Replacing Vivoactive 3 battery?

It is incredible!

So Garmin is making a watch to be trashed after 2 years (if the user needs battery autonomy).

Official support says it only replaces the whole body (wtf!!!!) and not only the battery, which has a natural degradation and it is expected to be replaced sooner or later!

That is a complete lack of environmental responsibility, unnecessarily generating electronic waste, looking only to maximize its profits without any care about natural resources or whatsoever.

Please use the link below to read more about our recycling and sustainability policies and procedures:

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/sustainability/environment/

Hi Kevin, sorry - I really don't care about those policies and procedures. They seem to be created to find an excuse for your technical problems.

Fact is: In all cases, the duration that the battery holds drops in a very short timeframe from "many days" to "under a day". This looks like a design problem - or - what I expect - a software bug. There seems to be a background task running and burning battery. I will try to get my hands on a fully working clock and try to prove it.
If that happens, you charge the customer with about 80% of the price of a new watch for a refurbished watch. That is way to much.

A normal battery can be charged about 1000 times. So if we estimate to charge it every 2 days, we will need about 180 charges a year. So after about 5 years, the battery should be down. If you would then offer a replacement battery and a replacement service (for those who need it), it would be all ok and everybody can life with it.

The way you do it - charging way to much and hiding the reason for the problems - that is the wrong way.

You have very good products but for now I am using the products of an other company although I don't like them. 

Of course not all are problematic. But some are - and that is the problem. And if you have a bad one, the support from Garmin is nearly zero.
So if I buy a new one - will I have a good one or a bad one? I would even buy a Fenix 6 if I could be sure that it would last at least 5 years or that I would get it repaired at a reasonable price. But I will not pay 300 to 600 bucks for a ticket to the lottery

I've had excellent support from Garmin in North America. Can't speak for other areas. For a while, it was much better to call their 800 support number than to send an email but their email support has been very good for me in the past few years.

I had an issue where my Vivoactive 1 would BSOD my desktop PC whenever I would connect it. I got around it by charging from a USB charger and syncing with my phone. There was no issue with my laptop so clearly the issue was with my desktop and not the watch itself. Out of the blue, I received a call from tech support who apologized for bothering me and then walked me through how to fix it. Overall, I've been very satisfied.

2,5 years here and the batttery is suddenly dying at a terrifying speed. Was fine two weeks ago (4-6 days with a charge), collapsed to daily recharging and worse. Not user-replacable, documentation says. In other words: watch is dead after 2,5 years.

Yeah, unfortunately Garmin is manufacturing disposable watches.

I'm no fanboy of Garmin mainly because their software is so problematic and their pre-release testing is horrible for both new and existing devices. That said,  luckily my battery has done well.

In general, I am much more trusting of devices having rechargeable batteries as I have had extremely good luck.  But, I do agree with you the battery is a critical component of a sports watch and should be have a separate warranty and or replaced at very little cost.  Unfortunately, Garmin is not going to care if their batteries crap out after the watch warranty has expired.

As I have shown with my watches as well as others have proven also: It is not the battery that is dead. It is the watch which is not going to sleep any more and just drawing way to much power out of the battery.