannot rely on this ancient software to even navigate me to an existing local customer or business, let alone plan any trip that I must risk any degree of faith in navigating. I wasted my money and time on this company and its products, I hope you learn from my example and not waste yours. PS: There are open source maps out there one can find online and install instead. They are pretty small, specialized and numerous sometimes, but if they happen to cover the area you are going to drive/hike in they are many times more detailed and accurate than anything Garmin and DMTI Spatial have put out. It is my hope these studious open source providers continue to help out us cartographically challenged consumers, and arent chased after by big, cold, insulting, scamming outfits like Garmin. If open source people can be shut down or sued by big wigs like that, then surely large, delinquent cancerous companies like Garmin can likewise be lanced like the boil they are. Final suggestion: if you are anywhere close to being a courier or a senior, do not risk your life and waste your money buying this software, or Garmin products for that matter.

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