We had a good run, and I knew I was on borrowed time with this baby. It’s the only running watch I’ve ever owned, and it lasted me 6 years. It saw over 10,000 miles, 32 of the 38 marathons I’ve run, and all of the shorter distance races I’ve run since I got it. It’s run Boston with me every single time I’ve run it. It’s been all over the place – all the way from PA to Alaska! It’s run with me on…

So my Garmin Forefunner 310XT was dead for a while -- it didn't power up. I charged it overnight, attempted soft and hard resets, pleaded -- and all for nothing, it has given up the ghost. It was either to run without a GPS watch (this is what I've been doing for few months now), buy another (meh, cheap ones are not that exciting and the expensive ones are, well, expensive) or repair this one. I had some difficulty finding the procedure for replacing an out-of-warranty watch in Europe, so I'll put it out here for anybody searching.

1) If not yet done, go and register on Garmin's site. Once there, register your watch

2) Call up the Gamin support. They will try to recover your watch by a reset, if this still doesn't work, you will be offered an out of warranty repair. What they do is, they send you a new watch in place of your old, non-working one. The benefit is -- it's still cheaper then buying a new watch, plus in my case I still have a much better watch than I would be able to buy for that price. The price of the repair is £74.40. The cheapest new GPS watch (Garmin 10) is still a penny under £80, except -- look at it! No grace of the FR310XT. Anyway, call them up on the following number

3) You will be assigned a RMA number. You have to put it on the package when you return your (faulty) unit, and you can also use it to track the repairs / replacement. Allow up to 3 days for Garmin to receive the package (if sent within UK) and 10 to 15 days for them to send you a replacement. At least that's the official number of days they give you, I got my already on the way within 3 days. The replacement unit has 90 days warranty. Which is fascinating since it is basically a new unit, so why not 2 years? Well anyway.

UPDATE: Yeah just received a new unit in the post today. The whole ordeal took less than a week! My new watch is now happily charging :)

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