As I may have mentioned in one of the entries about our weekend in Amsterdam, the Quest, dear old Doris, had a complete and utter failure. It wasn't my weekend for gadgets!
Firstly, I found that after all the hassle I'd had on the Isle of Man when Vodafone hadn't done as instructed and taken the international bar off my phone, and the subsequent emails and phone calls that supposedly had it sorted; it was Novodafone weekend again. Apparently, some dickhead at Vodafone had put the bar back on. Who said to do it will never be known. Life's like that!
Secondly, Doris went tits-up and couldn't find any of the satellites that are in geo-stationery orbit around the globe to help travellers navigate their way on land, sea and air! As we had planned a quick and dirty autobahn route to Amsterdam it wasn't too much of a problem.
Doris dithering "acquiring satellites" for 200 plus miles was getting to me. Luckily again, I had printed out a route from Via Michelin and also the "how to find the hotel" instructions off the Hilton website. So Claire was able to talk us through the final approaches.
Not so lucky was the scenic route back, island hopping across Zeeland had to be shelved as the route was securely locked in Doris' memory, but she had no idea where we were. I gave her a try and she failed again, so in the end she was confined to the top box in disgrace.
I mentioned earlier about the route up was a little problematic as I took the Rotterdam/Den Haag route upwards. Good job. As going south when we arrived at Utrecht, the motorway south to Gorinchem and eventually Breda was closed. The kind Cloggies eventually gave us a route to follow that took us on two side of a long triangle via 's-Hertogenbosch! So instead of a 74 mile motorway jaunt we had a 99 mile journey!
The weather was much hotter than the trip up and even the days we had spent in the city. Even the wind coming through the top vent on my helmet was hot, even at 80mph.
I digress. A third gadget, and the cheapest, was the mirror I bought. It is designed to go on top of car mirrors to give a wider angle than the OEM ones. I mounted one on the left hand hand guard so I had a bit more view of what was happening behind me when I needed to pull out to overtake. It proved useful and well worth the massive expense! All £3.95 of it!
The upshot of all this was more phone calls to get roaming back in my phone, how will I know?
As for Doris; her days are numbered. After exchanging several emails with Garmin, doing the data reset they suggested (and leaving it in my back garden for 7 hours still unable to find a satellite but thinking she is back at Garmin HQ in the USA!!!) they then said I needed to send it back for their engineers to look at. As with most things, there's a set repair fee and Garmin UK have that set at £86.40. Don't ask how they work that out!
For that, I can have mine fixed or the first suggestion was that they would simply exchange it for a new one. As the emails went on into a second day, they back tracked a bit on that and I might get my own back suitably repaired or a new one. Either way there's a new 12 month warranty.
It's all packed up and ready to go recorded delivery tomorrow. Let's see how the further adventures of the "Doris' Quest" go.
No comments:
Post a Comment