Garmin Battery Battery

About 3 years ago I purchased a Garmin StreetPilot c330 GPS. The Garmin c330 is a great little unit that looks like a mini 1980s TV but has since been eclipsed by flatscreen, widescreen and more modern Garmin Nuvi models.

The c330 comes with a rechargeable battery in the unit. This battery is required if you want to use the GPS when your car engine is not running, it helps find satellites more quickly and the battery allows you to remove the GPS from the base and still use it. My Garmin c330 battery died sometime early in January.

You would think that replacing a battery for the Garmin is straight forward. Think again.

With Garmin, you have to:

• remove a faceplate
• unscrew a front panel
• remove and put aside the antenna
• unscrew the battery bracket
• remove the battery
• cut the wires
• remove the battery from its casing
• remove a strip of metal
  
• solder a new battery
• solder the strip of metal
• install heat shrink around the battery
• heat it without causing it to explode
• insert the battery
• screw in the battery bracket
• reinstall the antenna in the exact same position as before
• screw on the front panel
• install the faceplate

There's a good tutorial and pictures of all these steps at GPSPassions.com, which you can see by clicking here. According to the poster and readers, you can do this in about 15 minutes and spend $10 or so on parts.

Not being comfortable with a soldering iron, I went to Garmin's site to see what they would charge.

It's $150 to repair my GPS. $150? It's not even worth $100. Why would anyone with second grade math spend $150 to repair a used Garmin c330 GPS you can buy on eBay for less than $100? And the folks at Garmin, who must be out to make any money they can, don't give you an option to just replace their dead rechargeable battery that you can't get at without MacGyver on your side. And the warranty on the repair? 90 days. 90 days for $150? A rechargeable battery should last years.

I thought this must be a joke so I called Garmin support and spoke to a rep about replacing my c330 battery. Not only did he confirm and stick by the $150 price, he told me that Garmin may elect to not replace my battery but to replace my GPS with another used c330 that they have in their return stock. What? No repair? So Garmin wants to effectively sell me for $150 (under the guise of repairing) a used unit that I could find on eBay for $50. Will it have a new battery that will last me another few years? They can't say.

Garmin is a Company Acting Badly for designing their products in a way that consumers can't replace a battery. Garmin is a Company Acting Badly for pseudo selling customers used goods under a 'repair' label. Garmin is a Company Acting Badly for installing a rechargeable battery that doesn't last more than a few years. Garmin is a Company Acting Badly for charging exorbitant repair fees that exceed a unit's value by two to three times.