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Review of Outdoor Gear Canada - OGC

I have a 2 year old, $285, Polar M430. Have used t...

I have a 2 year old, $285, Polar M430. Have used the watch lightly - 3 days week, once per day for heart rate training only and have taken very good care of it. Despite that, the watch became nonchargeable in April (I have since found via Polar forums online out that this is a longstanding problem with these watches). Polar Canada seems to have farmed out their service and support to their distributor - Outdoor Gear Canada. Neither of these companies are reachable on the phone. Polar support (non-transparently) directs you to Outdoor Gear - they do not offer phone support, and with the Covid situation they don't respond to email requesting support for over a month (during which time I had prompt same day support online from several other suppliers). After finally getting an email only response, you then enter into a once per day email exchange with "Steven" who promptly asks you to do all the trouble shooting maneuvers you've already done having read their and Polar's "troubleshooting FAQ's. A week passes doing that. Then, still on the once per day schedule, this guy says what you knew all along, that they would have to have the watch into their "shop". This, Polar/Outdoor Gear expects you do at your own expense and they offer no replacement or loaner watch despite advising that the repair (waiting to hear the cost of that) could take up to five weeks. As a supposed supplier to higher end athletes to whom data gaps make difference, this sort of runaround/"service" is unacceptable. If it were not for the fact that I already have a lot of training data in their App, and that the watch might be repairable I would have migrated to another manufacturer months
ago. If you haven't purchased an HR watch yet - DON'T BUY Polar in Canada - Outdoor Gear won't help you in a meaningful or timely way....