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Gag Gifts, Occasion Gifts - Zoombak ZMBK200 Advanced GPS Car & Family Locator
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List Price: $249.99
Our Price: $168.97
Your Save: $ 81.02 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Zoombak
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Batteries Included: 1
Binding: Electronics
Brand: Zoombak
EAN: 0896227001018
Feature: Zoombak is portable but can also be installed permanently. Its portability allows you to use it in your car as well as in other vehicles such as motorcycles, ATVs, boats and bicycles.
Includes Mp3 Player: 0
Is Memorabilia: 0
Label: Zoombak
Manufacturer: Zoombak
Material Type: plastic
Model: ZMBK200
Native Resolution: Unknown
Publisher: Zoombak
Studio: Zoombak
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Features
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Zoombak is portable but can also be installed permanently. Its portability allows you to use it in your car as well as in other vehicles such as motorcycles, ATVs, boats and bicycles.
Pinpoint your car's real-time location on-demand anywhere within nationwide coverage area online or through a live, toll-free customer care center 24 hours, 7 days a week.
Create up to 10 customized zones and get notified by text message and/or email when your car leaves or enters the zone.
Gives you your car's current position and location history.
In the box: Locator device, AC Wall Charger, Portable Car Charger, Installation Bracket, User Guide 30-Day Risk Free Guarantee, One-year Manufacturer's Warranty
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Editorial Reviews:
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portable GPS car locator * pinpoint and track your car's real-time location on a map * continuous tracking on demand (automatic update of your car's location every 5 minutes, up to 1 hour) * programmed tracking online -- see where your car has traveled for the past hour, day or week *
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Works as advertised with minor caveats
Comment: Installed this product in trunk of car. Installation was painless and only difficulty was finding an "always on" electrical line. Product came with sufficient material and wire length for installation into most locations. Product seemed real inconsistent first 24 hours it was turned on, I was almost to the point of considering returning it when it suddenly seemed to "sync up" and has been rock steady since. Not sure why this is but power cycling it a couple times may have done the trick. Otherwise works exactly as advertised but purchasers should be aware:
Notification of entry or exit from a custom zone may be up to 15 minutes delayed, since product only polls location every 15 minutes. When you do get notification it does report location of unit as of that moment.
Due to this delay its possible for vehicle to leave and return from a zone in the 15 minute window and not get notified, but the timing would have to be exact for that to happen.
Web site is aggravatingly slow (capacity issues?). Much easier/faster and more convenient to do text message request of location.
Text message response of location is nearest set of cross streets.
Auto battery drain notification is nice, it warned me on one occasion I had not fully plugged in power cord.
Continous tracking works nicely but it only updates location every 5 min for up to an hour, you then have to re-request (but apparently you can do this over and over as needed)
For "where is the car at this exact moment" requests and slightly delayed notification of zone transitions, works perfectly.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good product, needs better Web site, SMS scheme
Comment: I have been testing the Zoombak in a car for three days and it works well within the limits of T-Mobile's coverage, which is something you have to understand. They probably should have chosen AT&T as a GSM partner although T-Mobile performed pretty comparably in my test.
The Web site is slow and needs work. It was down at least once for some period of time (tech support reported that they had an outage). If you were in a panic to find your teen driver, I imagine this could be incredibly annoying. The Web session times out after some period of time without warning you. Once you've signed in as a user, the site should never take you back to the general commercial web site, it should just say your session has expired and please log back in. Why they need to expire the session that quickly is beyond me.
The most annoying choice they've made is the two step SMS process. You have to text "find" to 96225 from a registered cell phone, wait for the system to respond, and then text your pin number and device name to get a location. Why would you need to do that? Since your phone number is registered, you should just be able to text the device name from a registered phone and get back the location. Dumb.
Tracking is also poorly thought out. It's clearly set up just for the pet product, not cars, since it only allows you to set a border that's a half mile from a particular address. That's not useful in warning you when your driver goes more than, say, 5 miles away which is more realistic.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Zoombak Advanced GPS
Comment: I bought this to able to track my son, whom is a new driver. I was/am so satisfied with the product that I have told friends that whom themselves have since bought one. I would recommend a zoombak to anyone that wants to keep an eye on their new teen driver. It is awesome and reliable. Thanks to Zoombak!
Customer Rating:
Summary: "Not Quite Ready For Prime Time"
Comment:
I bought the Pet version of the Zoombak about a month ago and I'm sorry to say after a week of testing and multiple consultations with the Zoombak Technical Staff I did not have enough confidence in it to place it on my dog. I returned the unit to Amazon and received prompt credit.I also received an immediate credit from Zoombak for the year service that I had signed up for upon registering my unit because it was within their 30 day risk free period. The Zoombak staff was very courteous, and I'm sure they would be of assistance in locating your dog if you requested, however it wasn't until I asked to speak to a Technical Supervisors did I feel comfortable that someone understood the difficulties I was experiencing with the unit. As most of you probably know the Zoombak uses a combination of a Cellular Phone and GPS service to provide you informationn on your pet. The cellular portion of the system worked fine. I received immediate notifications when I turned the unit off or when the battery was low. Both of these options, which you can select upon setup, use the cellular portion of the unit. Another function that uses the cellular portion in combination with the GPS is the mobile locate function capability. It worked fairly well.
Now for the problems I experienced. After repeatedly setting up Safety Zones per the instructions that came with the unit, per the information I found on the Zoombak Website and finally the instructions I received from the Zoombak Technical staff I could not get the GPS side of the unit to recognize that the unit had left the Safety Zones I had established. I tested the unit by placing it on the windshied of my car where I normally place my other GPS units and leaving the established Safety Zone for a minimum of 15 minutes. Most time I stayed out of the Zone for 30 minutes or longer. On 3 occassions I called the Zoombak Technical Support Staff to verify that the unit was operating properly. They assured me that it was. On one occassion they had to re-sync the unit. At their instructions I increased the radius of my safety Zone. The minimum Safety Zone is 110 yds. I increased it 4 times out to a radius of 700 yds. the maximum I would would accept. On all 4 tests at these distances I received no mobile of E-mail alerts that the unit had left the zone.
I own 2 Garmin GPS units and both of them work perfectly up to 10 ft of my home so I see no reason why the GPS unit packaged in the Zoombak couldn't lock onto the require 3 GPS satellites and recognize that it had left or re-entered the safety zone. On one occassion I had the unit in an open area 20 miles from my home and received no alerts.
Given that Zoombak assured me that my unit was working perfectly I can only assume that they are either using an unreliable GPS Receiver in the unit or that the software program they are using to provide the alerts is not perfected.
A couple of other observations. If you watch the Zoombak video or the Martha Stewart Show video clip you might get the impression, as I did, that once your dog leaves your yard or premises you'll get an immediate notification that it has left. This is not the case. Your dog must physically leave your established Safety Zone and stay out of that zone for 15 minutes. If it wanders back in and out of the Safety Zone within the 15 minutes you get no alerts. I was concerned that my dog would be long gone before I knew about it. My other concern was that if someone took my dog and placed it in a car I would not be able to track it.The GPS instruction that accompany the unit clearly state that the Zoombak unit must have a clear line of sight to the GPS satellites in order to track it. This is the case with most GPS units. Unless you can train your dog to sit in the front seat you might have problems.
The bottom line folks is that if you love and care as much as we do about our dogs you should be wary of this product at this time. It's a great idea but not one that I want to be a Beta tester for especially with the cost of the unit, monthly service charges and concerns for my dogs. If you purchase it I stongly suggest that you test it extensively within the 30 day risk free period and by all means before you place it on your dog. Good Luck.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Peace of Mind
Comment: We purchased our zoombak locator shortly after they became available in the US and were not available for purchase anywhere but through the company directly. We have a rescued puppy mill dog who got spooked one night and ran off in the snow and ice. We had only had him for 2 months and at that point would not approach people, even us. He returned on his own after 2 days, but we did not sleep looking for him. It happened again a week later. Having the zoombak allows us to relax and know that we will be able to find him if it happens again, which we have decided is unlikely as he has bonded with us much more. We purchased the zoombak for the peace of mind we would have instead of worrying whether or not he would run away again, even if we never had to use it. Initially, we had some issues such as receiving text messages for the wrong dog (1x) and messages that he had left the zone when he was in the house (2x). Zoombak made several software updates and has since solved all of these problems. We eventually turned off the text messaging services to conserve battery life and have gone from 2 days per charge to 5 days per charge. We still receive low battery messages and power off messages. We are on a routine where we plug it in at night when we go to bed and put it back on when we get up in the morning. This has made the process much less of a hassle as when we first purchased it. We tested it while walking the neighborhood and it updates his location every 5 minutes, which is not ideal, but certainly meets our needs. The dog initially scratched at the backpack, but after 2-3 days became accustomed to it and it no longer bothers him. It survived a swimming trip in the lake after fireworks caused him to jump in, so the durability seems to be pretty good. It was and I think still is the least expensive option for this purpose and we are very happy with the product.
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