Review by Hazwaste for Zoombak ZMBK200 Advanced GPS Car and Family Locator
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This device seems to work fine when using Zoombak’s web site to do a location search. The device can not be placed somewhere that heavily shields it from the outside, or it will not get a good cellular and/or GPS signal.

The zone feature is the area where it’s just not delivering as advertised. Once you’ve set up a zone, it is supposed to alert you when the device enters or exits the zone. Sometimes it doesn’t alert you at all. When it does alert you, the alerts are sent 15 to 20 minutes after the device has entered/exited the zone, instead of sending it within a minute or two. If you enter and exit the zone within that 15 to 20 minute window you don’t get an alert at all.

This is not how it is portrayed on their little advertisement video.

Lastly, good luck on reaching a level 1 tech support staffer who speaks understandable English. This part is extremely frustrating. Why companies who provide tech support to English-speaking countries don’t make mastery of the English language a requirement is beyond comprehension. I guess political correctness is more important than a satisfactory customer experience.

Review by Richard W. Hill for Zoombak ZMBK200 Advanced GPS Car and Family Locator
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It has been a real challenge dealing with Zoombak. I was initially excited when I learned of their product. I am currently using TomTomWork for GPS tracking of our personal vehicles, which runs $500 per tracking unit, plus installation and $50.00 per month tracking fee, per unit, which adds up quickly.

Zoombak’s “claimed” capabilities along with lower month tracking fee prices ($14.99), seemed to be more cost effective then TomTomWork’s program.

I attempted to order from Zoombak directly via their website ( $249 per unit). Their web site declined two (2) different credit cards. I called Zoombak directly (Daniel), they weren’t able to authorize them either. I called my credit card companies, they never received any authorization request from Zoombak, they said that there should be no problem. I called Zoombak back, Anna the first agent that I spoke to did not speak English very well. I asked to speak to her supervisor, the supervisor’s English was worse than Anna’s! She basically said the it was my problem not Zoombak’s.

So being discouraged but still wanting the device as any “early adapter” would, I searched the internet and found it on Amazon for $60.00 cheaper, I bought it, there was no problem with my credit card! It was delivered yesterday.

I went to Zoombak’s website, created my account, paid the activation fee.

I charged up the device for 6 hours and turned it on. Zoombak’s system was not able to connect to the device, after about 10 attempts of trying to connect to the device (the unit was placed out in the yard of my metropolitan city). I called Zoombak’s tech support, Felipe (limited English) told me that new units are sometimes difficult the 1st time connecting. He suggested that I turn it off and back on and wait 30 minutes for the “Que” to clear out and try it again. If that doesn’t work to call back. Well, it didn’t work!

I called Tech support again, I didn’t get the girls name (limited English also). She told me that her supervisor would contact me within 24-48 hours! I tried to ask her some direct questions, she didn’t understand me, she was defiantly reading from a script.

Pros – nice looking unit, not sure if it works or not.

Cons – their customer service leaves a lot to be desired, 5 phone calls, 1 person spoke English. 24 hours later and numerous attempts to connect and the unit still will not connect to their system.

Hopefully Zoombak will get their bugs worked out and consider hiring a better talent pool of customer service agents that speak English.

Review by J. Vercellone for Zoombak ZMBK200 Advanced GPS Car and Family Locator
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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.

Review by Jennifer Terry for Zoombak ZMBK200 Advanced GPS Car and Family Locator
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My husband bought one of these in town for $100 but I made him return it and found it for $39 w/free shipping online. Boy, am I glad I did! We put this little piece of junk in the back window of my son’s car, (within full view of the sky, as the instructions will tell you) and it hardly works. The site is very slow to show you the location of the device, has a hard time finding it at all, can’t track in real time, is extremely slow sending email alerts. By the time I get an alert, my son has long since arrived at his destination and I’ve spent way too long wondering where he is. It’s even supposed to tell you how fast the device is moving, (say, in a car), but if it displays this information, it’s too old to do anything about and it really only gives you a snapshot of what’s going on, not ongoing information. Don’t be thinking you’ll be able to find a lost dog with it. You might eventually be shown a general location but by then the dog would have moved on. And all this wondrous information can be had for a monthly subscription fee! Yay! Oh, and by the way, I live in Columbus, Ohio, not the middle of nowhere.

Oh, and don’t suppose you’re going to buy one to give it a try, then sell to some other poor, unsuspecting sap. The only way to transfer it is to “authorize” someone to be a user on the account. THEY can then change the password and redirect the billing. But wait! What if they don’t redirect it? Then you’ll still get the bills AND be locked out of the account! Woo hoo! It had better be someone you really trust! So I guess this will go in the trash and be a $40 lesson.

What a great idea this seemed at the outset. Too bad the execution is so poor at this point. A more expensive device is probably the best idea. I’m sure the technology COULD be had cheaply, but will not be for a while. The companies stand to make too much money right now. I’m completely and utterly disappointed. Give this one a pass.

Review by Michael J. Pacheco for Zoombak ZMBK200 Advanced GPS Car and Family Locator
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REUPDATE 06/04/2010:

Cancelled today. I had to provide no less than 5 verification items and customer account representative still seemed unsure I was account holder… and this was even before they knew I was cancelling. I think they really want to stop the “black market” on their units. No fee since I have had it well over 12 months. New things I have learned since original review:

Unit is fairly heat sensitive and will stop working if in direct sunlight.

The unit just couldn’t be updated during one of their infamous update cycles. They did exchange for a new one at no cost.

I have downgraded review to a 3… I got my use out of it, “But”, reliability was a continued problem… frequent outages and/or missed notifications during zone transitions. YMMV.

Cancelled account units are declared worthless and technically cannot be reused by others.

Last but not least they are very aggressive on customer retention, I intend to watch closely and make sure account really does cancel.

UPDATE 05/12/2009:

Since two weeks ago, this device has suddenly started to barely work (three locates in 10+ days, when it should have had 40+ due to zone transits). Nothing has changed in it’s environment. Call to support did give a 1 month credit (thanks) and an indication they were in the midst of a system upgrade that was to complete this last weekend. Unfortunately, no change. Will be calling again.

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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.

Review by Dr. AJ for Escort Entourage PS Kit-0019 GPS Vehicle Tracker (Black)
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I have no problem recommending this product. It has worked as advertised and met all my expectations. The pricing is a little high, but as I’ve learned (read my Zoombak disaster) you get what you pay for. I keep this device in an enclosed trailer for some added security, and when the battery gets low, you are notified. You have unlimited locates, and the shock and perimeter functions work flawlessly as well.

Great product.–aj