Myron Global: The Final Chapter

My damaged heart-rate monitor. I had sent this photo to Myron Global with my original e-mail.

An unbelievable update to my unfortunate dealings with the Atlanta-based company called Myron Global, about which I've written not once, but twice, on this blog.

To make a long-story short, I bought a Garmin Edge 305 GPS device (pictured below) with wireless heart-rate monitor from them for $230, but the heart-rate monitor ended up having a corroded battery compartment. Two or three e-mails and two phone calls to their customer-service department elicted no satisfaction, indeed, elicited no response from the company whatsovever.

Literally the only communication I ever received from the company was what I interpreted as an extortionist e-mail, asking me to remove negative feedback I had eventually posted about the company on eBay, or else they would leave negative feedback about me.

I refused, left my negative feedback, and wrote about my terrible experiences with the company on my blog. It was war.

That was that, I felt. Too much time had gone by for anything else to happen.

And then, most surprisingly, I received an e-mail on Friday (October 19) from Jason in Myron Global's customer-service department:

"Hello, Every 30 days we do a search of un read messages and I see you have several messages that have not been responded to. Can you kindly advise if the HR monitor is working? I understand the issue was a corroded battery. This could have been simply due to heat or a defective battery that melted. All items we sell are brand new and have never been opened. We are not allowed to open items and inspect content as it voids our warranty agreement with the manufacturer.

"Be assured that we would not sell an item that has been opened or is damaged in any way. We do not even ship units that have any damage to the outer box much less the unit. All Garmin units we sell also carry a full warranty with Garmin that is valid for 1 year worldwide.

"If you have replaced the HR monitor through the Garmin monitor, I will archive your messages. If the matter has not been resolved please forward your shipping address so we can ship another unit to you or forward your purchase invoice should you want to claim warranty. -- Regards, Jason, Senior Sales Associate Myron Global, Inc."

I wrote him back and told him that, no, the heart-rate monitor was definitely not working, and related my entire story. Why, I asked, did Myron Global feel the need to resort to extortion when all the company had to do was to respond to my initial complaints. Well, according to Jason, the whole thing was a misunderstanding:

"Grant, let me clarify again. The e-mail you received was not a threat. It was an eBay e-mail showing the two feedbacks that had already been left. The first by you, the second by a CS rep at our company. Once the rep realized that they should not have left feedback for you, they immediately sent a request to withdraw feedback. The email you received is that request. This meant feedback is already left and we need you to approve its removal.

"Ebay rules require that if an ebay user (seller or buyer) wants to remove feedback, any other feedback associated with it has to be removed and both parties have to agree to it. The email you received was an eBay request created by our CS rep for you to look at the feedbacks and withdraw them if you choose. If you decided not to, then you simply delete the message. Feedback had already been left by you and us so we were trying to correct that problem.

"You should never have received feedback from us because you were right and we should have resolved your accessory issue some time ago. I apologize for both these faults."

(Of course, he never explained who it was at Myron Global who felt the necessity to flame me on eBay in the first place, for no reason whatsoever.)

I also mentioned to him that there were quite a few others I had noticed on eBay who complained of the same communication problems with Myron Global:

"There are negative feedbacks for our account mainly for replying late or not replying. We are working on hiring a few more reps to help with the daily messages. We receive about 400-700 messages every day. We begin replying to messages as early as 3:00 A.M. just to keep pace with the daily email volume."

To be fair, some of the complaints are from customers who say they have never received items they had already paid for. I pointed this out to Jason, and specifically mentioned the case of penneyfamily@nf.sympatico.ca, who left a message about their experiences on my blog. His reply:

"With regards to non-delivery. You will notice that these are only from international buyers. Most of these are due to delays from customs or from international carriers. The user email you provided penneyfamily@nf.sympatico.ca has the following shipping status: Tracking Number: XXXXXX Status: Your item cleared customs in CANADA at 5:19 pm on October 17, 2007. Information, if available, is updated every evening. Please check again later. Tracking History: Into Foreign Customs, October 17, 2007, 8:20 am, CANADA Arrived Abroad, October 17, 2007, 8:20 am, CANADA International Dispatch, October 12, 2007, 12:06 pm, MIAMI Processed, October 12, 2007, 8:24 am, MIAMI, FL 33112 Acceptance, October 11, 2007, 5:06 pm, REX, GA 30273 -- Regards, Jason"

A new heart-rate monitor is being shipped to me as I write this, via overnight express mail.

I have responded to the original "Feedback Withdrawal Request" and agreed to remove my negative comments in return for the removal of the negative comments about me. I am trusting Jason's version of the story.

There is no doubt, however, that this episode has revealed some pretty serious flaws in the way Myron Global deals with its customers. I hope I have contributed in some small way toward helping the company recognize and -- hopefully -- address these problems.

In a funny postscript to this whole episode, I received an e-mail from eBay the same day that all of this back and forth with Myron Global was going on. It was a "Feedback Abuse" alert, warning me that it was against eBay policy and not cool of me to have included the URL for this blog when I posted my own reply on eBay to Myron Global's scathing attack against me.

I can only laugh.