Can I use the SOS to request roadside assistance?

skyeye said:

Their duty is only inform emergency contacts. That is what we pay for in the basic charges for an account.

However one can buy an additional insurance and then IERCC will do more and call also SAR or other means of help. This is then all covered by this extra insurance fee.

skyeye said:

At this time, their duty is completed and the task is now with the emergency contact.

Absolutely not. You are stating so many wrong facts.

At this time in the dialogue, I’m not sure how to respond. You seem oblivious and ignorant on how the whole inReach SOS system works. That cannot be.

Are you confusing “emergency contact”, a personal contact the user has entered in his/hers Garmin account – with “emergency responders/services”, that covers the whole range of potential resources and agencies IERCC will use to solve the problem?

Video, 49 minutes: inReach Webinar: Everything You Need to Know About SOS

all nice, until you get emergency call in real life

then you wake up

advertising is nice thing, reality is something different

They will definitely try to get some human being on line, from that point this contact will take over.

I am not ignorant, I just report real life to you from own experience. After 3 real em calls from our devices, we know the limitation of the system.

Not even the prearranged emergency test calls work every time as expected. I had some recent experience, when I was able to call the deposited emergency contact with my phone, IERCC was not able to call them. The reason was investigated and found and corrections in system made, but still giving me strange feeling.

You are questioning the veracity and basic functionality of the most important part of Garmin inReach, the SOS response system.

it is more my management after certain experience

 • Emergency contacts are totally unnecessary for a rescue/response to be provided.

they are the part which will be contacted by IERCC first and when someone responses there it is all done.  If no success, the administrator of the account might be contacted (as we experience)

really, I have some experience in this, advertising material and big stories on social media are for advertising too, I prefer to relay on real facts, real life .

And yes, I have to take the system as it is and you should see the bashing I got from my management when IERCC was not able to call the emergency contacts at all.

I had to defend the system then very much as 'we see now the limitation of it' was thrown at me for many days.

So I have to take what it is and be carefull telling someone it is supper high safety equipment.

I am also not sure what exactly did change when Garmin took over GEOS. Earlier, this was open to every customer, today only few other networks seem to be served by IERCC, I am not sure what else was done there, my last contact with them gave me feeling that someone is saving costs on personnel or training.

So you are basically saying that Garmin's statements that it will arrange for roadside assistance via SOS are just marketing/advertising hype that should not taken seriously?  That's a serious claim, and one that doesn't make much sense to me.  Imagine the public relations/reputational harm when the first couple of Garmin customers left stranded with their inreach devices gets out.  As well as any who might file a lawsuit for for not providing a service they've made public statements about providing.  Those folks aren't likely to be quiet about it (the "social media" you mention, etc.).  So Garmin takes a PR/reputational hit as well as incurs legal risk, and for what purpose?  To save a few minutes on an SOS response call?

The terms of service doc Edvard posted does clearly say that "[u]pon contacting the emergency responder(s) and/or, as appropriate, the applicable embassy, and informing them of all relevant facts, Garmin is released from all further responsibility and/or obligation to take any further action whatsoever."  But Garmin has other public-facing statements and responses from customer service that go well beyond "contacting emergency responders" etc., some of which have been posted in this thread.  Seems like Garmin is wanting to have its cake and eat it too by having a narrow duty laid out in its terms of service, but getting the benefit of people buying/using this device at least in part to have some roadside assurance peace of mind in places with no or spotty cell coverage.

I haven't been able to find any people posting about their personal experiences using inReach for "roadside assistance" situations--positive or negative.  But assuming that data provided by Garmin in the blog post I linked to earlier is accurate, 12% of 10k calls = 1200 or so "driving" calls that Garmin describes as "involv[ing] people simply needing help while on the road and outside of cellphone service."  Presumably if Garmin/SOS had mishandled those calls, refused to contact "roadside assistance," etc., we would have heard about some of those situations from frustrated customers.  But who knows...maybe in all those cases Garmin/SOS just contacted "emergency contacts" and those folks handled the details of getting roadside assistance to the stranded customer?

all based on advertizing

go for real life, I know from experience how all works, not from reading

I am also not looking for any experience of other people, enough to to  know where are limits

It is not all abt not wanting to do something, it has also to do with legal matters in different countries and simply availability of resources

The basic task is simply communicate the emergency call to someone so this one can take over. This is also how it goes in practice. Try to call the emergency contacts, if not possible try to call anybody who might be somehow connected with the emergency call.

This can be embassy in some cases, but also admin of the account etc. In one case, when emergency contacts failed as well as relevant embassy, our supper admin (original dealer) was contacted and he then started to communicate with the device and informing other people of the org. Thereafter one of the emergency contacts was reached by email, details were passed to the emergency contact and so the task was accomplished. This just as one example.

You have also to think about simple av of some rescue resources. It is easy to say we have a big list of contacts. But whom to call when the device is sending emergency signal from eastern Mali? Boco Haram?

Using Mali as an example skyeye? Come on. 

You are obviously in an NGO/UN/international-type environment,

operating inReach devices in special locations and have use cases/profile setups that are not applicable to the majority of inReach users. 

skyeye said:

I know from experience how all works, not from reading

If the contact path on your three SOS activations to IERCC/GEOS was only towards the emergency contacts listed in the user profile and not primarily with agencies that could help the user – that conduct would be outside Garmin inReach SOPs and Terms of service.

I have never heard of such a case before, not in the media or personally.

It does not reflect the reality on hundreds of annual SOS-responses by IERCC.

I've had good results with direct contact to Garmin inReach support staff. Considering your unique problems, I believe you would benefit more from contacting them with the issues you have, than complaining on an open user forum that has few Garmin representatives.

Using Mali as an example skyeye? Come on.

what is wrong with it? Either someone advertises worldwide service or not. Or what is a good example?

You can say we work worldwide, but the oh yes this place not, this one also not and this one we can not etc, then this would need clarification.

Or simply classify in good regions and bad regions or what? Or our service is worldwide except for Africa, Asia, South America...?

And what is majority of users? How is this defined? Only users hiking in the backyard are the friendly users?

And no, such big user pools behave in function not differently from other users too.

There are only the two emergency contacts for us as for everybody else. Not less, not more. They will be attempted to contact as first. And yes, there will be confirmation message sent to the ir device. One can try to answer the message, should the full communication with one of the em contacts be successful, this one will now take care of the rest. Or put it the other way round: what should IERCC do when it receives an 'red button' call? The only info they will have is to text to the device and immediately call the predefined emergency contacts. This is why the emergency contacts has to be chosen  with care and not just some dummy.

And if you want see the very basic procedure, just make a test emergency call. You can book it at any time and then you will see what basic steps are carried out after em call was received. I am trying to do exercise with our users during a training course etc.

In the professional accounts, there is an additional feature, where simple information about activation of emerg call by one of the devices in the fleet will be passed to some predefined users of the account. This can be also seen on the screen of the operator and he might contact this in addition. This I experienced in one situation, where IERCC was not able to contact anybody at all. But this is abt all advantage of professional account.

I have never heard of such a case before, not in the media or personally.

well so now hear it  ;-)

I just want to explain you that what you are made to think has also other side, which you do not see or do not want see, because all this beautiful advertising and reality might be not as perfect as you want believe. It is not that I want tell you all is wrong and not reliable, but all has limitations which are in general not part of advertising.

Similar with report abt hundreds of successful sos operations. And where are the less successful operations? They exist definitely, but you will never read abt them.

And yes, we big users, have very frequent correspondence with enterprise support, don't worry, there lot of things are solved, but lot not. I just recently met some big users, much bigger then my org. And sure, we share our experience and share it with Garmin too.

skyeye said:

what is wrong with it? Either someone advertises worldwide service or not. Or what is a good example?

From what I understand, Garmin promotes where Iridium has messaging capabilities, not where or what local resources are available for assistance.

Emergency response available for helping out will naturally vary with country, location and funding.

skyeye said:

what should IERCC do when it receives an 'red button' call? The only info they will have is to text to the device and immediately call the predefined emergency contacts.

3.2. SOS Monitoring. Upon receipt of an SOS message, IERCC personnel will:

(i) attempt to contact, if available, the primary and/or secondary contacts identified by you in your registration data to attempt to validate the SOS message,

(ii) identify appropriate emergency responder(s) according to available location coordinates;

(iii) attempt to contact the appropriate emergency responder(s) and inform them of the relevant facts in the IERCC's possession (including your registration data information and/or location coordinates);

(iv) if you are traveling outside of your home territory, and it is consistent with IERCC procedures, attempt to contact the embassy of your government consistent with your registration data, either in the location identified by your location coordinates or your government's Washington, D.C. based embassy, and provide embassy staff with relevant facts in the IERCC's possession; and,

(v) provide updates of location coordinates as available to the identified emergency responder(s).

[Note: Messaging allows you to provide additional details to the Garmin IERCC to help aid in the response. Messaging is not required for the Garmin IERCC to move forward with initiating a response.]

skyeye said:

because all this beautiful advertising and reality might be not as perfect as you want believe

You have your sources, I have mine. I trust mine.

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/blog/general/top-questions-triggering-an-sos-on-an-inreach-device/

„You may trigger an SOS for anyone — yourself, another individual in your party, a third-party individual or an emergency situation like a wildfire or vehicle breakdown“