Garmin Support Happy End

I could write a book on history of my interactions with Garmin support. And there would be multiple chapters in it. Generally speaking they are good people, dealing with software which has bugs and is poorly documented (for support purposes).

The two major incidents I had, both ended up with Garmin physically replacing my devices with new ones. And I have reasons to believe that both are just software issues, which could be fixed by fixing the bugs and providing an update.

Actually for the first issue (cannot simultaneously play audio and record an activity) I have a proof it is a software bug, which I nailed down after I got the replacement unit. Basically the bug is resource (memory) starvation when additional maps are uploaded to the watch. It seems each additional map consumes some RAM (file system? index?), and in the end there is insufficient memory to run some functions simultaneously. The catch is the factory reset does not remove the uploaded maps, so even after a factory reset, the device exhibits this problem. Of course a replaced one comes with no uploaded maps so it works fine. But if you fancy your used watch being replaced, hook a USB cable and feed it with a number of maps, e.g., from the OpenTopoMap project.

The second issue was a 2nd-hand Garmin Index bathroom scale not being able to be registered on a new account and throwing a HTTP_CONFLICT_409 error. I don't have a proof here, but it too seems like after a factory reset some identifiers were not cleared and the companion app was not able to handle the device registration. It took them 14 months to resolve this issue. I bough the device in December 2020 and received the replacement unit in February 2022. There were numerous email exchanges in the meantime and ultimately (January 2021) they decided to replace the unit with a new one. They only had black ones, I wanted white, and then it all went silent. As a round year passed by, I contacted them for a status just to learn the case was closed. Not giving up, I found they sent a replacement unit in July 2021. I had never received it. And the unit they sent was black (I still wanted white). Digging deeper I found they sent it to somebody else. So wrong color to a wrong recipient. After several more email exchanges I finally received the white one last week. Which - of course - registered perfectly. But I still have a feeling the root cause for the HTTP_CONFLICT_409 is still there. If anyone happens to experience this with a Garmin product, I'd be curious to know. In the meantime the case is closed after the 14-month saga.