As a surprise Christmas gift Lisa gave me a Garmin Edge 305 bicycle computer. It’s a GPS device that includes a cadence sensor and heart rate monitor. I won’t go into detail of the numerous features – you can google all that stuff.
One morning a week or so ago, I was getting ready for my morning bike commute. My 305 was attached to the wall charger and display “charging complete”. Without much thought I unplugged it and placed it in my jacket pocket for later use.
When I arrived at the trail head where I start my typical weekday ride, the 305 failed to power up. I tried several times without success. I figured the battery flaked out and I attempted to recharge it when I arrived at work – no luck. This unit was fried. I called Garmin support and they were very friendly and provided me with an RMA #. I mailed the unit back that day and received a new unit back just a week later. As a bonus the technician copied over my waypoint data from my damaged unit to the replacement one.
Assuming there are no more operational failures, my only complaint with the 305 is the battery life. With GPS enabled it will last a few hours, but that’d be of no use on an epic 100 mile ride or more. Also, if anyone from Garmin is reading, the training software included is nice, and tells me all the correct metrics, but the mapping technology is junk. Consider tapping into google earth or something with sexy eye candy. A yellow dotted line over a white map with highway markings is amusing, but imagine flying over your route in a 3D topographical map.
Overall I’m very happy with Garmin’s customer support. Having experienced RMAs with computer components, the process did seem old fashioned, lacking online status tracking and other perks, but they did right in the end.
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