Did you know that if you buy your Garmin in one country or region, they won't honor the warranty in other countries or regions?

Maybe I missed that, but why did you buy watch in the US instead of your home country? Lower price? And how did you pick it up if you don't have address in the US? You could and should order the watch to your home in Columbia as gift to yourself and you will not have problem you have now.

If you are traveling all the time, at least you could buy in the country you are traveling often. Then you could repair/replace watch when you are there. If you are traveling to the US in the near future, that's your best option.

I had the exact same experience, buying a watch from amazon.de, then a minor problem (backlight stopped working) 11 months after the purchase (13 months of warranty remaining). I reached out to Garmin Greece support and told that they cannot do anything about it because "not a local purchase". I ended up talking with probably the same Laurie that you did, which basically offered the same solution: replace it through the US, pay a lot just so the watch can go from Greece to USA, then (a new watch) from USA to Greece (!). 

By the way I don't appreciate all the criticism in some of the comments that followed. Yes, I did buy from "another country" because it was actually a good discount at the time. It was not a surprise to get a solid treatment from Amazon [*]. On the other hand, Garmin telling me "we're so sorry for taking your money and your watch failing, please pay us 100-200$ if you want it fixed" is a disgrace for a global company. Evidently the process is broken and they could work with their official support channels to fix it, no reason that they can replace through US if I pay 200$ in shipping but they can't do the same via a couple of emails back and forth. They just DON'T want to get the process fixed. 

[*] Full refund, no questions asked, apologies that the item is no longer in stock

On a closer look at their warranty page it does mention that if you seek warranty service outside of the original country of purchase, ... Garmin may, in its sole discretion and subject to applicable laws, repair your product with comparable parts or replace your product with a comparable Garmin product (new or a Garmin Recertified replacement), or require you to ship your product to a Garmin Authorized Service facility in the country of original purchase or to a Garmin Authorized service facility in another country that can service your product, in which case you will be responsible for complying with all applicable import and export laws and regulations and for paying all custom duties, V.A.T., shipping fees and other associated taxes and charges. In some cases, Garmin and its dealers may be unable to service your product in a country outside of the original country of purchase or return a repaired or replaced product to you in that country due to applicable standards, laws or regulations in that country.

Honestly this literally reeks of "we don't want to be bothered with this edge case, so we'll make it hard for you". In my case neither the local support not Garmin support even bothered to consider options. The former said "we don't care at all", the latter said "I don't care at all what the problem is and whether it can be repaired locally, just ship the product, and by the way not to Germany but USA, where it's most expensive for you" [they were both overly polite, but that was the key message]. They didn't even look if a replacement can be made available. Honestly a huge disappointment

mperedim said:

Garmin telling me "we're so sorry for taking your money and your watch failing, please pay us 100-200$ if you want it fixed"

Come on, this is not what Garmin is telling to Michael. Fixing the device is covered by the warranty. The money he needs to pay is only for shipping it and the necessary taxes for doing this. So the money is not paid to Garmin.

Out of a lousy support experience that doesn't make any sense whatsoever and was elaborated in hundreds of words you chose to single out and nitpick a single word. Kudos, you are right, in my frustration I was wrong on this, this is not what Garmin is saying, Garmin is saying "pay (not pay us) 100-200$ in postage fees and taxes instead of us fixing/replacing your device from our local support/vendor either for free or for a tenth of that cost". Yeap, thanks a lot for pointing that out baselpower, the fact that the money is paid to meaningless shipping and tax fees now makes me feel a lot better. I take back everything I said, this is top-notch support by Garmin, not a huge disappointment at all. 

subra said:

Can you name a company that provides international service as you imagine?

Rohloff, AFAIK

I am a US Soldier on a deployment in the middle east, I bought a US market Fenix &x SS and it had the vibration motor fail. I contacted garmin who advised they can send a forward replacement if i put down a deposit which I did.  They shipped me a replacement via USPS to an APO address here.  Then I was on the hook to pay shipping back which I could only do via DHL at significant higher cost as USPS won't allow me to ship it back via them due to the lithium battery and it being used.  

I think that is different as deployment territory is considered US for shipping purposes or something along those lines. 

Only for purposes of getting mail and that is because the military moves it from the US for USPS.  the APO is basically in NY.  The base is very much not US property here and I shipped it back via a local DHL shop.

I had a similar experience with Garmin.  They have structured their refund/replace/repair policy to be very Heads-I-win-tails-you-lose.  Like you, I will never buy another garmin product and will tell everyone I know not to as well.  Sheesh, you would think with the prices they charge they could be a little more gracious!