Total Traffic Network

Rana, there is still some confusion over this issue for our area. I'm also in the Vancouver area and had purchased a new subscription for traffic back this last July but I've recently received a new GTM 20 unit from Garmin because the tabs on my old unit broke. The new unit came with a fresh 15 month subscription which will end on 1/14/2010 and after updating GTMxxx fw to 5.30 the date remained the same instead of showing "lifetime." However when I contacted Garmin, Tamara J, a product support specialist stated this, Lifetime traffic extends for the
useful life of your Garmin traffic receiver (as long as you own a
compatible Garmin GPS) or as long as Garmin receives traffic data from
its traffic supplier, whichever is shorter. You are able to transfer
over you previous lifetime subscription to your replacement GTM 20.

I guess this implies that I have a "lifetime" subscription. I would strongly recommend that you contact Garmin, by phone, before jumping at subscribing to address your concerns. Hope this helps and not confused things more.

Petlaur,

I did spend some time talking with Garmin, and the way they explained to me is that, if it doesn't say "Lifetime", it is not. So come the expiry of your subscription, as displayed on your unit, you would have to buy the Lifetime one.

So are there many of us out there with older units showing lifetime subscription after the 5.30 update? I was merely quoting from the email I got from a Garmin rep, who do you believe? As I've got a ways to go before expiration I'll see what develops between now and then.

Rana, I spent about half an hour on the phone with Garmin earlier today and was able to secure a new code to give me a "lifetime subscription" for traffic. The product support specialist had to check the info on my replacement GTM 20 and spoke with a supervisor, evidently the supervisor had no problems with granting the lifetime subscription because I had paid for a year's subscription back this last July for my old GTM 20. Anyways after entering a second new code into my 660 (the first code actually reduced my subscription by 3 months because of a computer glitch on their end) I got my new "lifetime subscription."

I spoke with Garmin a few days ago and the guy said he would check with his supervisor and call me or email me the next day. He never did either. He said that there was a cutoff period for getting the free upgrade and it was sometime in July. My subscription is good until July 29 of next year. I ought to be able to get the upgrade to lifetime. I'm going to call again tomorrow from work and see if I can get someone who will actually follow through.

Be persistent thrak, my paid subscription had an expiry date of July 9 of next year so it was a little bit older than yours. I was on the phone for 30 - 40 minutes while they checked and tried to sort things out, eventually the Product Support Specialist told me to leave him my phone number and he would call me back in the next 20 to 30 minutes. He ended up calling me back less than 5 minutes later with a proper code to enter into my 660 which "officially" gave my unit the lifetime sub. Apparently he just had to go to another computer to come up with a good code, the first code he told me to input actually shortened my sub. by three months LOL. If I can get lifetime you should be able to as well. Hopefully Garmin will send a general fw update that will change all eligible units to show "lifetime" without each one of us having to plead our case. Good luck with your call to Garmin tomorrow!

I called Garmin again this morning and spoke with someone named Chris. He said that, when Garmin issues a new code as they did for you, they find that they are getting charged twice for the royalties for the same subscription so they aren't going to do that any longer. He assured me that Garmin is "in the process of establishing a system" to handle this change and that I would be grandfathered in since my subscription renewal was so recent. He verified all of my information - including traffic receiver number - and said I would receive an email "probably within the next couple of weeks" containing a new code.

I'll have to wait and see if it happens.......

Well, good luck with this thrak. I think we just would like to see some consistency in how Garmin handles this and other issues.

I called Garmin again. I spent half an hour on the phone and was finally told, "You don't qualify". They said if the subscription was PURCHASED prior to July 20 they won't do the upgrade and "there's no way to possibly do it". It doesn't matter that my subscription expires on July 29 - only the "purchase date". I asked how someone else who's subscription expires on July 3 could possibly qualify and they kept repeating that expiration date had nothing to do with it. I tried explaining that, if the thing had an expiration date of July 3, then it MUST HAVE BEEN PURCHASED PRIOR TO THAT DATE OR ON THAT DATE. No dice. Logic has no meaning for these people. They just keep parroting the same thing over and over.