SPOT Reviews 

So I suspended my account with Spot and yet I find they have taken £50 for the service renewal. The only way I can find to contact them from the UK is to call a US number. I'm really not happy with them.

I would like to add that the tracker never really worked either. I wish I had read the reviews before buying one.

Have paid £144 for annual renewal on a Spot X. I have a receipt for the payment but the service has been suspended. Have spent 3 hours trying to speak to customer service and got through twice. Both times been assured it would be sorted but still not working. Totally hacked off

After trying for ages to find a way to cancel my account online, I could not. Then I emailed their deactivation email address. No response to the first email, second email was bounced with a "Recipient address rejected: Access denied." response. So they just don't want to deal with me, but they are still going to take my money. I've had to resort to cancelling my credit card as there's no other way to stop these cowboys from taking my money. Never using again.

Terrible devices ( I have had 2) that never work. On hold for hours with the company with no answers. I cancelled my yearly subscription 10 months ago and they charged my credit card last month with no notification or invoice, trying to get that refunded with no answers. Very bad company to deal with.
Stay away.

I am now on my second year of using the Spot X unit. I am amazed at the amount of negative reviews on Spot as I have not have issues with customer service, payment, texting, tracking, custom messages, etc. Unit has performed above expectations but yes, their is a steep learning curve and I think that is why it gets bad reviews. When I first bought the unit, I studied the manual and found various instructional videos online and it all came together. I am definitely pleased with the unit.

I love my Spot. But the website is not user friendly on smartphones. Lots of links hidden. Took me 15 minutes just to update my credit card. No way to email them either on their contact us page. Way more frustrating than it needed to be.

For a company that prides itself on saving lives, its incredible that this company treats its customers the way they do. In my case, they sent me a defective device, promised me a refund, and then made me go through 3 levels and 65 mins. of time just to request a refund, only to be told that the supervisor had no authority to issue any refunds. The act like a bad TV product company that will not give any refunds. Now I am faced with disputing the charge on my CC.

The spot x device is crap. Look at all these bad reviews Spot. Clean up your act, for Pete's sake, you are a safety company! What a joke. Don't you have any self-respect?

Russell Gache

Same issue as others. Charged annual fee when device was suspended. Have to pay additional monthly charges to even use the device. No email of receipt for charges. Company lacks transparency in their billing practices.

I'd give 0 stars if I could.
The device it self works kind of ok, even with clear view of the skies it's still hit and miss if it tracks, sometimes needs multiple restarts to work properly.
I was considering upgrading to the gen 4 until today.
Last year it autorenewed without any warning, phoned and the gave me a discount. I told them I didn't want it to renew again and if I wanted to restart the service I would. They said yes no problem at all auto renew will not happen. (You see where this is going)
Today I check my online banking and guess what? £195 as been taken even though I ordered a new bank bank they still managed to get it authorized somehow!
I'm going to have to wait all weekend to call them and make them refund me, this is putting me in a position now where I may not be able to pay some bills.

Automatic charge comes back after years of no use.
Used the service in 2015. Cancelled in 2016. Charges on my credit card in 2019 and 2020.
I'm seeking a refund.

There is NO way to cancel via the website. You have to call, wait on hold for over 30 minutes, then they are rude! This might even be fraud for not letting your customers cancel! never again!

Poor Customer Service! I was on the phone re: billing question for over 30 minutes and then I had to end it as customer service couldn't solve the problem yet kept me on the phone.

I no longer use the SPOT device so I have just tried to contact SPOT to cancel the subscription.
Like many others, it has proved impossible to contact them. There is no customer services email on their website and the telephone number does not work!
They have my debit card details, albeit now out of date so I contacted my bank to find out if they can still take payment. Apparently, they can and even if I changed the card they could still contact Visa to ascertain the new card details!!
However, the bank advised that I put a "Merchant Payment Stop" on the account to prevent any further payments. If SPOT change the merchant name or ID, payment would go through but because I've put the stop on, payment would be refunded and the bank would reverse charge SPOT.
So, it seems this may be the only way to terminate your SPOT payment?
For those thinking about purchasing a SPOT device, don't! It works OK-ish but if you ever want to stop using it, it's almost impossible to extricate yourself from the annual payment cycle.

Biggest thieves out there - Advised that you can cancel on their web page - Surprise you cant!! Do not sign up or buy their products - There is much better supported products out there and with SPOT you get ZERO customer support or service! DO NOT DEAL WITH THEM!!!!!

I got an email today from Spot stating that my invoice was ready for review. They charged my credit card $247.00 with out my consent. My service with this company expired quite some time ago. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY. THEY WILL TAKE YOUR CREDIT CARD, AND RUN WITH IT! THIS SHOULD BE ILLEGAL.

I read all the Trustpilot reviews and decided to take action immediately after paying for a full year.
I reacted to the contract email and got another email saying to call them - they are not willing to deal with email -they state. I made sure my email was clear, and Spot sent me this email:
" Dear Customer,
Thank you for taking time to email SPOT. This email address is no longer in use. Please forward all inquiries to one of our live agents by calling our Customer relations team

To get access to device settings, payments, invoices and more, please access your online account at our website "

I called Spot and got a French and English speaking professional woman.
I started the conversation by stating that I read their Trustpilot reputation and that I wanted a smooth termination of the contract after one year without automatic renewal. I wanted an email confirmation.
She helped me smoothly to terminate the contract at the end of twelve months. Thank you, Spot.
But then the confirmation email was extremely tough to obtain, and we did not agree when the phone conversation ended.
Why was this important?
Because the only thing Spot wanted to give as a sort of confirmation was:
A Ticket number (Jira00000) - no email copy.
On my findmespot.com account page, a status: pending deactivation. The contract renewal date and the contract billing date on the same page remained visible and active for renewal in a year.
I told her that I respected her as a professional but that this business procedure was unacceptable because of:
Their Trustpilot rating.
That this is not a termination of the contract on a specific date without automatic renewal.
She was so kind as to tell me that they would try and resell me 30 days in advance.
But I wanted clarity now.

So I asked for email confirmation now, and she would not give it.
Then I had to say that would do the following:
To consider reversing the pending MasterCard transaction, I probably wouldn't because I wanted a 1-year service.
I would terminate the Mastercard after a few business days to solve it. I would have no means of payment.
I would talk to ICSCards and Mastercard to recommend not doing business with their Irish Company anymore. [ On credit card: "SPOT EURO CARRICKMINES IRL" description: "Cable and other PayTV" ]
I told them this business practice might be legal in the US but not in Europe (not confirming the end of the contract).
I would hand them over to legal services.
I left it there ended the phone conversation, and was fully prepared to execute the above.
I had dinner, and then - unexpectedly, they sent me an email. [From customerloyalty at their domain ]
"As per request, your SPOT account has been scheduled to be deactivated on xx-xx-xxxx and will not renew automatically.
Your confirmation number is Jira-xxxxxx.
Thank you,
SPOT"

So they did it, ONLY after MAXIMUM pressure.

What to make all this? I do not know.

I bought a Spot Gen 3 on Amazon (sold out on REI) for my first overnight 4-day backpacking trip on the Timberline Trail. A couple things about the device itself: the construction is flimsy. The "waterproof" USB cap barely stays in place, which would likely result in the device being destroyed in rain, a fall into a river-crossing, or any other liquid-involved accident. Imagine falling into a river, breaking a bone, and your only way to let someone off the trail know you're hurt if via this shoddily-built device. Message sending is SLOW. Don't plan on sending a quick message to the family letting them know you're okay. This thing takes 10-15+ minutes to send a message and it must be left face up, not moving in order to send reliably. Now let's talk about customer service. My experience with SPOT has been one of, if not the worst experiences I have ever had with any company. Ever. What SPOT doesn't make clear is that when you activate your device, not only do you have to pay a one-time activation fee of $20, but you also have to sign up for a 12-month, non-cancellable subscription plan. If you go backpacking every month or so, that might be fine for you. But if you're someone like me who goes once or twice a year, that really isn't a great option. Basically, for your first backpacking trip, SPOT has you on the hook for the price of the device ($150), an activation fee ($20), and a year of subscription fees ($120). $290! The worst part is that when you call them to explain that you needed to use the device for a month only, they basically tell you "too bad, you should have read our 150-page agreement that states you'd be on the hook for 12 months." Legally, that's all fair and good, but it doesn't earn you loyal customers. Now I have to jump through a bunch of hoops to return the device and cancel by subscription via my credit card company. SPOT could have said to me "not problem, just reactive your subscription when you need it again." I would have been a happy, satisfied customer. Instead, they chose to irritate me to the point that I'm here, writing a 4-paragraph essay on why you should avoid this product like the plague. I'm absolutely disgusted that SPOT has choose such an anti-consumer business model, especially for products that are literally meant to save lives in the event of an emergency. If you enjoy being nickle-and-dimed by a big corporation, then consider getting a SPOT gen 3. If not, look elsewhere. Thanks for reading!

The review from Chris in June regarding their billing practices reflects my own experience. Same thing happened that they bill you automatically. I did not catch it either and just spend over an hour trying to cancel. No way to e-mail. They put you on hold and I never got to a live person. Good product but clearly make it next to impossible to cancel the service . I will never buy one of their products again.

I have a SPOT Legend and have had it for many years. A truly wonderful machine, does all that it says on the box. So why only 1 star rating? My device is working perfectly well after many, many years and still receives satelite signals. However, after many years of great service I let my yearly licence expire. I have spent the best part of three days, on the internet, phoning distributors and trying all the telephone numbers given on the SPOT website. Unfortunately those who write their website obviously don't do much international telephoning. All the telephone numbers begin with a + then the numbers but if you don't know the country how do you put in the country code? The website site is akin to reading double dutch. I can't telephone and got no reply to my email. A great device let down by an abominable website & customer service.