Possibly purchased a stolen nuvi on eBay - any advice?

Funny indeed.

If the registered owner says it was stolen, that's all that Garmin needs to hear. He is the OWNER of record who registered it with Garmin in the first place and it belongs to him until he officially transfers ownership to someone else. No one has to prove anything. It's his registered property until he tells them otherwise. If someone buys it and he refuses to transfer the ownership, their beef is with him, not Garmin.

I always go to the resolution centre at Ebay and they act fast on these matters!

Cheers

Again, a change. Semantically the statement is incorrect. The operative phrase is more correctly 'that's all Garmin WANTS to hear'.

A claim of theft without proof is not theft. And the OP has a bill of sale.

The registrant could not call the local constabulary and tell them to get his unit back unless he had a police report in hand - and Garmin should not be allowing anything less.

However, what Garmin could do is to put the parties in touch with each other to let them work matters out.

In my opinion, this advice is as good as it gets. I agree 100%. It "is" quite possibly there are 2 victims here, the buyer, and the seller, but, IMO, it is the seller who should take the brunt of responsibility here, refund the money, then contact E-Bay to get to the bottom of this.

You should demand your money back from the seller, create a police report, contact the FBI, file a complaint with the Internet Crime Control Center (I3), and let eBay know about these activities. A couple of phone numbers for eBay are 800-322-9266 and 888-749-3229. It is unfortunate that you have to be a victim in this circumstance. These criminals need to be severely prosecuted for their unwanted behavior.

LOL This is a nice but naive way of looking at it.

Garmin's minimum wage paid telephone support probably put this in the "worry about it in 2013 file, maybe..." and moved on.

If I were the OP I'd file a claim with eBay / PayPal right away. To not do so would be the ultimate example of foolishness.

LOL you give Garmin / customer support far too much credit.

With all of the words wasted by many people on what Garmin ought / should not do, the simple fact of the matter is that it will be most convenient for Garmin to do nothing.

Garmin's support doesn't care about any eBay / PayPal receipts. By telling the OP "we'll get back to you later" they are basically telling the OP to go pound sand. Or did you think Garmin has a CSI unit secretly working in Garmin HQ, analyzing the fingerprints on the Nuvi, tracing the IP address of the original software registration, and figuring out how one of their beloved customers lost a Garmin GPS unit?? ROFLMAO

Garmin can tell the OP "sorry, you need to go figure it out. We ain't doing nothing". Their minimum wage customer support have far more important things to do, like go play video games on the interweb between customer calls.

The OP has the power to dispute the transaction, and get his / her money back, rather than sitting and waiting for Garmin to "get back to you"... Let's face it, with falling revenues and virtually no margins these days on Garmin products, Garmin is not in the position like Apple to give the OP a brand new GPS. Garmin is hurting financially. Their support is not going to do anything. They and others (like myself) basically see this as the ball is in the OP's court. OP - go file a dispute.

i usually dont buy any electronic on ebay
unless it is the manufacture or they sell brand new stuffs!
also make sure that their feedback is good but look what type of things are on the feed back
i had seen some account that they will buy or sell cheap stuffs like less than $1 and build up the feedback to 50~60 positive, then tried to sell something expensive like laptop - i would not trust this type of account. too fishy!

even buying from craiglist - i will ask for box and accessories!

remember if it is stolen, mostlikely they will have the GPS, the mount and power cable only.
no box no usb cable and no manual.
and if they said i lost the box or trash it. then i rather not buy and save the headache.

My first Garmin 260W was purchased on ebay. I had it registered and even received the latest map update at the time for free. The ebay seller was affiliated with Garmin and they honor the request for the free map update. Never had a problem with my 260W

I'd only return it to the claimant if there is a police report that predates the purchase.

If not, your purchase of the used device was totally fair and legitimate and it is you that might be the victim here.

Not fun, but stick to the report and go with whichever way it falls.

Since my time is running out to file a claim I emailed the nice person I was working with at Garmin.

I asked if anything new had happened and what I should do now. Here is the response I got:

"Sorry, I have yet received anything from the original owner. My assumption is that he did not go through with the police report process as it will cost him more money to get the process finalized. At this point, I would use the device as is—since you’ve paid for the device and have proof of purchase on hand. However, I cannot remove the registration from his account. I apologize. It is up to you if you would like to get a refund."

Change 'cannot' to 'won't'.

BOO GARMIN!!!

File your claim.

@bramfrank - I'm disappointed in you. I figured with all of your blustering you would be willing to represent the OP in his legal action against Garmin. Because according to you Garmin MUST allow him to register the device.

LOL

If it turns out to be stolen return it to the rightful owner and get a refund from the seller. He should be happy to do so to retain his privileges on EBay

It isn;t stolen. If it was the owner would have called the police and filed a report. Costs nothing to do.

At this point he could write back to Garmin and inist that in the absence of any proof to the contrary, that they delete the regustration; But there comes a point where you need to toss in the towel, since the OP can always buy another for the same price.

If it was me I would take one last shot at itand ask the CSR who responded to carry my request to management, along with the text of the message sayig that there is no proof of loss and that there IS a bill of sale.

But the OP's claim must be filed and he has simply run out of time.

I myself would be writing to the VP Sales and describe the situation, the negative publicity that Garmin is receiving and discuss the benefits of corporate communication - he might just get himself a brand new navigator for his trouble.

But that's me.

When a GPS is stolen in most cases its a break-in into the vehicle. Obviously it would have been reported. Probably the original owner lost it or misplaced it. What does a registered device get that an unregistered does not? As I understand you can still get firmware updates and you can purchase and install new maps.

If the unit is stolen and recovered, it is returned to the registered owner. The same will happen if it is sent in to Garmin for repair. You also can't put lifetime maps or premiumn traffic subscriptions on it if it is registered to someone else.

There is a cost, not to report the theft but to obtain a copy of the report. The report is public record (at least in the States) but agencies have the right to collect a fee for making the report available. I know, it cost me $5 to get a copy of the theft report on one of my units plus the time to travel to the adjoining county sheriff's office to pick it up. They would have mailed, but it would cost extra as they only accept cash, money order or certified check and then add additional fees for mailing.

Probably was stolen, return it. A friend of mine did get a knock on the door by the folks in blue.

Pay with a cc. Seller doesn't respond within 24 hours do a chargeback on the cc. The seller has to prove the item is legit to Paypal and the CC company. If they can't they lose and you get your money back.
It's not up to garmin to do anything other than say the unit it registered to someone else.

"decision very difficult when choice presented at night, in unfamiliar city"...Charlie Chan

Seriously now, this has gone on for a month...set it aside, let the owner do the legwork to get it back and go out and purchase a new one, they aren't much more than a few months of Starbucks!

I am thankful for everyones help so far. I've filed a claim with eBay. We will see what happens. I'm still a bit weary that the registered owner never sent in a police report.

Good luck. I still thing it was misplaced or lost rather than stolen.

After a fiasco like this is it really worth trying to save a few bucks buying on ebay? I think the secret is don't buy used on ebay (especially electronics)....Time and effort to solve problems and frustration cost something.

The Garmin people, once again, prove to be jackwads. Mattb did the right thing. Garmin should have told the registered owner that he had one week to produce a sales receipt and/or police report or they would change over the registration to Mattb. In this day and age (faxes, scanners, e-mail) it would take me all of about 30 minutes MAX to find the receipt for my "toys", scan and e-mail same to Garmin. Filing a police report or incident report takes about 10 minute once at the police station; thus, a one week limit on the former owner is reasonable.

JM2CYMMV

I completely disagree. There is no doubt that the registered owner is the original owner, or at least a prior owner, since Garmin confirms the serial number on-line when you register. So there is no reason that the original owner should have to track down the original sales receipt as you suggest. Heck, I would be hard pressed to find the original receipt for the computer in front of me or many of the other things that I've bought.And I don't see any reason to send the real owner rushing to the cops to try to get a copy of their paper work from them. As far as I'm concerned, if the original owner says it was stolen then it very likely was stolen, they would gain nothing by selling it and then claiming it was stolen.

When one buys from the electronic bay of thieves one should expect that they are getting fenced items. If anyone should have a week or less to take some action it is the new buyer. They should have gone back to both the seller and the payment agent and immediately tried to get a refund.

The buyer is right and the original registered owner is wrong.

It cannot be legally considered to be stolen unless there is proof of loss: a claim from an insurance company; a police report or whatever. Anything else is hearsay and non-binding. If lost there is no right to recovery. If stolen, then it would have been subject to a legal claim. Heck, his mother may have confiscated it from him and sold it for some reason.

Garmin SHOULD have asked the original registrant to come up with proof of loss - in fact perhaps the original registrant bought it, registered it and then then returned to the store from which it was purchased and the registration would still be on line. Maybe the registered individual was hoping to score the unit back?

I don't want to get into a discussion about possible motives, but there is sometimes no explaining why people do what they do.

The OP had no option, since the time for claim had run out and if indeed it turns out that the unit was not really stolen, the eBay seller will have been penalized for something he didn't do.

Realize that even if the unit WAS stolen, it often is purchased with a clean title - and Garmin *should* respect this.

But they won't.

Sit back and guess.
It is now in EBays hands.

Mattb
Be sure to get back to us and let us know the finial decision by EBay's resolution Center. I myself wouldn't have waited as soon as I knew there was a problem. Make sure to make a claim with Paypal as well.

Garmin could fix the problem out of the shoot as soon as they realized there was a problem by asking the original owner a simple question "did you sell the unit or was it stolen?" I have to question Garmin on that one.

Irrelevant due to timing, but comments on this sort of situation that may be of interest:

eBay and PayPal are the same company now, so I would not expect any different result from going through the two separate Resolution Centers or whatever they call it. But definitely file the issue through both eBay and PayPal.

If eBay/PayPal doesn't make good one refunding your money, you can always dispute it with your credit card company. Be aware that any time you purchase through PayPal you technically agree to waive your chargeback rights, so eBay will claim that you owe them the money in the event of a chargeback. So chargeback through your credit card will result in PayPal freezing the account if your PayPal account doesn't have enough money for them to withdraw it from your balance.

I had an issue that eBay/PayPal didn't resolve in my favor, and I used a chargeback through Discover to get my money back (USPS never delivered, but listed it as delivered, Discover did chargeback since there was no signature). PayPal froze my account, I created a new one with a different credit card and they haven't frozen the new account yet. The chargeback/new account creating was over a year ago but less than 2.

Side Note - PayPal is shady, don't leave money you receive in your PayPal account, just withdraw it right away when you are on the receiving end of payments. They pretend to be a bit like a bank, but are not and immune to all sorts of regulations that would normally apply to them. Since eBay and PayPal are the same company, it's hard to use other methods for eBay transactions due to eBay restrictions.

All this time spent....? Interesting read, but never the less, Garmin should have done exactly that. Give 'em 1 week after being notified, then Garmin makes it his...c'est la vie, c'est le merde! FIN!

There is no reason to register your Nuvi except if your planning to buy a Lifetime Map. To get a firmware update you don't need to register, just use webupdater. Now to update the map just buy the onetime DVD Map at amazon or other retailers on the web when there is a sale $20-$25.00, this is for people without INTERNET access and wants to update their GPS . Before bidding or paying in ebay ask the seller if the GPS has been registered so you can cancel the transaction. I have bought a registered Nuvi and the first thing to do is contact the seller and ask to remove the registration if that is not possible return the gps and if the seller refuse then ask for a reduction on the price paid in exchange for a positive feedback, with that I get my refund. Now every time I bid on ebay the first thing I do is ask the seller about the registration. Hope this will help you.

After five weeks the original registrant could have produced something. You know, I almost have a mind to cancel the dispute and just keep it.

Hi, A friend had his NUVI stolen from his car. He did not have the Garmin Lock or 4 didgit passcode set up. Is there still a way that Garmin can track this unit?

If the unit was registered, Garmin will not register it to another user if they try. That's all that will be done.

You can't track a navigator, though Garmin can block access to map updates or unit exchanges if the unit was registered, which you know if you've read this thread.

It is gone - new ones are cheap.

some reponses here are quite amusing.

Yes, I agree.

WOW. That is totally incorrect. Title is never transferred when it comes to stolen goods. Do the goods often make it back to their rightful owner? Maybe not. But that's not to say finders keepers in the above.

While the goods you buy at a pawn shop may have been stolen, title in many jurisdictions DOES tranfer to the buyer when you buy from a licensed pawn shop. It is the shop that takes the risk when buying goods from the street. Pawn shops are required to vet all their purchases with the authorities. Goods cannot be claimed from the purchaser should it turn out that they were, indeed stolen. No real difference than if you buy merchandise at a police auction.

We may be talking about law in theory, v. practicality. If a person buys stolen goods from a pawn shop, those goods absolutely can be taken away from the buyer without any compensation. It would take an order of a court to do so. For a GPS? Probably not. Just like the analogy of a woman in a short skirt and a tube top partying with a guy who didn't know, sure, the buyer would likely keep the goods.

If you apid through paypal, they will get you a refund when there's a problem with the item.

Yea, the electronic bay of thieves is so dependent on the fencing part of its business that it found it important to do this for the small percentage of times when the buyer gets wise in time and jumps through all the hurdles. But that this was even discussed here shows that fences, I mean sellers, often put things of with trusting buyers and it just doesn't happen.

In Alabama all goods purchased from a pawnshop are legally not stolen. Both the pawnshop and buyer are protected, Victim not so.

Funny Indeed