Garmin: Impressive Customer Service

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been having problems with the heart rate function of my Garmin Forerunner 305 - inconsistent readings, no readings at all and an inability to pair the chest strap with the GPS receiver.
I thought it was just a matter of changing the battery in the chest strap (twist the battery cover with a coin, pop the old battery out, put the new one in and replace the cover) and when I used it for the first time after the change, everything appeared fine.
However, after just a couple of miles, the monitor registered a reading of over 230 beats per minute and stayed that way for about 10 minutes before finally crapping out altogether and showing a reading of “0″ - nice.
Later that night I scoured the Garmin web site and located the Technical Support contact form. With my unit a couple of weeks outside the warranty period (isn’t that always the case?), I didn’t expect too much, but filled in my details anyway - name, address, product model number and explanation of problem. I couldn’t find my serial number (it has worn off the back of the unit and no longer visible), so I left that blank.
To my surprise, 2 days later, I received a pleasant email from Garmin Techincal Support saying they’d shipped out a new chest strap which I should receive early next week. Excellent news and quite a shock. With my unit out of warranty and no serial number provided, I thought Garmin would at least call or email me back to validate a few things.
Anyway, I know people are usually quick to criticize the Customer Support departments of major companies, so I thought I’d give a quick shout out to Garmin’s Impressive Customer Service!
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May 29th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
[…] - the UPS man just showed up with a replacement heart rate monitor for my Garmin Forerunner 305. As posted last week, I’ve been having problems with my heart rate monitor for some time. After submitting an […]