On the 12th of November I took the plunge and set up a trade-in for a new 710. I traded in my Triton 400 and that brought the Explorist 710 price down to $219. Not a bad deal, considering the price of a new 710. It was still hard to do, because my T400 looks like it just came out of the box.

I don't think I ever contacted customer service before, so I can not comment on how good or poor it was, but my experience with customer service recently has been positive. Virtually no waiting on hold and the people I talked to I can understand perfectly and they can understand me. I do call early in the morning, so your mileage may vary.

I would like to say that my transaction went smoothly, but it didn't go as expected because I still don't have my new 710. I sent the T400 to Magellan on the 15th, and parcel tracking indicated it arrived at the Canadian address I sent it to on the 16th. I waited until the 19th before calling Magellan to see why they have not changed the status of my order to indicate that they have received my T400. They politely indicated that it could take up to 7 days. I then waited until the 26th before calling again, and I explained my situation again. The customer service rep said that she would approve the order. She did ask for a parcel tracking number, but I did not have it with me at the time. She said that it wouldn't matter and would process the order anyway. Monday the 29th came and my order status still did not change and I didn't receive any emails etc. I called again on the 29th and gave my tracking number to another customer service rep and was given the same reassurance she would process the order and pass it on to her supervisor right away and I should receive the order in 5 to 7 days. I felt better, but my order didn't change status until about 9:30 this morning (30th). According to the tracking number, I should get the unit tomorrow 🙂

I am not sure if customer service is any better than before, but at least they are easy to understand. I am not sure how knowledgeable they are about the products either, because they were not able to answer my question about the availability of a Canadian version of the GPS. My email I sent to Magellan from the Magellan web site went unanswered too. After each call to customer support they send you an email and ask you to fill out a survey of how they are doing. Looks like they are trying to improve. To be clear, I am not complaining about how customer service treated me, they were very good. Who knows what happened to my package. All I know is that it was signed by a guy named Pete T and perhaps he is enjoying a relatively new GPSr and will be lurking on the Tritonforum.com to figure out how to use it :S