Grrrr… As a followup to my previous post, the ticket I opened regarding the realtime (wall) clock pausing when the workout pauses got the response “…any sort of auto pause feature isn’t the best solution for you. I would think that continuous recording setting may work better for your specific purposes…”. This is a surprising reply. I didn’t realize “clocks should show the current time” was debatable.
My other ticker regarding wild fluctuations in altitude and temperature got closed without commentary. That just pisses me off. I’m suspect I have a bum unit, but I’m not sure if I should deal with returning it or not.
I’m not super-impressed with Stages customer support at this point.
(That said, when I had a bad Garmin 520+ recently, I couldn’t even get hold of Garmin support… I’m not having good luck with GPS vendors lately)
the only thing currently stoppign me buying the L50 is not knowing if Ill have to pay for the premium platform to do what I need to… I dont use strava at all but would need to be able to download routes (prob from strava courses!) and be ableto upload to garmin connect.
As for customer support Garmin doesnt actually have any as far as im concerned, when i tried to complain about a three hour battery life they told me to turn all the features off and they just ignore and delete anything I try and post about the blue halo on my screen!!
I was able to download a route to my L10 and follow the route really easily. It’s pretty basic functionality… You have the route shape and an icon for your current position. Your direction of travel is always “up”. The map didn’t zoom in quite as much as I would like. The scalebar showed 1000 feet, 3 miles, 5 miles as I recall. I would have preferred one more zoom level in, and can’t imagine why I would ever want the 5 mile zoom level.
Still… the functionality worked well. I was able to navigate without any difficulty around the loop I was following, and it saved me from a few wrong turns that I would have made without it.
Had to download the route via USB from my computer, but I didn’t think that was a huge hassle. I downloaded two routes, one from an export of a Strava ride and one from a route I created on the Stages web site.
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Not an encouraging response, I have to wonder whether they actually read your ticket.
Stages has said that the course creator would be free and not require a subscription. I don’t know about workout creation.
TrainingPeaks free account - you can create a workout for today/tomorrow and download as FIT.
Not trying to turn this thread into my personal rant platform, but… I had to open another ticket with Stages today about my L10. I did my morning ride, same as always, and the headunit faithfully sync’ed with the Stages app and uploaded the ride. Or so it said. Now the ride is stuck on the stages website because “No activities found within file”. The file summary stats look fine on the unit itself, so I have no idea why the exported file is borked.
I’m feeling like a beta tester for an unfinished product.
‘‘I’m feeling like a beta tester for an unfinished product.’’
So Garmin mark 2 then… Looks like itll be wahoo roam for me then, I so wanted this to work.
Used Garmin products since my Forerunner 305 back in 2007. Had the 405, 405cx, Zumo 590, gps62map, 520 and currently with my 1030 with radar.
Customer service has been great, always replied to any email I’ve sent them. They are extremely helpful and have recently been offered a 30% trade in on my forerunner for the new 945.
The GPS62MAP has been a life saver. Has never let me down in the most extreme conditions you can imagine.
I’m no fanboy, have looked at the roam, bolt and other Wahoo stuff, and have never been tempted.
I know Garmin’s short comings but they’ve never made me feel like sending a product back for a refund, felt like I’ve purchased an unfinished product or I’m beta testing it.
Hope you enjoy your Roam.
Mark -
It looks like the two of us are posting here about the L10 and also over in DCR comments.
Since posting there about the improved sync performance after an app update, I’ve had more recurring needs to reboot the L10 after syncs. At least I have now gained access to Stages-Link premium in order to try out the course functions of the device, at the suggestion of Jim and via the hand of Aaron in CS. I’ve learned this week that in the world of Stages I have not only a Link account name and password, plus a Public Feature Request Log account name and password, but also a Support account name and password. The beta feel sentiment is understood, and it seems a bit that way to me too, especially after my SDL1 was just rock solid reliable. I’m hoping that the reliability is re-established soon in the update cycle, I am uncertain which brand’s line I’d feel confident jumping into to replace this L10.
I have the M50 and, after a couple of weeks, I haven’t had any bugs with the device itself. My only issues are with features that I wish it had and have requested and a few other features that are missing ( like configuration on the phone). I do think that their free versus premium features model needs rethinking. I think that workout and course creation- core features of the device- ought to be free. Training plans and advanced analysis I am fine paying a reasonable fee for.
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I RMA’ed my L10 back to CleverTraining. Stages replied to one of my tickets saying my unit had a hardware problem, and sent me RMA info, but I wanted a refund instead of a replacement.
I’ve been using ipBike on an old/unused Samsung Galaxy S5 for a while now, and it works fine. Only reason I wanted a dedicated bike computer was for weatherproofing. But after my bad luck with a Garmin 520+ (bricked itself) and now the Stages Dash L10 (see above), I think I’m just gonna sick with what has been working.
I swear I never had problems with bike computers in the past. Pretty much every GPS or bike computer I’ve had has been fine… until these last two.
Hey Mark,
I just pulled the trigger on the L10.
I’d appreciate if you could summarize the issues you were having that led to Stages identifying and confirming the hardware problem?
I’ll make a point of testing these to see if I can reproduce any, to know if I have a bad unit.
Cheers,
Robert.
My post from June 24th summed up the issues, but I’ll summarize again here:
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The current time (“wall clock” time, not ride or lap time) would stop when the ride stopped. Typical scenario was that I was meeting someone at [time, place]. I would ride to [place], and stop to wait. But the wall clock would stop updating. So if I arrived at, say, 7:14AM, it would always be 7:14AM until I started moving again. This seems like a small thing, but it drove me crazy. Made me wonder how many other software bugs were lurking.
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The temperature and altitude readings were all over the place. For instance, look at the temperature on Follow Mark on Strava to see this activity. Join for free. . It was not 108 degrees Fahrenheit that day. Not even close. Or look at the altitude on Follow Mark on Strava to see this activity. Join for free. . Notice the three large/instantaneous altitude drops. I was on a fairly flat trail.
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One of my rides simply never uploaded. Apparently it was a corrupted file? See my post from June 26th. I had to manually enter my ride stats in Strava/Golden Cheetah. Manually entering info… like a barbarian! 
For issue (1), Stages support just told me I probably didn’t want autopause (see my post from June 25th). That annoyed me because every other cycling computer I’ve ever used has been smart enough to realize that wall-clock time shouldn’t stop when the ride stops!
For issue (2), they closed the ticket without commenting. Apparently they tried to consolidate the tickets and it somehow closed all of them? I don’t remember the exact verbiage, but I was annoyed. The ticket I opened for issue (3) included a complaint about them closing the other ticket.
In response to my ticket for issue (3), they said I had a bad unit and gave me RMA information. I didn’t bother returning to Stages though… I didn’t want a replacement, I just wanted my money back. So I returned it CleverTraining, who took it back and refunded my money without hassles.
There were nice things about the L10. The initial configuration and battery life were awesome. I should mention that I bought an L10 after having a similarly awful experience with a Garmin 520 plus. That unit was a crash-fest, until eventually it just bricked itself in a way that couldn’t be undone even with a hard reset. I had some lousy luck with GPS units this summer! Had to return two faulty units from two different manufacturers in less than a month. Third time was a charm though… got a Bryton Rider 330 and It just works, without fuss.
Thanks Mark,
I’m actually starting to wonder if I made a mistake… I can always return it for free if I don’t open the box. Bryton is the other manufacturer I was thinking of using. I liked the look of the 310 (which is identical chassis and GPS chipset to the 330, minus a few features related to routing I think). What are your thoughts on the menu system and interface of the 330…?
GPLama had a long list of issues with the Rider 450. I noticed there is a new 420 as well…
Regards,
Robert
The menu and interface on the bryton 330 aren’t going to win any awards. Initial setup involved a lot if clicking, but i am a minimalist about my setup: main screen of 5s, 30s power, heart rate, cadence, lap time, time of day. i rarely visit any other screen.
Things I don’t love about the bryton: Syncing via bluetooth is really slow. powermeter zero takes too many clicks. Routes need to be synced from a computer via usb. had to buy $15 out front/gopro mount because one wasn’t included. reviews suggest some folks have durability issues but mine has been fine so far.
After my Garmin and L10 fiascos, i’m just happy to have something that works, was cheap, shows power, and uploads to strava easily enough.
Thanks again Mark.
My OCD won’t tolerate the Bryton menu system, which by all accounts is a bit of a mess. I think I’ll set the Stages up and see how it goes - it really has so much potential.
Will keep this thread posted with my experiences.
Not good unfortunately.
I purchased the “anywhere mount” to use the L10 with my Garmin mount (I have one that integrates into my bars nicely and I suspect many others will as well) and it turned out to be a complete waste of time. Made of cheap plastic and may as well be a spring because the unit bounces around as though it were! Quite comical really. Dunno why they do this one out of plastic - their other mounts appear to be alloy. And the weight of the unit is such that the mount needs to be very stiff.
The unit itself looked pretty good, but this is a fairly basic thing that Stages has totally stuffed up. Not everyone can use their out front mount, which requires a standard round handlebar.
