Most defective product I've bought in a long while!

First, the help you will get here is mostly from other helpful users. This kind of attitude will not get you much sympathy. I'm not a Garmin employee, but I think the Garmin Swim is great and very innovative. So I'll try to help.

Push the bottom left button and navigate the menu: History > View > Session, and select the session (date/time when you swam). You should see a summary with

total time,
swimming time,
distance,
number of lengths,
average speed in minutes per 100 meters or yards,
average strokes per length,
SWOLF,
strokes per minute,
calories burned.

Can you report on what you see on this screen. From that, we should be able to tell if it makes sense or not.

If the info on the watch make sense, It could be a problem with ant agent uploading the file to garmin connect. You mention manually uploading a TCX file. Garmin swim doesn't use TCX files. Activity files use the FIT format (.FIT extension). Upload the file as an attachment, We'll be able to tell if it's a valid Garmin Swim file and if the file is corrupted or not.

You're right that I won't get sympathy, and I'm not sure I was looking for any. I was venting because this is an expensive gadget and I don't like feeling so unpleasantly surprised after doing so much research into this watch and seeing none of these problems listed in any review that I read.

Thanks to your note about the FIT files, I was able to manually upload my activities. Note that the reason I uploaded the TCX file is that I followed the incorrect instructions at http://connect.garmin.com/help/faq (How do I manually upload data from wireless devices?), which told me to look under the History folder, not the Activities folder. The web site is not well-maintained at all. Take another example: click on Troubleshooting on http://www8.garmin.com/fitness/ant_product_page.jsp : you get a beautiful page that says "HTTP Status 404 - /fitness/troubleshooting.jsp". Hmmm, does Garmin respect its customers?

The session information in the watch makes sense now that you clarified that "strokes" actually means "average strokes per length".

Defects still remaining:

• Garmin ANT Agent says that activities were uploaded to Garmin Connect. But when I go there, I see nothing. I have to find the Activities files in my Mac and manually upload the Activities files myself.
  
• When I look at my watch history, it says under Totals that I swam all of 0.10 km, even though one of the sessions has close to 1 km.
  
• I installed Garmin Communicator Plugin on Mac. It works for Safari, but doesn't get detected on Chrome even though it's listed in chrome://plugins .
  

But thanks to you, the worst problem is resolved: I can at least see proper activity analysis (even though I have to upload the files manually). I'm still pissed but much less so now.

Glad you were able to sort it out. I can understand you frustration.

For your, ant agent problem. I would wait until a couple of fail attempts to confirm there is a problem. For me, it worked first try. I know you have to configure it with your correct username/password, may be you made a mistake. You could try uninstall/reinstall to see if it fix the problem. For Garmin Communicator on Mac, unfortunately, I have no advice since I am a windows user. May be you'll get a reply from someone else. There are forums for Mac users for both ant agent and the communicator plugin. May be you can find an answer there and/or post you question.

https://forums.garmin.com/forumdisplay.php?175-ANT-Agent
https://forums.garmin.com/forumdisplay.php?192-Communicator-Browser-Plugin

I had never looked at Totals before, it looks fine for me. I agree it should work, but check again next time, sometimes when we use a device for the first time, we do things the wrong way without being aware. If it don't work consistently after a couple of weeks, post back again.

Also, a Garmin employee drops by regularly.

Hope this help

After trying several more times, ANT is finally uploading the activities to Garmin Connect. I can see the "Pending Uploads" folder finally emptying immediately. I have no idea what's changed, but I'm glad it's all over.

I'm glad this is resolved. We'll try to hunt down the offending FAQ and correct it as required so others aren't similarly mislead.

I'm glad this is resolved. We'll try to hunt down the offending FAQ and correct it as required so others aren't similarly mislead.

Thanks for replying. Here are all the outstanding issues, which are all minor:

• As you acknowledged, the FAQ regarding manual upload for wireless devices incorrecly specified History instead of Activities
  
• The "Troubleshooting" link at http://www8.garmin.com/fitness/ant_product_page.jsp is still broken
  
• With only one session, when I looked at my watch history, it said under Totals that I swam all of 0.10 km, even though one of the sessions was close to 1 km. Now that I have 2 sessions, the Totals is now correct and shows 1.9km. Not sure why the total was wrong in the first place.
  
• I installed Garmin Communicator Plugin on Mac. It works for Safari, but doesn't get detected on Chrome even though it's listed in chrome://plugins .
  
• When I was having problem with ANT, the Garmin ANT Agent software on Mac incorrectly said that activities were transferred to Garmin Connect, even though nothing was transferred and the files were still in the Pending folder.
  

I'm very happy with the Garmin Swim now!

We will try to reproduce the issue you experienced in #3 and address it if necessary. I'll also make sure to pass along the other feedback. I'm glad you are happy with your watch now. :-)