So I got an Oregon 450. A couple of nights ago, I go online to buy a city map for it. Great! Garmin allows you to buy the maps online and download it for instant installation! Awesome!

Not so much. I go through the process and I get an error at the very end of the payment submission. “Try again” it says. I did. Just to make sure, I went to my bank’s site and found no charges, so no harm, no foul. I tried two more times, changing really the billing name parameter. Same error.

I wonder if it’s a browser issue. I was using Safari. I switched to Firefox. It works! Ok, Garmin, you suck, but at least I have my maps.

Fast forward to today. This morning, There’s FIVE charges from Garmin. $560 total. So they report an error to the user, the maps are not available for download on my account page, meaning in their eyes, the transaction truly never did go through. However, their payment system sure considered it a successful transaction.

This is what happens when you try to follow the rules. Garmin’s whole scheme sucks so bad in many ways. They lock maps to device serial numbers and owner information. They say this is to help prevent theft, but it’s really to prevent software piracy. The problem is 1) Pirates have long circumvented this. For the past three years, you can download maps on torrent sites and bypass this. 2) It hurts the resell value of your devices because you have to tell Garmin you sold this device and give them the new owner’s info, etc. Of course, Garmin doesn’t mind that the used device market is being damaged at all. That’s just a side benefit.

Moreover, their account management website has always sucked. They use confusing terminology, there are technical errors all the time, and the interface is confusing.

This sucks because their devices are always so awesome. How can a company be so amazingly good at one thing then hire a bunch of buffoons to run other parts of their business?

I called Chase, which has surprisingly good customer service. They credited my account and marked those transaction. If they go through, I’m reporting this as fraud. Good. I hope Chase marks those idiots at Garmin as thieves.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 22nd, 2010 at 3:32 pm and is filed under Technical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.