About a month and a half ago, Kristen and I bought a TomTom ONE GPS. It’s a pretty decent unit, easy to use, and fairly inexpensive (under $175 for refurbished models, about $200 for new). Review at CNet.

We bought a refurbished ONE about a week before our move to northern California, and the unit performed quite well. However, about three or four weeks ago, the ONE started randomly freezing/rebooting when certain addresses or points of interest were entered. It seemed sporadic at first, and then steadily progressed to the point where the unit was almost unusable because it would freeze and then reboot during each trip, or when planning one.

Now we come to the point of this post – TomTom’s service. I contacted them on the website after reviewing the FAQ and not finding an answer to my problem. Within 24 hours I had an email response from a TomTom service rep acknowledging my problem, and requesting my ONE’s serial number. I responded with it, and within another 24 hours, I had my next response. I was expecting to have to ship my ONE to them, have them repair it, and send it back, probably costing me shipping and most certainly a downtime of over a week. This was not the case. The TomTom rep let me know he had configured my TomTom account to receive a complete download of the newest software package, maps and all. This was almost a gigabyte of information. Sure enough, I followed the instructions which had me erase the TomTom, download and reinstall the software and I was back up and running.

Big thanks to TomTom service for quick and easy fixes. I was completely expecting to have to be without the unit while I sent it to them, probably on my dime, but they took care of it easily over the internet.

EDIT 1/6/08: Here we are two and a half months later, and everything is still perfect. I haven’t had any issues with the TomTom since they helped me out.