1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
EXERCISE CAUTION
Date of Review: Sep 28, 2008
The Bottom Line: The product is excellent; can't trust their maps; cost of their updates is prohibitive; they gouge you on service. Try another company whose emphasis is customer support.
While the design and functionality of this product is very good the Magellan customer and product support leaves a lot to be desired. I purchased the Maestro 3140 less than 4 months ago and found the maps to be extremely out of date and no new maps available on their web site. While reviewing their site recently I found there was a new maps update.
Here is the clichcer. It costs 79.99 and they will only provide it free of charge for products purchased within the last 30 days. There is no literature in the packaging to instruct anyone they have 30 days to update their software.
The update has been out less than a month. This leaves anyone who purchased their out of date GPS with an additional $118.00 bill to bring it up to date.Yes I did say it was only 79.99, but because it is not available for download on line I am being charged an additional $25 dollars for shipping for a CD. This is quite lucrative for such a small item. They are trying very hard to get the printer and ink marketing in effect here.
It is such a shame they lack business sense to the extent they market out of date products with no sense of duty to ensure the product performs well, but rather look for ways to stick it to the consumer with hidden costs and over priced services. Their business practices over shadow the quality of the product they manufacture and this is very unfortunate but even more unfortunate is that it seems to be a growing practice which Magellan obviously subscribes to.
In closing, I was told by one of their service managers the current maps they're MARKETING could be up to 18 months out of date. If you live in a high growth area maybe you want to try TomTom or Garmond. They don't seem to have map datum issues.
