Today it just died. I’ve only had it for a few weeks. It has worked flawlessly until now. I unplugged it from the charger, and it won’t come on. The only odd indication was yesterday when I noticed it would alternate between “charging in progress” and “charge complete”. Has anybody else had this problem? How is there customer service?
-Brian
My forerunner 305 just died (the screen is completely fritzed with lines up and down the display). Go to the serivce section on the website, ring them up for an RA# and you should be able to send it in under warranty. I’ve heard fairly good things about their service. I’m now a bit concerned about the reliability though 
Today it just died. I’ve only had it for a few weeks. It has worked flawlessly until now. I unplugged it from the charger, and it won’t come on. The only odd indication was yesterday when I noticed it would alternate between “charging in progress” and “charge complete”. Has anybody else had this problem? How is there customer service?
-Brian
I had this same problem when I first bought my garmin forerunner. I plugged it in overnight to “recharge” it and that seemed to take care of the problem. I haven’t had the same problem since.
Their service was top notch for me. I worked at a store that carried Garmin and we had a number of issues. That being said, we’d sell roughly 30-50 305’s per month and would get 1-2 returned with technical issues. Garmin told us to give them a replacement immediately and Garmin would replace the broken one for us, and never asked any questions.
So I have seen the issues, anything from not finding satellites to broken screens, etc. Garmin always took care of the issues.
Mine did basically the same thing and I couldn’t get it to turn on or anything. I went to the online maunal, did the hard reset (don’t remember how but the procedure is in the literature) and it came back to life. I then downloaded the latest firmware from the Garmin site and it’s worked fine ever since.
I recently had the same problem. The first thing I did was a reset -
**“**If the Forerunner device has locked up during charging, it may need to be reset to power back on. To do this, please hold down the “Mode” and “Reset” buttons at the same time and then press the “Power” button to turn the Forerunner on.
Once you release all three of the buttons the Forerunner should power on correctly. Also, updating the software of the device is recommended. Please visit the product download page for the update. If you find that the key sequence or the software update do not resolve the lockup then you will need to call 1.800.800.1020 or email Garmin technical support for further assistance.”
I still had problems and realized it wasn’t synching with the software on the computer because the Forerunner did not change time automatically with daylight savings because it was earlier this year. I went to the settings and set daylight savings time to manual.
I hope this helps.
Thanks to everybody! It came back to life.
-Brian
This has happened to my FR 305 before. I detached it from the charger and couldn’t turn it on. Putting it back on the charger however and letting it stay there for about 10 minutes brought it back to life. There was also another time that I was convinced that it is dead, but somebody told me that a “hard reset” by holding mode and lap buttons for more than 10 secs together might bring it to life.
Unfortunately welcome to the club. Glad to hear you got it working again.
I’m on my 4th unit of either the 205 or 305. Glad I bought it at RRS. I just take it back each time with no problems. As long as it stays free to replace I guess I’m ok with it. Really begs the quality question though.
Every now and then mine will not turn on.
Solution is to do a soft reset.
Press both the ‘mode’ & ‘reset’ buttons (same time).
then you should be able to turn it on.
also take a look at
http://www.motionbased.com/
particularly the forum, will will find many solutions to any problems and/or things you might wish to know.