I don’t like to share bad experiences or “gripe” on this blog. However, after the 8 weeks of frustrations experienced with getting a warranty replacement of the Car Power Adaptor for my Magellan Roadmate 6000T, I have decided to provide fair warning to anyone looking at buying a Magellan product.

I have owned the Magellan 6000T for 8 months. Two months of that time it has not worked because of an acknowledged poor design from support in the car power adoptor. They told me the adaptor has been redesigned.

I opened a support case 8 weeks ago (Sept 7, 2007) to get a replacement. They took my information and provided me a case number and told it I would have a replacement in 7 days. After 7 days I called back to check ont he status. After waiting on hold, I was told there was a glitch with their computer systems and the part was not released and it would be sent out nd I would get it in 7 days. Since then I have called every week, somtimes twice a week, for status of the warranty shipment and have gotten nowhere. Every time I call I am told 7 days and it will be here. I have asked to speak with a supervisior twice and and been told I will get a call back both times. So it’s obvious that the supervisors are not going to talk to me. I suppose they don’t want to face the facts of the joke of the operation they are running.

Besides the terrible customer service, the device would lock up evey couple of weeks (when I could actually use my $600.00 GPS) and lose all the saved locations. So I am in the market to buy another GPS for my other car. I probably doesn;t need to be said, but Magellan is permantently out of the running for this purchase and ALL future purchases.

One more comment on the warranty — I was notified by email that my warranty was up in a few months and had a link to extend it for $130.0 for another year. That’s a joke. They have the worst “customer service” I have ever experienced in any industry. If you want a GPS, look at another brand all together.

UPDATE 1 (NOV 2) - 57 days after I made this warranty claim through Magellans “Technical Support” center, I called again for the 9th time. I was told once again the same thing I have heard from the last calls – “The adaptor has been released to shipping and it wil be shipped within a weeks time. A tracking number will be sent in E-mail when it is available, but no tracking number is available at this time.” Next week when I call again — I think I may beat them to the punch and say “Let me guess.” and read the above statement to them. BTW, I never got a call back from a supervisor as I asked for at the begining of this week — no big suprise there.

As far as calling their corporate customer service number, I tried that too. That is routed to India as well, likely run by the same company that takes the support calls. I thought about writing to Magellan about this lack of customer service or interest for that matter and asking for the extended warranty on the device at no cost. I still may do that, but this type of customer response typically comes from the top of the corporation down - so I’m sure I will not get a response from them either.

UPDATE 2 (Nov 8): Only 63 days after I put in a warranty claim, my replacement car adaptor arrived.