Support
Who picks up the email
MapIT is written and run by one person, in my own time. Saying so up front seems fairer than letting a support page imply a rota.
What that means in practice:
- Every email comes to me, and I answer it myself. Usually within [SUPPORT RESPONSE TIME], sometimes longer if I am away or it is a busy week.
- A duplicate charge, a payment that did not activate, a refund — anything where someone is out of pocket or has paid for something they have not got — I fix first, because that one is my fault to put right.
- Bug fixes take as long as they take. A watch app update also has to clear Garmin's review, which is outside my hands entirely.
- There is no phone line and no live chat. I would rather say that plainly than have someone go looking for one.
The address is [SUPPORT EMAIL]. Including the device code shown on the watch is the fastest way for me to find a licence.
Common questions
Why access ends in December rather than a year after purchase
MapIT is sold by service year, which has a fixed end date that is the same for everyone. A licence bought part-way through a year costs proportionally less, reflecting the shorter period.
The reason is that map data costs run on a common annual cycle. Billing everyone against one calendar, rather than tracking a separate renewal date per person, is what keeps this at a few euros a year and keeps the admin small enough for one person to run. The exact end date is always shown before payment.
A broken or replaced watch
The licence survives, provided it can be identified. It can move to a new watch up to twice in any rolling twelve-month period.
An email address given at checkout is enough for me to find it. Without one, and with no access to the old watch to read its code from, I may not be able to — MapIT has no accounts, so there is nothing else tying a licence to a person. That is the honest reason the email tickbox at checkout is worth ticking.
How long maps stay on the watch
A downloaded tile is kept for up to 30 days, then has to be fetched again the next time the watch has a connection.
This is a condition of the map provider's terms, not a setting I picked and not one I can turn off — the licence for the map data forbids extended offline caching, and MapIT has to honour it to be allowed to use the data at all.
What this means in practice: a map opened before setting off works for that trip with no phone and no signal. What does not work is loading an area once and expecting it to still be there a year later without the watch reconnecting in between. For a route where the map genuinely matters, opening the area shortly before leaving is the reliable habit.
Finding the device code
It is on the watch: open MapIT, and the code is twelve characters shown in groups of four. It is also encoded in the QR code the watch displays for purchase.
Redeeming a voucher code
Scanning the QR code on the watch opens the purchase page, which has a voucher field on it. The device code does not need typing in — it is already carried in the link.
A payment went through but the watch still says expired
Opening MapIT prompts it to check its licence. Activation usually completes within a few seconds of payment, but the watch only notices at its next check.
If it has been more than an hour, an email with the device code will sort it out. A payment that did not activate is the thing I drop everything for.
Refunds
Section 9 of the Terms is the full version. Briefly: duplicate or incorrect charges and technical failures at my end get refunded, and genuinely exceptional cases are worth asking about. A change of mind after the service has been used generally is not, because access starts immediately and that is confirmed at checkout.
Whether this will still be running next year
A reasonable thing to want to know about a small paid app.
MapIT is one person's project, and I am not going to pretend it is backed by a company that will outlive me. What I can point to is how it is built to fail safely. Access is sold as a service year with a fixed end date, so nobody is ever paid up far ahead for something that might not arrive, and no subscription is quietly renewing in the background.
What I will not claim is that the maps outlive the service. Tiles already on a watch keep working until they age out, and no longer — see below.
I only open the next service year once the map data behind it is paid for, so the question of whether it can be delivered is settled before anyone is charged.
What I can see about where a watch has been
Nothing. The watch fetches map tiles directly from the map provider, so those requests never reach my servers. There are no GPS tracks, no routes and no tile history. The Privacy Policy sets this out properly.