Do not under any circumstances buy a SPOT unit! It is unreliable in a 911 situation, and customer service is the worst I have ever experience.
Here is my story. I bought the unit for $200, and paid the $200 annual fee. I figured that if I ever needed it, the 911 feature could get me out of deep trouble, so it was worth the cost.
I went car camping with my 4 little kids, ages 10, 8, 6 and 4. While I was on the trip, the unit sent out a 911 message due to a malfunction. The good news was that I really wasn't in danger.
Here is the bad news: When the SPOT unit sends a 911 message, it does not actually go to 911. It goes to some call center in Houston. There, some dude gets the message and has to figure out what to do with it. From there, it is all down hill.
In this case, the dude called my wife and told her my unit had sent an urgent 911 message, and were we OK? and did she know where we were? Of course, she freaked out, thinking the kids and I were dead somewhere. She had no idea where we were and whether or not we were OK, and SPOT completely fumbled. The SPOT guy was completely clueless about what to do next. He acted like he had never gotten a 911 message before.
The SPOT guy then called my business partner and asked him were we OK? and did he know where we were? Now, the SPOT unit is supposed to tell SPOT where you are, right? The SPOT guy's computer wasn't working properly that day, or he couldn't figure out how to zoom in and out, so he could not tell on his screen even what state we were in. Totally pathetic.
The SPOT guy then called information (411!) and got the number for the fire station in the little 10-person town near where we were. No one answered there. He left a voicemail at the fire station. Then he called my wife again. Then he called my business partner again. Tick tock tick tock tick tock. Both of them are freaking out, and the SPOT guy has no idea what to do. This fumbling around by SPOT took years off of my wife's life.
Eventually, the SPOT guy called the right emergency service location, and they immediately dispatched an emergency crew to the scene.
From the receipt of the SPOT 911 call, to the dispatch of emergency services, it took SPOT 45 MINUTES! During the 45 minutes that SPOT wasted, we could have been DEAD.
I have spent countless hours on the phone with the top officials people at SPOT. I probably had 20 calls with them and a similar number of emails. I got nothing but stonewalling for months. First, they told me that "this could never have happened"...they "always" dispatch within 2-3 minutes. Then, after FIVE MONTHS of asking them for their logs, they finally admitted to me that in fact it did take 45 minutes, and then they claimed that 45 minutes was an acceptable timeframe to reach emergency services.
After they finally admitted what had happened, they promised to send me by Fed Ex a new SPOT unit and give a year's service credit. Five weeks later, I have received no unit, gotten no service credit, and SPOT now won't return my phone calls. SPOT sets an absolute new LOW for customer service.
SPOT is a bunch of Keystone Cops. Don't buy this unit under any circumstances. And if you already bought it, do not rely upon it. If you ever need 911, you are better off trying to drag yourself up from the bottom of the canyon by your fingernails than hitting the 911 button and thinking that help is coming. It may not.
