Garmin and TacX subscriptions

Sometime at the end of last year, I found a coupon for one free month of TacX, a cycling service offered by Garmin that integrates with their app to provide courses, routes, maps, and head-to-head competition online. I wasn’t interested in head-to-head or in doing anything that involved watching the app, but my own custom routes had grown a bit stale, so I decided to try it.

The coupon code worked just fine—even after almost five years—and I was registered.

Got in one good ride…

Then I got COVID and wasted a week not riding anywhere. After that, the weather at the end of the year was warm enough to cycle outside, so I did that instead.

I eventually rode my first course weeks later and it worked just fine. At the beginning of the year, I managed another ride, which was more fun than the first. You can see the map and a video showing you where you’re riding. It’s really not too shabby—at any rate, it was a nice change of pace from my “push this many watts for this long” one-hour-long rides.

Two weeks later, I got sick again, so I’d definitely burned through my coupon, having ridden only twice. By the time I was ready to try again, I’d forgotten that my account had almost certainly expired.

Extending a subscription at Garmin

How did I find out? I’d selected the second ride I’d done and said “do that again”.

The app showed me a modal dialog that informed me that this map is not part of my subscription. What? Did the app tell me that my trial period had expired? Of course not. Did it tell offer to let me sign up for another subscription? You know, did it try to sell me a subscription? Oddly…no. It just refused to let me ride on that course.

I was in a bit of a hurry. I’d gotten into a “riding mindset”. When I tell you I was a bit agitated, that’s an understatement.

I looked in the app quickly to see how to sign up for a subscription. Nothing.

I went to the web site. Logged in. Checked my orders. It only showed an order for a US map from last year. There as no sign of my recent subscription purchase (yes, it was free, but you’d think it would show up on my account).

There was literally nothing to indicate that I’d ever been subscribed—or how to subscribe again. I had to browse the web site to find their list of subscriptions and choose one for myself. The list was in German, of course, because Garmin has to use my location—rather than the language my browser asks it to use—to determine how it’s going to communicate with me.

I found the subscription and purchased it.

Does it show up anywhere? Nope.

No orders in my Garmin account

Fortune favors the bold

Brimming with confidence, I went back to the app and tried to load the course again.

Nothing. Same error message.

This happened a couple of times.

I’ll let you imagine the cursing. It was legendary.

After several tries over a couple of minutes, the course loaded and I was finally able to ride.

As a paying subscriber, this is what my app looked like.

No maps in Garmin TacX rideAhead − Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore − Built 1436

it’s just a little spinning loading-progress icon for the whole ride. I had the elevation profile at the bottom and the incline indicator at the top, but no video.

I rode that way because what else was I going to do? I don’t really watch the video anyway, but it’s not a good sign when the app works worse once you’re a paying subscriber.

Another incident: calibration

I’ve learned that this kind of behavior is not unusual. I’ve not had a single ride that just started smoothly, where the technology didn’t impose itself into the whole routine as an active participant, demanding attention rather than quietly being of service.

My most recent ride yesterday started with a calibration. I calibrate every time because, when I don’t, the software will track an odd number of watts, either undercounting even though the workout feels 25% more strenuous than usual, or just failing to record watts at all, either providing no resistance at all or providing completely random although always quite light resistance, independent of the program.

So, I calibrated. I’m better about remembering to turn on the TacX device by now, although the software chirpily tries to calibrate a device that isn’t even connected. It doesn’t notify you that this is the case, but it shows a different calibration procedure, which I’ve learned to recognize as indicating that I’ve not turned the device on. If it asks me to pedal up to 40kph, I know that the device isn’t even on. I can pedal all day, but it’s not going to calibrate a device that isn’t under power. When the device is on, it asks me to start pedaling up to 30kph.

I pedaled up to 30kph, then freewheeled as instructed. You’re supposed to leave the pedals alone until the calibration is complete. My foot hit a pedal by accident and the TacX claimed that the calibration had been invalidated. JFC. It showed a retry button.

Retry.

Pedal.

Nothing.

It doesn’t allow me to recalibrate. The “retry” button was just a joke on the part of the programmers—or perhaps a very hopeful promise of what might come in the future.

I went into the settings and started a manual calibration. That one worked.

I started the program and started pedaling. Nothing. It wasn’t showing any sign that the program had detected a device. The calibration had been successful, but the software was still off in its own little world.

Restart the program (not the app).

Off in la-la land.

I had to shut down the software and restart it, reselect the program, recalibrate, and was finally able to ride.

This is just how much fun it is to work with Garmin software.

Yes, there was a lot of swearing.