Garmin nuvi 680 Car GPS Receiver

You could not pay me enough to go through what I have with the Nuvi 680. I mainly bought it to help with work commute. The advertised idea of instant traffic reports was highly appealing to me as the Phoenix commute can be a problem. I paid a lot more for this unit solely because of that capability (offered through MSN direct). I have now had the unit four months and the traffic report has only worked for maybe 10 days. Even when it worked, it was unacceptably slow.

My first problem was out of the box. The entire unit froze when I activated it online. Calls to Garmin resulted in a finding I had a defective unit, so I went back to Best Buy and they replaced it.

The replacement unit then worked for about five days before I went on vacation. I was able to see traffic reports for Phoenix, and I did get movie times, gas and weather. I was unhappy, however, because it was taking 15 – 20 minutes to download this information each morning, so I was already committed, traffic wise, and so it was of no help.

I was then on vacation for three weeks. When I returned, I found it would no longer connect to MSN Direct. No data downloaded. It took three calls to MSN Direct and two to Garmin to figure out that the antenna was defective, so I had to wait for a replacement (an annoyance is that you have to send in the bad piece first and then they send you a replacement). It still didn't work! More calls revealed that because I had signed up (and paid money to) MSN, they had to cancel my account and reactivate with the new antenna's activation code.

It worked for three days. I was traveling and then tried it a few days later. It has now stopped working again! Again, I find myself without data.

I am trying to decide whether to demand a refund, toss it in the trash it or try again to get them to help me fix it.

I estimate I have made ten calls to MSN Direct and five to Garmin. I have spent dozens of hours just trying to get traffic data – the data I bought the unit for. This unit is a disaster if you are buying it to see traffic. Ironically, the rest of it is nice and workable and does what it promises. But I would buy a lesser unit for half the price if all you want is navigation.