What is the best way to report a bug?

The best way is to contact Garmin Support. They will analyze your input, identify if this is a bug or not, whether it is known or not and take the necessary actions (help you understand, resolve or create a ticket).

In rate occasions will a post in these forums lead to some action by engineering. This happens when a Garmin moderator intervenes in the discussion and discloses whether further investigation is taken on.

The more customers end up added to the same ticket, the higher chances the ticket will be prioritized in the engineering queue, whether serendipitously  through Garmin support, or pro-actively through select forum posts.

Thank you, but how does one contact Garmin Support? I looked at the Garmin website, and the only remotely relevant thing I can find is a form to make a suggestion for improving a product, which is sent to the "innovation experts". This doesn't sound like a good place to report a bug.

1148788 said:

how does one contact Garmin Support?

epix (Gen 2) | Garmin Customer Support, then at the bottom of the page, chat, call, or email.

Interesting, thank you! On the Australian version of the site, the EMAIL option is missing.

And today when I visit the link posted by seilogramp above, I don't see any options for contacting Garmin!

Going to the Australian support site - https://support.garmin.com/en-AU/?contactOverride=true&productID=760778&tab=topics

Thanks for taking the time to reply. With more exploring I have seen a variety of behavior on both the Australian and US sites. Sometimes I don't see any additional instructions for how to contact Garmin, sometimes only CHAT and CALL are shown, with the EMAIL option missing. Anyway, during one attempt when EMAIL was visible, I managed to send a bug report.

You could also send an email directly to [email protected]. I've used that address in the past and gotten support from them.

1148788 said:

I have seen a variety of behavior

Options come and go based on operating hours and when each form of support is available. It is normal behavior.

Hi Chris,

Just following up on this. I haven't had any luck interacting with Garmin to report the "race an activity" bug.

Here is the confirmation from Garmin of my original bug report:

Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2022 15:27:36 -0600
From: Garmin <[email protected]>
Subject: Confirmation of email submission
Reply-To: Garmin <[email protected]>
Confirmation of email submission
_______________________________________________________________________

Subject: Race an Activity has long-standing bugs affecting multiple
users for years


Problem Description Race an Activity has bugs (on Epix-2, Fenix-5 & 6,
and Instinct, at least) that have been reported on the Garmin user
forums for as long as 5 years without resolution, e.g., see the
representative sample below:
forums.garmin.com/.../epix-
2/308935/issue---race-an-activity
forums.garmin.com/.../fenix
-6-series/274926/race-an-activity-not-displaying-correctly---19-2
forums.garmin.com/.../fenix
-5-series/239355/how-to-race-an-activity-hint-don-t-race-an-activity
forums.garmin.com/.../fenix
-6-series/271474/old-bug-time-ahead-behind-when-racing-an-activity-and-
solution
forums.garmin.com/.../fenix
-5-series/192082/race-an-activity
forums.garmin.com/.../insti
nct/165604/race-past-activity-not-working The main issue is that the
"time ahead/behind" field can show completely nonsense values
throughout the race, e.g., over an hour behind when the activity is
only 45 minutes in length. At the completion of the run, the watch
reports the correct values. The behaviour seems to be semi-random,
e.g., I have done several run racing against the following activity:
[redacted] and the first few
of them worked fine, but then it started to show values of time
ahead/behind of over an hour at the beginning of the run. Since this
behaviour started, I have seen it every time when racing against this
particular activity, and with the same initial offset. Another bug with
Race an Activity is that the calculation for the estimated time to
completion is very poor, e.g., on one 45 minute run that I do, the
estimated time to completion jumps up and down by a minute even when I
am only 50 metres from the finish. There is clearly something very
wrong with the code that does this calculation.

A couple of days later I received an email from Garmin to participate in a survey to rate their feedback (which was zero, apart from the email above):

Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2022 09:30:43 -0600
From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: Rate your Garmin Support Interaction

Please help us by rating your recent interaction with our Product
Support Team.
Your participation is completely voluntary. Your feedback will be
treated confidentially and only used to improve our Product Support.
Rate My Interaction
Sincerely,
Garmin's Product Support Team

I tried email a few days later:

Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2022 16:17:55 +1100
To: Garmin <[email protected]>

But this bounced with:

Your message couldn't be delivered because there is a partner connector
configured that matched the message's recipient domain. The connector
had either the RestrictDomainsToIPAddresses or
RestrictDomainsToCertificate set.

I also tried another email address:

Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2022 16:24:01 +1100
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Rate your Garmin Support Interaction

but received no reply.

This is really a pretty poor situation. The bug I am trying to report has been a major issue across the FENIX line (and EPIX 2) for many many years. "Race an activity" is a very useful feature that doesn't work correctly. The bug has been repeatedly reported by users on the forums for years, but nothing happens.

Is there any way forward? I am just trying to help Garmin improve its firmware, and have put a fair bit of effort into this, and have made no progress.