Swim workouts still broke in 6.04

Update: Have a case open and not just a support ticket. Continuing to provide activity and workout fit files along with illustrations and footage from my watch between 2-3x a week.

Appears Garmin continues to 'research'.

Support has gone dark again.

As I updated another thread where I was asked the status, I'll add that detail here also:

They have not responded since 4/29, nor have they said they actually have replicated the problem. 

As I swim 3x a week I was providing 3 Activity.FIT and the corresponding Workout.FIT along with Visio diagrams detailing what my watch face showed during the workout and where endless loops would occur and URLs to each activity/workout in GC weekly.  I also included the garbage HEX strings on certain screens and detailing that both Garmin Connect created workouts which were just as broke as my 3rd party workouts (humango.com) and which .FITs were which.

In the end they had at least 15 workouts to look at since I opened the case with the above details, the several forum posts with others having the same issues, and all of my workouts since Firmware 4.16 as they asked for a ZIP of my entire watch (minus .ISO files) when the case was moved from a Ref Ticket to a Case Ticket.  
<< Ref: 21777194K1 >> <Q#:1002452>

So I reached out and my contact reached the dev team.

Hello eric,

The engineers are currently working on a software update to fix this. I do not have an ETA of when this will be out. I will update you as soon as there is a fix available. 

Assuming this is true, they must be able to replicate the issue as it should be pretty easy to do.

If this feature is important to you I would either any of this two things:

1) ask garmin the money back because the watch doesn’t do what it promises and it is a key feature for you

2) head to the forums of largely sold watches (like 945, fenix 6 and 7) and ask if they can replicate. If they can, ask to contact garmin and to add them to their ticket.

i believe that if we contact with a problem on a 945 lte where one or two people has the problem it will be their lowest priority…because the watch doesn’t sold that much and because of people impacted with the bug.

also if it is present on a fenix , outdoor team can also help. 

I'm the same way... impossible to use the watch for swimming training, one way or another it gives failures.

I mainly have them in the intervals and rests.

I am considering filing a complaint and demanding my money, because clearly the watch does not deliver what it says it does.

I don't know, what a disappointment with Garmin, I'm about to switch to Coros or Wahoo....

Sadly, intervals WERE working in 3.07 and lower.  I don't know how this gets past QA or who there testers are.  For 30 years I've been on the bleeding edge for all kinds of tech coming from the IT field and accept issues.  The problem with Garmin is, they don't seem to test or crowdsource testing.  I have been the beta tester for many companies and products over those 30 years, signing NDA's, providing reports and weekly feedback, all for free as part of making the product better for all.  It doesn't appear that Garmin finds value in all of the resources they could be using to improve their products including Forum ambassadors. 

erockem said:

It doesn't appear that Garmin finds value in all of the resources they could be using to improve their products including Forum ambassadors.

Totally agree with the bulk of this message, especially the final quoted part here.

Seeing possibly no real channel to report bugs, I contacted Product Support via E-mail the other day with 4-5 items that have been nagging at me lately more than the last year.  Admittedly they may all be minor-ish problems with possible workarounds, but I think also nearly all work as specified/desired on 935/Fenix watches (maybe 945 non-LTE).

I ended up with 2-3 back and forth e-mails with a support person that seemed to be trying to get me to go away by offering workarounds that make the general behavior I was going for functional but require additional user actions (ignoring certain screens, adding other screens / datafields to scroll to mid-workout, manually performing certain operations that claim to be automatic).

All I really wanted to do was be sure the dev team was aware of the issues and (hopefully) planning to fix them, but instead am left wondering if the support agent merely marked my case as resolved as I gave up continuing the discussion after those messages and my level of frustration.

The new beta program mentioned elsewhere is interesting, but I've also seen comments it will more of a release candidate channel than an alpha / beta approach... so perhaps not as interesting as I had hoped.  I guess we'll see what watches get added and how the releases look.

In my ~14 years with Garmin Fitness / Outdoor products I've been off and on frustrated hoping for a "real" competitor to offer something to get me to switch.  The last time may have been around the 310xt era, but in the last year with the 945 LTE I seem to be pushed that way again.  For better or worse they still have a few key features that keep me here...

Firmware is hard, and maybe impossible to remove all bugs / issues, but I think the "apparent" lack of resources or trying here is the real bummer.

I would be really curious if anyone is successful getting their money back. I've been keeping track of my swims manually because of this and debating just buying another watch to keep track of it. (I know, crazy)

Unfortunately, I bought the watch from an outdoor retailer out of state with a strict return policy but damn. I really wished I held onto my 235 and waited it out for the Fenix or the 955. The 945 LTE really does feel like a step-child that's forgotten about despite DCR's report from Garmin that it wouldn't be.

EDIT: Before anyone asks, I did report this in 4.16 with photos/videos/etc. It was the very first thing I noticed after I updated.

Yeah, the 935 was flawless, but doing IronMan's it was nice for the wife/mom/kids to live track me every minute of every leg so she knew where to be and when to cheer me on anywhere in the race, along with the piece of mind when I finish the swim with the LTE option.  And the 945LTE only had one small bug I could live with when I got it, as swim workout intervals worked back then.  If they cant both get it fixed, I may have to ditch the LTE and she will have to go back to the IM tracker for best effort location tracking as solid training is more important than accurate tracking.