Buying Used Garmin GPS Units- Transfer of registration
If you are currently looking at buying or selling your Garmin GPS unit please be aware of ownership/registration issues with Garmin. If the current owner has registered his GPS with Garmin then the new owner will have restrictions on upgrades until the registration has been changed. Once a unit is registered with Garmin it is associated with the owner. That owner can then upgrade the internal firmware and the maps whenever he likes. If he then sells the unit the new owner will not be able to do those upgrades until the registration with Garmin has been changed to the new owner. This is particularly important for those units that are supplied with the Map Source software. If the last owner has unlocked the software that means it has been registered with Garmin. The new owner can load the software but can not unlock it even with the unlock code because it is tied to a particular Garmin account of the last owner. Now, if none of this is important then you can use the GPS unit as your received it and it will get you from place to place just fine.

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This is not right. It is not necessary to register a Garmin unit neither for firmware update nor for map updates or other things. Even life time map update is possible without any registration.

Update 1/19/10

It has been pointed out to me by another ebay member that Garmin now allows transfer of registration through a simpler process. The present owner now only needs to log into thier My Garmin account and delete the registration for the unit they are selling. This will then allow the new owner to log into thier My Garmin account and register the GPS unit.

Update 12/1/11

I have been informed that the new Garmin GPS units that come with Lifetime maps and traffic have a restriction on ownership change. The lifetime services that are included with the unit are only valid to the original owner. If you sell the unit to someone elase they cannot get the included lifetime maps and will have to pay the one time fee to get the map subscription. All other registration restrictions discussed above are still valid.

Update 08/16/12

I have been informed that the newer units purchased with the included lifetime maps and/or traffic retain that subscription after transfer of ownership. Garmin will also help in locating the past owner of a GPS to transfer ownership and will transfer ownership in the event that the last owner cannot be contacted. Lifetime map and traffic subscriptions purchased after the purchase of the GPS unit are not transferable to the new owner. (This information is 3rd party and not verified).

I can only repeat: it is not necessary to register a Garmin unit
I never registered my Garmin devices, my nuvi 2495 LMT too and can use lifetime map update via LifetimeUpdater, mapUpdater or GarminExpress without any problems.
If I sell my unit a new user can use it like me, because Garmin never gets to know that the owner has changed.

The announcements above are only only for seperate purchased subscriptions for maps or other things - not for subscriptions that has been sold with a unit.