Brendan writes:

My wife and I had a trip planned to drive south from Illinois to Louisiana. The trip included a number of side-journeys, so I decided to upgrade my GPS from an older laptop-tied unit to a hand-held. After looking at various devices on the market, I decided on the DeLorme PN-20 GPS; it had similar features to most of the Garmin GPSMap units, but included full navigation and topographic maps of the United States.

Since the trip was in five days, I bought the GPS through Amazon.com, where I could get it in two days without paying an arm and a leg for shipping. I ordered it Monday, it arrived Wednesday, but the box was an older box. It contained Version 6 of the topographic maps, rather than the 7 that was being bundled with the latest retail packages.

I called DeLorme support Thursday morning, in the hopes that there would be some sort of upgrade available. I very quickly got through to a live human in their home office in Yarmouth. I’d no sooner finished describing my purchase before she volunteered that I was eligible for an upgrade to Topo 7! I didn’t even have to ask, she said it would go out Priority Mail that day.

I was quite pleased, but figured I’d better plan most of my trip using Topo 6, since I was leaving Saturday and the new version may not arrive in time. I installed it on my desktop computer, calculated the main route I’d be taking, and created mapfiles for the GPS. Saturday arrived, everything was packed, and we were just about to hit the road when the mail was dropped off. Sure enough, there was the new software! I tossed it in the laptop bag, figuring that I’d install it on the road, and tweak the maps from there.

Unfortunately, one thing I forgot to pack was the special USB cable the PN-20 uses (not a normal one, since the device is watertight). And it turns out, you can’t create PN-20 map files on the software until it’s synced up once with the device, to determine firmware version. D’oh! I’d never synced up 6 or 7 with my laptop before heading out the door, just with my desktop.

I posted to the DeLorme company forums, explaining the situation, and asking if there was any way to spoof Topo 7 into thinking it had already synchronized, since I knew the firmware version for my PN-20. I got a PM back from one of the customer service reps, saying that no, this was probably not possible. So instead, they offered to overnight a replacement USB cable to where I was on the trip!

Sure enough, a FedEx package soon arrived in Louisiana, containing not just a USB cable for the PN-20, but also 3 DVDs of pre-cut maps that were being shipped with the latest GPS units, making drive-planning vastly easier. Needless to say, navigating on the remainder of the trip became much more pleasant.

I felt vaguely guilty, since the problems were due to my forgetfulness. I figured the least I could do was tell others about how they went above and beyond to make sure a stranded customer could still use their product!

-Brendan

That is stellar. Go DeLorme, go DeLorme, it’s your birthday! Way to transform a buyer into a loyal customer. Kudos.

(Photo: Getty)

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