Buy Garmin Reviews 290

I am usually enthusiastic about Garmin products and was considering upgrading my Garmin Fenix 5 Plus to the new Garmin Fenix 8 Solar 47 mm Titanium (with yellow band).

What really bothers me about the design is the yellow microphone cover. The band can be swapped for another color, but the ugly and conspicuous microphone cover cannot.

There is no alternative with a MIPS display, gray case, and solar.

Many online share my opinion (links cannot be shared here):

Garminrumors
Garmin Forum
Reddit
I have approached Garmin through multiple channels to see if this watch is available with a different color microphone cover. Unfortunately, Garmin is not willing to consider this.

Conclusion: this is not possible, and if you paint the part yourself, the warranty (understandably) becomes void.

Throughout this process, the customer service has not been particularly helpful and has indicated with a high degree of disdain that Garmin simply makes good design choices.

Usually a fan of your products, but less impressed with the customer service and customization options.

I will wait for a potential Garmin Fenix 9, and if the design is not appealing, I will switch to a competitor.

I am happy to change my review if you can offer me a resolution.

Garmin tech support had 40 minute queue to connect with a technician. Once I was put through, I could tell he meant well but did have the foggiest how to fix my issue of no music playlist present despite downloading onto my watch. Having attempted sending a video which failed, I sent photos which also failed to go through. I had to wait for him to get some charge into the Garmin 255 music so he could check however the only options he could offer was either to return the watch by paying more money direct to Garmin in contrast to Amazon or reset the watch back to factory settings. Having agreed he should ask some colleagues he put me on hold for ten minutes and hung up!
In general, poor aftercare, poor product, poor software alongside Spotify app.

Garmin GPS worse than absolutely useless. Just about every journey I have to turn it off and resort to the road atlas, why? Because the Garmin delights in finding the narrowest and the worst surfaced roads to take you miles out of the way only to get you back 800 metres further up on the road you originally left. Quite honestly it is an appalling bit of kit. I would give it away but there is no one dislike enough

Tried to buy a watch in sale but they cancelled my order. Then refused to give me sale price. Customer service were not helpful. Very disappointing service. Avoid.

Really great Venue smartwatch, battery life great as was the functionality. However the oles screen was Garmins first try and it burnt in the screen with watch face so became unusable. Garmin offer pittance off a refurbished same model watch that was 4 years old, could not give me the option to upgrade from a watch modeI no longer trusted. Poor customer service experience

I have never been able to pair this device with the Garmin app. For a globally recognized company, it’s baffling that they can’t create a system that reliably connects two devices without issues. No matter what I try, the connection fails, making the smart features practically useless. A high-end cycling computer should not come with such basic connectivity problems. Extremely disappointing.

I bought my Garmin Forerunner 255 in the UK in August 2024. Early In January I noticed my heart rate on the watch took a 10-15% drop. Garmin customer took two weeks to reply to every communication I sent. It took 6 weeks to prove that my watch was defective. i had to communicate by email as they do not have a WhatsApp number.
Then I had to courier this watch to their Office in South Africa. ( Not to the UK, where I bought it). Two days ago, (two weeks after the it got picked up) the courier company said SA customs were demanding a payment(deposit) of USD 275 to get it to Garmin. I have refused. Essentially it is Garmin's problem not mine. Forget the courier costs which Garmin must pay for, I am not even sure if I will ever get the watch back.
This whole saga shows that Garmin customer support is almost non existent. In fact I will call it diabolical. With all the drama I have had to put up with, it would been much better to replace it under warranty.
Love the watch, but my worst customer service experience ever.

9 emails to customer service all unanswered, 4 calls, none of which solved the problem with my 6 month old venu 2s. Only to find out that the problem, it reports highly elevated heart rate eg 115bpm when it is actually 42, has been known for over a year.

I bought a Garmin Marq Gen 2 golfer watch from beaverbrooks in Jan 2023.

It was fine until October 2024. Then the watch kept freezing, rebooting, always through my golf roun; sole purpose for which it was bought for! After multiple emails, with the retailer and Garmin, it transpires that on their website they are aware of this glitch and are still trying to find a fix. Multiple weeks later after trying various things as suggested by them, we sent the watch back and they replaced it in January 2025, saying that the new version was fine and with no bugs. As you would expect.

However, after using it for a couple of weeks, it has now frozen, and rebooted during the golf round more than four times. I have fed the data back to them and they are reviewing it but they can give no timeline for fix; considering I raised this issue in October 2024, and now being the end of February 2025, it is inconceivable that this company still has not fixed this software glitch. Their response to me is we have no timelines to give; a £2000 watch which is useless for the functionality it was bought for.

Email sent to the CEO and chairman no response.

I would suggest anybody considering buying this version of the watch look elsewhere. They clearly have a software glitch and are unable to patch it. I cannot believe that they expect customers to pay £2000 for a watch and for it not to work.

Looking at all the other reviews recently, this looks like it's more widespread and could well be a Quality issue across the brand's watches; from product to service! You have been warned.

Just don't bother! Worst customer service. On 2nd fenix 7 and still issues and Cs team Just respond with generic emails. I've had 3 previous garmin watches but never again. Honestly can't see them keeping going at this rate.

Whatever you do DO NOT BUY a Honda Motor Vehicle with GARMIN Navigation.
Cant update it.
GARMIN DO NOT respond to emails to solve the problem.
RUBBISH COMPANY

Awful product and customer service. I purchased a Marq that just stopped working after 3 years and deteriorated rapidly from 2 years onwards (its freezing every day and I have to restart it and I am losing 100m per km on the navigation while running). Support team are saying they’ll try to fix it if I pay 618 pounds! No advice or support, just pay them and send back the watch for an indefinite period and hope they might fix it.

I have always been a Garmin watch wearer, and having upgraded to the Fenix 6 Solar, I have had continuous charging issues. After 18 months the charging point stopped working so I had to have the watch replaced. Then 12 months later the same issue occurred and the response from the help centre was "it is now out of warranty, please pay £160 for a replacement".

No option to have it fixed when there is clearly an issue with the model charging.

Poor complaint resolutions, I would expect more from a large multinational corporation that prides themselves on supporting their customers.

I've spent 200£ for smart watch to find out is only for showing time really? Poor service treat me like I don't know how to use and have to answer 100 question. Why is 2 years warranty If watch not working properly after 3 months

So after being a garmin watch owner for a while, we get the blue triangle a month after the warranty, they simply say oh we will give you 50 quid off a new watch and that's there answer to great customer service....

Bought a Garmin decent mk3i 9 months ago then got blue triangle start up issue, just contact customer service I thought,easy fix I thought sure they can sort it easy I thought …… well 2 weeks now and still on going and no customer support not even a call back after many attempts to contact customer services. Will selling once issue is sorted ( if it ever gets sorted ). This dive computer has crashed on a decompression dive and now I’m locked out of it for weeks and had to hire a shearwater for a dive trip and have an old shearwater of nearly 10 years that’s never missed a beat should have stuck with what I know! Never again and was about to buy the x50 also glad I’ve dodged a bullet there too !

Bought a Garmin Edge Explore 2 after using the the 705 and 810. What a dissapointment. Now on my 3rd device after 15 months. Features are complicated, profiles are fixed with the indoor one meant to be used on turbo?
Cannot change profile names or mileage logs.
OK it has a good size screen and maps preloaded but first unit set back be on/button fell off, second unit would not register altitude gain.
Wish I had gone for another make no where near as good as 810 and sales blurb does not mention any of the restrictions.

Bought the Garmin swim 2, partly my own fault for not looking at strap measurements... I have a large wrist circumference, unfortunately when I received the watch it's too small. I've worn swimtag monitors provided by my local leisure centre, unfortunately they stopped doing this, hence, my search for a smartwatch to monitor my swim time.
I contacted Garmin customer service, confirmed that the biggest watch band isn't adequate for me. It's such a shame that I can't keep this due to the band size. Hopefully this review will help other people with a larger wrist circumference choose a better option.
I notice there isn't a response from Garmin customer service to any of the reviews posted on Trustpilot, surely they should be taking note of reviews, especially when they are discriminating against people with larger wrist dimensions.
Sorry Garmin, don't know what all the hype is, time to look elsewhere.

Update from 1 star on 7 Feb. I was initially very disappointed! I've had Garmin watches for years and have had to contact their support on numerous occasions and have always been pleased with the service. However, my watch is playing up - battery not lasting and optical HR broken. The very pleasant customer service person just spoke to me for a while and then I received an email asking questions. Some of which seemed a bit generic/repetitive, which irritates me. There was no confirmation they had received my answers and no indication at all of expected response time. Then when I was given a survey to rate them the number of words permitted was so small I gave up trying to say anything. Hopefully it gets resolved quickly but if not I might reluctantly look at other manufacturers if I can establish they have a better customer service offering. Now that I'm using Strava and not Garmin Connect it might be less of an issue swapping.

Once I had received a response to my query - a couple of days later - it all went much better. I've been given a 30% discount for a trade in - UPS label, was delivered to them the next day and the day after they have shipped my new Fenix. All is forgiven. Just feel that my expectations could have been managed initially with a timeline statement on the first email.