Contacting Garmin with Suggestions/New Features

To my knowledge there is no link. You just send them an email.

I use the regular Garmin support link to give them suggestions.

Thank you everyone. That makes sense...I guess. If I were Garmin, I'd have a specific place for customer/user suggestion input. But then again, I am not Garmin.

I have done the same, but I am always suspicious that suggestions just go to the bit bucket. I never get any follow-up other than the standard "boiler plate" response. Customer support tech's are trained to solve customer problems, and I don't think they have much motive to pass along or even acknowledge suggestions. It is poor public relations for a company to ignore customer comments. Garmin should have a specific proceess for handling customer suggestions and complaints that is separate from support.

Ok ... I'm off the soapbox.

I have made a couple of suggestions.Not sure if they already had them on the drawing board but they showed up on some newer models.Suggestion to show time on main screen never happen.I asked for update to show the time on the main screen since it changes for time zone on 265.Now you have to go to another screen.Did get follow up they are looking at it.

A feature I would love to have but have no reasonable belief that it would ever be implemented is device crash feedback. When your GPS crashes, it generates a crash report and stores it in a log file on your device. Garmin has no facility for uploading those reports for further analysis. This means those annoying crashes, such as traffic related ones I have with my Nuvi 765T, have no realistic chance of ever being fixed unless the Garmin developers happen to stumble across them themselves.

When an application crashes on an iPhone/iPod a crash log is generated and the next time the device is synced, the report is uploaded to Apple and forwarded to the developer. On Windows, a crashed application can send a crash report to Microsoft. I would love to see Garmin enhance WebUpdater to upload any crash reports on the GPS so that the developers can investigate. I am a programmer by trade and looking at the crash reports on my GPS I see consistent memory locations that have problems. However, I have no way of sharing that information with Garmin (I asked).

Garmin does have a shared information enable setting when you use MyGarmin. I don't know what information they download but when it is enabled I am guessing they are extracting something useful to them from your unit.

Do you know the name and location of the log file it creates?

Yes. Off the root of your device's drive is a directory called "debug". In that directory you will find a file called "GarminError.xml". It may or may not get updated on your system. Mine has some reports but not all of them. The diagnostics still show my reports.

You can read about the data Garmin collects in Garmin®'s Products and Applications Privacy Statement: http://goo.gl/WQ6RM

Depending on the unit, it may include location information, ad logs, track logs, POI feedback. The data is transmitted by the device or the Garmin Communicator plugin.

It doesn't look like my zumo 660 has registered an error or it doesn't collect error info since this directory or file doesn't exist.

This is my 2nd zumo and they both do the same thing. They just shut off while navigating. The quickest way to reset it is to unmount it and re-mount. It boots up again and continues navigating.

I haven't had it on the motorcycle mount yet (snow, snow and more snow!!!) to see if it does the same there. I love it but the turning off is a pain.

I seems to me that Garmin doesn't know what the problem is.

Thanks for the info on the log file and data collected link.

If you press and hold the speedometer on the virtual dashboard, it will display the error reports screen. Each entry contains a date/timestamp, the error code and register contents when a serious error occurs.

Don't worry about the soap box as you know that is what the site is for,I am thinking of buying a new GPS and I tell you if it just came down to phone(customer service)I would 100% go with TomTom they answer the phone very quickly when I am on hold for Garmin at least 10 minutes.

I have been lucky when contacting Garmin by email or phone and getting a fast answer.Holding on the phone for long length of time is annoying for sure.But for example verizon which I am a customer I would rather take a beating then to call them about home phone,Internet and cell phone.They keep you on hold like forever or forward your call to another dept after lengthy hold.To start over again from scratch.Yet they have a good product.

Please don't get us started on Verizon. Where as their actual phone service might be pretty good, their customer service in non existent.

Could not agree more.One big headache to call them.The internet full of complaints about their customer service..

Thanks WASup, yeap the errors are there, a full page. I know for sure that 1 matches to the time that the GPS shut off while traveling.

I'm curious if Garmin collects this info when you share info during updates? They'd be foolish not to.

So now I know I can touch and and hold the battery, signal bars and the speedometer for some kool stuff. I wonder what else there could be?

No they do not. I contacted customer service last fall to inquire about that as I was having a lot of crashes from traffic reception. They told me they do collect the logs but only from returned devices. Those in the field are not downloaded.

WAASup,
I was wondering why I couldn't find the .xml file when I went looking for it on my zumo after reading your first note about its existence. I checked my alternate backup file of the GPS, I alternate between 2 backups, and it does not have an GarminError.xml file. I think that the file didn't exist until I held the Speedometer screen and brought the errorlog up on the GPS screen. The zumo has a Garmin/Diag directory where it resides and I checked that directory the other day after your first note and all that was there was a sys_log.bin file. Most of my errors in the file are definitely before this date.

Aardvark,
Thanks for the info, I will send my GarminError.xml file to them since they don't collect it.