Garmin Poor Financial Performance

Surprise, surprise. Granted I just bought a 765T in March, but I am less than 100% satisfied. The first one I received had some oddball screen marks. The second one did not. The 3.90 firmware that came with it is buggy with a sluggish touch screen and traffic reception that stops working. The lousy firmware came out in December and it is still not fixed (why?). Garmin is getting competition from other vendors who have either drastically reduced the price of maps (Amazon.com has dropped the one-time update to $30 but that is supposed to end soon) or now bundling free lifetime updates. Garmin releases a new model and, in the process, removes features that older models have and puts maybe one or two new features into the new model. You want an FM transmitter and MP3 capability on a new 1xxx or 3xxx device? Good luck.

Someone in the Garmin marketing department needs to go back to school and learn that products need to add features AND work right out of the box. Taking features away and not having what could be called a top-of-the-line flagship model for a given series is not good business sense.

I almost want to feel sorry for them. They seem to be convinced that doing an okay job is enough for them to continue taking our money and earning our trust. They need to do more than simply benchmarking themselves against other companies that are out there and not distinguishing themselves.