Garmin Nederland Reviews 

Deleted the wrong account gone in 1 second.

I accidentally deleted 26 years or more of garmin sport and fitness data.

They do not have a grace period for user generated account deletion. They do if they disable your accout. It's 30 days.

I logged onto my garmin account in one Google Tab, in another I saw I could delete an account that I had accidentally set up. So I logged onto that account - clicked on the user icon to ensure it was that account - then clicked delete. It did say it was irreversable.

Well it deleted the account logged on in the other tab. 26 years of running, rowing and health metrics gone in an instant.

Within minutes I got through to user support they couldsnt stop it.

Garmin please set up a grace period to cover for this type of mistake!

THIS IS ABOUT GARMIN SWITZERLAND.
GARMIN SWITZERLAND IS THE COMPANY THAT HAS ZERO QUALITY CUSTOMER SUPPORT.
WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE EVER. THEY MUST A BILLION CHF/EUR/US COMPANY BUT SO S*T.

I WANTED TO PURCHASE MULTIPLE WATCHES FOR FRIENDS AND FAMILY.

IF THEIR WATCHES ARE AS BAD AS THEIR PEOPLE IT'S GOING TO BE HELL.

Received a Vivomove Trend which arrived with a visible dust speck under the glass in the middle of the dial. I raised it immediately with customer service and they said they would replace it with a re-certified version. When I refused that offer they said they can offer you an upgrade to a newer model (which will be a brand-new device) with up to 20% off the recommended retail price (RRP) but as it was outside the 30 day return window I couldn’t have a refund. When I challenged it confirming it was only 5 days since the watch was purchased they said I was confused and would be receiving a brand new watch but to send my existing watch without the charging cable which implies the new one I was receiving wasn’t going to have one so I wouldn’t be able to confirm whether it was brand new or recertified watch. Given the issue is cosmetic I have decided to keep my original watch as I know the fault on this but this is very poor customer service and I won’t be buying any more Garmin products.

Have no issue with their products previously received, however this review is based on their poor customer service.

Item shows as in stock and dispatch in 2-3 working days. Ordered 6 days ago and still not dispatched. When contacted I first get told it’s being investigated internally and will be dispatched asap.
Then get told two days later it will be dispatched in the next couple of days.
No reason given for the delay.
Will be cancelling my order due to shoddy customer service.

On April 19th, I ordered a Garmin watch costing over $800 that was supposedly delivered about a week later. I never received the package, so I opened a support ticket with Garmin on April 24th.

From that point forward, the customer service experience was extremely disappointing. Garmin would only respond after I followed up multiple times, and communication often took several emails or phone calls just to receive a basic update. I called Garmin support three separate times and was repeatedly told the investigation was still ongoing, but I was rarely provided proactive updates unless I personally reached out first. The last guy I talked to literally told me he gets these calls often, wishes he could help more, and "he would be mad to if this was happening to him"... Wow, so helpful!

After more than three weeks, Garmin finally informed me that UPS had apparently attempted to contact me during the investigation. Garmin never communicated this to me beforehand, and like many people today dealing with constant spam calls, I do not answer random unknown numbers.

Without meaningful communication throughout the process, Garmin ultimately denied reimbursement for the watch that I never received.

What makes this experience even more frustrating is that after waiting over two weeks without a resolution, I went out and purchased another Garmin watch from a store because I still needed one. I honestly was not very impressed with the product itself, and after this customer service experience, I am thankful I am still within the return window because I will be returning it.

For a company selling premium products at premium prices, I expected significantly better customer support, communication, and accountability. Based on this experience, I will be switching to COROS moving forward- And I would suggest you do the same!

Totally explains why Garmin is rated 1.8 stars on Consumer Affairs website & 1.5 stars on Trust Pilot. Horrible experience, horrible product, horrible customer service. STAY AWAY!

Beware before buying an Etrex 32. Mine works ok when I walk briskly (say 3mph), but when I walk slowly and stop regularly to take photographs, as I like to do, it comes up with ridiculously inaccurate figures (12 miles for a walk of no more than 4 miles, most of the time is recorded as stopped time, average moving speed given as over 30 mph!!!). I reported this to Garmin. They sent a replacement but that was exactly the same, so there is clearly a fault on this model. I was also unhappy that Garmin wouldn't refund because I waited more than 30 days to request this. Given the unacceptably poor quality of their product I think they could have been more flexible.

I bought a Tread Overland XL for 1500 euro. It made 3 years and failed, freezing screen. No warranty offered, no repair available.
Their offer was 25% discount on a new unit!
Would I buy another Garmin? NEVER
Enshitification at it's best.
They are on the road to failure

I am to my detriment a loyal Garmin customer, and to be fair they were in the past quite helpful, however, in recent years they will do anything other than either admit there is a fault or help you as a customer out, I purchased a pair of Power Pedals at a cost of £990 they failed to calibrate, Garmin replaced them within the warranty period, but the second pair also failed to calibrate, but after the warranty period, they were only used for 5K miles, I reached out to Garmin for help, their solution is "trade in trade up", where I send in my faulty £990 Pedals and receive a 30% discount on a new pair, negating the fact that the pedal bodies I'll be returning are worth more than the discount, this fact seemed to be lost on Customer Service, that was the end of the conversation, no more help was forthcoming.

I purchased a Garmin epix Gen 2 in January 2022 for close to €1,000. After approximately four years of normal daily use — no drops, no physical damage, used as intended — the OLED display developed severe and permanent burn-in: dark patches, ghosting of interface elements, and persistent image retention that makes essential information (time, health metrics, navigation menus) difficult to read under normal conditions.
I contacted Garmin Iberia's after-sales service and was told the device is out of its legal warranty period. Their solution: pay €353.06 upfront as a blanket authorisation for either repair or replacement — with no prior diagnosis, no itemised quote, no right to approve the specific outcome before payment, and no guarantee that the unit would not simply be swapped for a refurbished device.
I formally escalated the complaint through CICAP, the Portuguese Consumer Arbitration Tribunal. Throughout the mediation process, Garmin's position was consistent: the device is out of warranty, the defect is not proven to be of manufacturing origin, and €353.06 is the applicable fee. At no point did the company offer a goodwill gesture, a partial contribution, or any acknowledgment that a premium device failing in this way within four years falls short of reasonable consumer expectations.
A few things worth knowing before purchasing:
First, OLED/AMOLED burn-in is a well-documented issue across the epix Gen 2 and Fenix 7 lines. A search of Garmin's own community forums returns numerous reports of identical symptoms on devices of similar age. Garmin's internal response to the mediation stated that their quality data does not support a manufacturing defect — but this assessment is made remotely, without physical inspection, and based on a photograph.
Second, Garmin's argument that a defect occurring after four years cannot be of manufacturing origin is technically and logically flawed. OLED burn-in by definition develops progressively from latent material weaknesses present at the time of manufacture. The timing of visible manifestation does not determine the origin of the defect.
Third, the repair model Garmin offers outside the warranty period effectively means that maintaining basic screen functionality on a premium device costs €353 every few years. For a product sold at this price point with this positioning, that is not an acceptable support structure.
I am not writing this out of frustration. I am writing it because the information I was missing when I bought this watch — about the OLED degradation risk, about Garmin's out-of-warranty repair costs, and about the company's approach to premium product longevity — would have been directly relevant to my purchasing decision. It may be relevant to yours.
Device: Garmin epix Gen 2
Purchased: January 2022 | Issue reported: February 2026
Repair quote: €353.06 | Outcome: unresolved

I have purchased the Garmin Fenix 5, 6X, 7X, and the Enduro 3. I have had an issue with my 6X and a heart rate strap and Garmin was quick to either replace, or work through the repair. They even have a program where they will send you a replacement immediately before they receive your device so that you don’t miss training analytics.

Their prices are high, but their products and services are solid.

Garmin UK does not have a facilty to be able to rate their watches so I will use this one.
Garmin watches are only warranted for a max of 2 years so when you are spending £3-400 on a Garmin watch please be aware that they may only last this long.
Whilst they dont intend that they decline in capability as time passes, they are aware that this happens at times.

I purchased a Garmin Forerunner Music smartwatch in October 2025. The device worked normally for a few months, but then started having recurring Bluetooth connection issues, including not being detected or constantly disconnecting.

I performed all recommended troubleshooting steps, including factory reset, clearing Bluetooth data, and re-pairing, without any permanent solution.

The device was sent to an authorized service center and returned apparently working. However, only a few days later, the same issue occurred again.

This clearly indicates a recurring defect that was not properly resolved.

I am very disappointed with the product reliability and the lack of a definitive solution. I am requesting a replacement or proper resolution.

I’ve had the FR 645 and 265.
I live with insomnia, so I sleep very little.
But the watches have always said that I fall asleep quickly and stay asleep most of the night.
If they can’t even track that you’re awake - why should you trust anything they say about REM or deep sleep?
I’ve literally been up at night to take a shit while asleep apparently. Or reading that the library in daytime.

The UX is horrible. I dread every single time i need to find a setting. I make my own HR zones and i have to Google where they are each time to find it.

The web platform is so ugly that i hate to use it. And it could easily be fixed. They just dont.

And the Garmin Scale.. Most expensive scale ive had. At the same time among the worst too. Just waking it up is a hassle.

Oh, and they have subscriptions now too. So expensive hardware, and locked out of features <3

I paid around 400€ for a Garmin dog collar, expecting it to work for years. Instead, after only about two years, the product became effectively unusable because the Garmin Canine app is no longer available to download.

That is completely unacceptable for a product at this price point. When a device depends on an app to function, removing that app without providing a proper replacement or long-term support makes the hardware worthless.

Vivosmart 5 is one of the worst Fitbit/smartwatches I've used (x2).

I bought a Vivosmart 5 because my wife has a Garmin watch and says it's great. I get my smart5 and it works great for 1 day. Then it constantly resets itself, trying to connect to the Wi-Fi. I go through all the troubleshooting, and it just won't work. The battery dies in like 6 hours because it's trying to connect to WIFI the whole time.

So I contacted support, and they offered to swap out the watch for me and gave me 2 options. I can send my old one, and then they'll send me a new one free. Or pay $50 more than I originally did to get them to send one out immediately and send me a shipping UPC so I can send my original back. They said they would reimburse me as soon as my original one got to them. I'm impulsive, so I opted to get paid and get one right away.

New vivosmart5 showed up, and right out of the box, it feels like it was refurbished. The first day of the first smart5, it auto-detected when I woke up. This one, I have to manually tell it when I wake up by tapping the screen. It's not a big deal. But after about a month of that, the touchscreen stopped working. It seems when plugging it in to recharge, toggling something, and every odd time, the touch screen stopped working. Resetting only worked 1 out of 10 times. Now, about 2 weeks later, the thing keeps shutting off. When I plug it in, it says it's fully charged. touch screen doesn't work, and it's been like 6 weeks, and Garmin still hasn't reimbursed me for the original I mailed back...

At this point, both of them were buggy and unusable. And that they still haven't paid me back for the first one, I'm chalking it up to a loss of over $500.

After less than three years of using my Garmin Fénix 7X Sapphire Solar, the Back/Lap button stopped working. The issue is caused by a tiny component – a simple micro‑switch worth only a few cents. On a premium device costing over €800 / $800, I expected this to be repairable.
Instead, Garmin informed me that they do not perform any repairs at all, do not sell spare parts, and that the only option is to replace the entire watch with a Fenix 8 for an additional 20,625 CZK (~€830). In other words: a minor fault on a cheap component = buy a whole new watch.
Garmin claims the reason repairs are impossible is to “maintain water resistance.” That explanation does not hold up. Local watchmakers routinely perform pressure tests, and many independent technicians have successfully replaced the faulty microswitch on these watches. So the repair is technically possible — Garmin simply chooses not to offer it.
What makes this worse is that many other Fénix and Epix users have reported similar button failures. This appears to be a recurring weakness, yet Garmin’s response is always the same: no repair, no parts, buy a new watch.
For a company that advertises “premium durability” and “built to last,” this policy is extremely disappointing. A high‑end sports watch should not become disposable after a few years because the manufacturer refuses to support basic repairs.
After this experience, I will not purchase another Garmin product again. A brand that sells expensive devices but treats them as throwaway items once the warranty expires is not a brand I can trust anymore.
Miroslav V.

Garmin (Europe) Ltd – 1 star

Bought a refurbished Vivoactive 3 from Garmin in Dec 2022. Worked fine for over 3 years until a Garmin-prompted sync/firmware update on 29 Jan 2026 instantly killed the touchscreen. No damage, no misuse.

Garmin admitted the fault happened after their update but refused any statutory remedy under the Consumer Rights Act. Repeatedly offered only a paid trade-up. Ignored my detailed CRA arguments, Letter Before Action, and final notice.

Forced to file small claim via MCOL. Company policy seems to be deny everything and hope people give up.

Avoid Garmin if you value statutory consumer rights. Poor after-sales support and zero respect for the law.

Bought my 12 year old daughter the VivoFit3 (recommend age 4+) at Christmas so she could use the Garmin Junior App. After months of happily using the app, tonight my daughter was logged out and we were forced to pay a £1 parent authorisation fee so she could log in … only to then do it and she not be allowed to log in as a parent controlled account! Absolutely ridiculous that the app was made for kids to use, parents are forced to pay a fee and then the kids can’t use the app anyway!

try to get access to their API - you are going to get super mad with the requests policy

What they say and what they do are so far apart its not funny.
Never trust a word they say. They are liars and are scammers.
I would never buy a garmin again