TomTom Sends Mangled Warranty Replacement, Plenty Of Excuses

After about six months of use and while it was still under warranty, the TomTom iPhone Car Kit Mark purchased failed. The onboard GPS booster and Bluetooth that are the entire point of the device stopped working. Some highlights of Mark’s struggle with the company: TomTom initially wouldn’t replace it, claiming that the warranty was void since they no longer make the product. Then they sent Mark what was clearly another customer’s return–a scratched-up unit without power cords. They claimed that they couldn’t send a power cord because Apple makes the cable. Because Apple manufactures black car-to-mini-USB cables.

Mark writes:

In January of this year I bought the TomTom Car Kit from Amazon (direct not through a 3rd party) and it was wonderful.

Everything was happy until about 3 months ago when the bluetooth and onboard GPS in the car kit failed, leaving me with an expensive phone mount to hold my phone on my windshield. I started calling TomTom customer support and was run in circles, I did all the troubleshooting and spent HOURS on the phone only to be told what i already knew, the unit failed.

The rep I was talking to then told me that they were “no longer making the car kit so they will not honor the warranty and send me a replacement.” I told him this is unacceptable and he needed to find an alternate solution. He said he would call me back, he never did. Day later I called them back and had to go through the whole process again which i did and was told they would email me when they had more information.

I never got an email and called back 2 days later to be told that they needed my serial number to move forward, i gave it to them. I called back the next day for status and they said they were waiting on my serial number, i gave it to them again. This “needing serial number” thing went on for 5 days and I called the corporate office in Mass and finally got someone to record the serial number properly only to be told they didn’t have any replacements and i would have to wait.

Finally 2 weeks ago (after waiting about a month) they told me they were in stock and they needed my serial number to process my RMA *facepalm*. SO yet again I gave them my serial number and they sent me a return label which i promptly used to package and ship my defective car kit to them, exactly as they instructed with all of the cables and everything.

Today I get my replacement car kit and it looks like i got someone else’s RMA drop shipped to my house. NOT ONLY IS IT MISSING THE POWER CABLES, it is scratched, and doesn’t include the sticker that is needed to add the height required to use the car kit with an iphone 4 (the iphone 4s are slimmer and the car kit was designed for the iphone 3G so they made a sticker to make up for the depth so it will work properly).

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I spent over an hour on the phone with TomTom support this morning where i was told:

“I am not allowed to ship you out a power cable or the depth sticker there is nothing i can do to help you.”

I am stuck in customer service HELL and need to leverage the power of public shame to get TomTom to honor their warranty and make things right. My demands are simple and in my opinion very reasonable. They need to simply send me a complete replacement with all cables and everything required to make it work properly or to give me a full refund.

We don’t have any special contacts for TomTom, and they were highly ranked for customer service awesomeness way back in 2009. It sounds like in this case, they’re simply refusing to replace an item from an abandoned product line, and hope Mark goes away until his warranty runs out.

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