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Cellular forums Home > Archive > GPS > January 2006 > TomTom Support
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| Does anyone know if TomTom ever reply to customers who have wasted cash on
their products. Don't get me wrong, its not bad, but when it constantly
sends you to a place twenty or thirty miles from where you want to be, it
makes you doubt its capabilities somewhat.
I got the AA software which is really accurate finding postcode locations,
but the user interface is about five years behind TomTom's. The best thing I
got is the Navigator 4 I got on the laptop. Ok in the Transit, but not much
good in the car.
Anyone know if TomTom 5 is any good and do they offer a cut price upgrade to
poor unfortunates like me?
Cheers
Pete
| |
| Andrew 2005-11-12, 5:48 pm |
| On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:37:45 GMT, " Pete" <me@nomorespam.com> wrote:
>Does anyone know if TomTom ever reply to customers who have wasted cash on
>their products. Don't get me wrong, its not bad, but when it constantly
>sends you to a place twenty or thirty miles from where you want to be, it
>makes you doubt its capabilities somewhat.
It has never done that to me, I have never needed to contact support.
>Anyone know if TomTom 5 is any good and do they offer a cut price upgrade to
>poor unfortunates like me?
They were doing one, the Tomtom website would probably be a good place
to check current offers.
--
Andrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.
| |
|
| OK, cheers Andrew
I have looked at the TomTom site and sent them a couple of requests for
help. So far, zilch.
It never let me down until I used it to do some deliveries in West and Mid
Wales.
If you have three, ask it to Navigate you to Whitland, but do not specify a
street. It will actually send you to a place near Llanelli. Likewise if you
ask it to navigate you to Clynderwen, it will take you to the same place. If
you enter Newtown in Powys, it will navigate you to a place about twenty
miles to the South. Although, if you put a street in, it takes you to that
street, but do not rely on the truncated postcodes, if more than one
instance of a street name appears.
It has navigated me to Cities all over Scotland & England without any probs,
but most of the time I am looking for some place in West or Mid Wales.
Pete
"Andrew" <spamtrap@localhost.> wrote in message
news:82ecn1pfonl67pe
3n8nup474136ceq8lu5@
4ax.com...
> On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:37:45 GMT, " Pete" <me@nomorespam.com> wrote:
>
>
> It has never done that to me, I have never needed to contact support.
>
>
> They were doing one, the Tomtom website would probably be a good place
> to check current offers.
> --
> Andrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com
> Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
> please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
> Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.
| |
| Andrew 2005-11-12, 11:48 pm |
| On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:06:01 GMT, " Pete" <me@nomorespam.com> wrote:
>If you have three, ask it to Navigate you to Whitland, but do not specify a
>street. It will actually send you to a place near Llanelli. Likewise if you
>ask it to navigate you to Clynderwen, it will take you to the same place. If
>you enter Newtown in Powys, it will navigate you to a place about twenty
>miles to the South. Although, if you put a street in, it takes you to that
>street, but do not rely on the truncated postcodes, if more than one
>instance of a street name appears.
I don't use TTN3, I upgraded to 5 when it was released. I just did a
route to Whitland and it takes you to the town centre near the
station. Clynderwen takes you to an "Unnamed road" about 1/2 a mile NE
of the one pit pony town.
--
Andrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.
| |
| watchcat 2005-11-14, 5:49 pm |
| I have asked them for help a couple of times and got no reply at all. It was
hard enough just to find the online form to send the query. They don't want
to know you once you've handed over the money.
" Pete" <me@nomorespam.com> wrote in message
news:ZDqdf.8700$mF5.7174@newsfe4-gui.ntli.net...
> Does anyone know if TomTom ever reply to customers who have wasted cash on
> their products. Don't get me wrong, its not bad, but when it constantly
> sends you to a place twenty or thirty miles from where you want to be, it
> makes you doubt its capabilities somewhat.
>
> I got the AA software which is really accurate finding postcode locations,
> but the user interface is about five years behind TomTom's. The best thing
> I got is the Navigator 4 I got on the laptop. Ok in the Transit, but not
> much good in the car.
>
> Anyone know if TomTom 5 is any good and do they offer a cut price upgrade
> to poor unfortunates like me?
>
> Cheers
>
> Pete
>
| |
|
| Ok, cheers Andrew, I am still waiting for a reply from TomTom, but its only
been six days.
Great product (when it works), crap support.
"Andrew" <spamtrap@localhost.> wrote in message
news:poucn158kslflgf
k68gcih6af1b7ij3454@
4ax.com...
> On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:06:01 GMT, " Pete" <me@nomorespam.com> wrote:
>
>
> I don't use TTN3, I upgraded to 5 when it was released. I just did a
> route to Whitland and it takes you to the town centre near the
> station. Clynderwen takes you to an "Unnamed road" about 1/2 a mile NE
> of the one pit pony town.
> --
> Andrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com
> Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
> please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
> Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.
| |
| B. Peg 2005-11-14, 11:48 pm |
| > "watchcat" wrote:
> I have asked them for help a couple of times and got no reply at all. It
> was hard enough just to find the online form to send the query. They
> don't want to know you once you've handed over the money.
Heck, they don't even respond to you if you *want* to buy their product.
I've been waiting for over 6 months on their TomTom Rider thing for
motorcycles - even subscribed to their newsletter on it's arrival. It was
promised for early summer, then late summer, and now it finally appears
(maybe?) when it's getting too cold to ride and my summer trips have ended.
That and I just learned it appears to have a price tag of $1195 (it also
shows a price of $999 on another page, i.e. "In the Box" on their website,
so maybe they don't know how much it's worth?!). Add to that, not all
features are available in the U.S., especially in out of the way areas where
cyclists tend to travel away from urban sprawl. No thanks.
Too bad. They lost me for all their unfilled promises of delivery and being
overpriced for features it may not be ever capable of supplying.
Can't beat Garmin in my book.
B~
| |
| william@lowerknowle.com 2005-11-18, 11:48 pm |
| Pete wrote:[color=darkred
]
> OK, cheers Andrew
>
> I have looked at the TomTom site and sent them a couple of requests for
> help. So far, zilch.
>
> It never let me down until I used it to do some deliveries in West and Mid
> Wales.
>
> If you have three, ask it to Navigate you to Whitland, but do not specify a
> street. It will actually send you to a place near Llanelli. Likewise if you
> ask it to navigate you to Clynderwen, it will take you to the same place. If
> you enter Newtown in Powys, it will navigate you to a place about twenty
> miles to the South. Although, if you put a street in, it takes you to that
> street, but do not rely on the truncated postcodes, if more than one
> instance of a street name appears.
>
> It has navigated me to Cities all over Scotland & England without any probs,
> but most of the time I am looking for some place in West or Mid Wales.
>
> Pete
>
> "Andrew" <spamtrap@localhost.> wrote in message
> news:82ecn1pfonl67pe
3n8nup474136ceq8lu5@
4ax.com...
I believe the upgrade offer ended on 30th October. TomTom msy offer you
a late upgrade, otherwise your only option would be to buy the new 300
unit.
In my view, 5 is a substantial improvement, and resolves pretty much
all of the faults in 3. It has:
- Full postcode resolution (brilliant);
- Navigate to City Centre (great for when you need to get to the centre
of a strange town, but you don't know any street names);
- Street names are limited to those within the previously entered town
(a big failing in v3);
- Improved map browsing;
- Improved route previewing (including a full play-through);
- Itineraries (i.e. multi-stop routes);
- Updated and more accurate mapping.
All-in-all, well worth the upgrade cost, and perhaps even worth the
replacement cost.
--
WH
| |
|
| In message <1132360101.369998.184550@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>,
william@lowerknowle.com wrote
>In my view, 5 is a substantial improvement, and resolves pretty much
>all of the faults in 3. It has:
>- Full postcode resolution (brilliant);
Was that a fault in TT3? Anyway, there was a third party utility that
worked with TT3 that gave full UK post code lookup. It took a lot less
memory space than the TT implementation..
>- Navigate to City Centre (great for when you need to get to the centre
>of a strange town, but you don't know any street names);
TT 3 did that with ease. You cleared the previous entry and put the name
of the town/city in the first field. For villages navigation was to the
pub/church. For towns it was the high street or train station.
In TT5 there is an unnecessary extra menu item to do this.
>- Street names are limited to those within the previously entered town
>(a big failing in v3);
TT5 has failings in this respect especially if you don't know the name
of a district within a large town or city.
>- Improved map browsing;
Er, I don't see much difference.
>- Improved route previewing (including a full play-through);
TT3 did this - TT5 5 is limited to 80 miles.
TT3 required one less menu as it was possible to route journeys without
the need for the GPS to be connected.
>- Itineraries (i.e. multi-stop routes);
Agreed - but TT5 is not perfect.
>- Updated and more accurate mapping.
Updated maps yes, more accurate maps no. The maps are still years out of
date.
>
>All-in-all, well worth the upgrade cost, and perhaps even worth the
>replacement cost.
>
Debatable. If TT had provided updated maps for TT3 I would still be
using TT3 because in my view many of the features they removed in the
TT3 to TT5 upgrade were a lot more useful that the ones they added. I
was already using full postcode lookup and POI warnings via third party
software with TT3.
TT3 was less buggy than TT5
--
Alan
news2005 {at} amac {dot} f2s {dot} com
| |
| Nospam@nowhere.com 2005-11-19, 5:48 pm |
| Apparently on date Sat, 19 Nov 2005 01:37:44 +0000, Alan
<junk_reply@amac.f2s.com> said:
>In message <1132360101.369998.184550@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>,
>william@lowerknowle.com wrote
>
>
>
>Was that a fault in TT3? Anyway, there was a third party utility that
>worked with TT3 that gave full UK post code lookup. It took a lot less
>memory space than the TT implementation..
>
>
>TT 3 did that with ease. You cleared the previous entry and put the name
>of the town/city in the first field. For villages navigation was to the
>pub/church. For towns it was the high street or train station.
>
>In TT5 there is an unnecessary extra menu item to do this.
>
>
>TT5 has failings in this respect especially if you don't know the name
>of a district within a large town or city.
TT5 has a major failing in this respect. With Destinator, you have a string of
options to use besides the default city/street/house that most things assume.
If you don't know which town, there being a number of districts which might be
"city", you can just tell Destinator to give you the option for
street/city/house instead.
Then you pick the most likely city from the list of those that contain a street
of that name. Not enormously useful for "station road", there being no end of
them all over the place. But absolutely crucial when you want to navigate to
Georges Hill, in Hazlemere. It's not in Hazlemere, seemingly, and nor is it in
Holmer Green, which is sort of a district there. Those are the only real
alternatives, and it is genuinely on the map there in western Hazlemere. You
just can't tell TT5 which town it is in, so you can't select it to go there.
If you know where it is, of course, you can use the map to select "navigate to
here". But most of the places I use the navigator for, are places that I don't
know where they are in the first place.
>
>TT3 did this - TT5 5 is limited to 80 miles.
Haven't noticed that.
>TT3 required one less menu as it was possible to route journeys without
>the need for the GPS to be connected.
Now that's a feature TT5 could do with again. Destinator (which I was using
before) didn't create issues there at all - it would just route from where you
last had a fix and reroute if necessary.
>
>Agreed - but TT5 is not perfect.
Unfortunately, itineraries used to be optimisable, but that facility seems to
have been left out in TT5.
IOW, you can't enter a string of addresses and ask it to find a sensible route
that re-orders the list to optimise mileage or speed.
>
>Updated maps yes, more accurate maps no. The maps are still years out of
>date.
A gigantic failing in the mapping is where a road is cut. E.g. there is a road
in Flackwell Heath, Fennels Way. It is shown as joined to Swains Lane (the road
coming into the town from the north). It is linked to the west end of the
village by St Hilda's Way.
Fennels Way is also connected to Heath End Road (the road leading out of the
town to the west) by Oakland Way, and also Bernards Way.
Naturally, with all these connections, most routes in this area will utilise
Fennels Way.
A good thing, on paper. However, since these roads were built, I gather, they
have been divided by bollards, pavement, hedge, and even an allotment. There is
only one way into Fennels Way, and that's from Swains Lane. That's also the
only way out, so having crawled along the dozens of large speed humps in
Fennels Way to the far end to find yourself trapped, and been rerouted to each
of the other dead ends there are there, you now retrace your route back to
Swains Lane to discover you now have to turn right across the main road in and
out of Flackwell Heath to the north, which is not trivial. In the end, it works
out easier to turn left, and find someway to get back to where you started,
whereupon TT5 will now tell you to turn right again, and won't find an
alternative route that avoids any of the roadblocks either if you are heading
to the west of the village, until you more or less got there yourself.
This problem is not isolated to Flackwell Heath, of course, another popular
route, when you get to the North of FH, (from either direction) is to guide you
into Beech Road because that cuts the corner off on virtually any north/south
route through Wycombe Marsh. Sadly, Beech Road has a bollard-protected river
halfway along. Better yet, there's nowhere to turn round on one side of the
river so you have to reverse all the way back onto the main road, all the while
cursing TT5 for the lack of a user-defined roadblock function, unless there is
one that I've not noticed, all contributions gratefully received.
Anyway, these not actually joined roads are an absolute pain when the routing
takes you through them all the time, and it's mainly down to poor map data -
which is not entirely TT's fault but may well have something to do with the
price paid for the data, i.e. different levels of information cost more. It
would be fair enough to have different priced products, on this one, and also
to have the facility to add and share across the Net, personally identified
data of this sort so we could update maps ourselves rather than relying on
1990's maps with fairly major errors in them.
>TT3 was less buggy than TT5
I went from Destinator to TT5. A lot of the functionality I was used to,
vanished. Map data is fairly similar - slightly more detail and accuracy in D3
but bizarrely, a number of map errors that were fixed from D1 in the D2
version, came back again in D3 so there's not much to choose between them
there, as far as I can see.
At least TT5 doesn't say "turn left" on every roundabout, regardless of which
direction you actually want to go (yes I *know* the first thing you do on a
roundabout is turn left, but...)
There are some major usability issues with serial ports here, but I'm thinking
these are probably down to using a Dell Axim X.5 which gets all puzzled when it
isn't ActiveSync happening there. Mind you, Destinator seems to have less grief
over this function.
| |
| william@lowerknowle.com 2005-11-19, 5:48 pm |
| Alan wrote:
> In message <1132360101.369998.184550@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>,
> william@lowerknowle.com wrote
>
>
>
> Was that a fault in TT3? Anyway, there was a third party utility that
> worked with TT3 that gave full UK post code lookup. It took a lot less
> memory space than the TT implementation..
>
>
> TT 3 did that with ease. You cleared the previous entry and put the name
> of the town/city in the first field. For villages navigation was to the
> pub/church. For towns it was the high street or train station.
>
> In TT5 there is an unnecessary extra menu item to do this.
>
>
> TT5 has failings in this respect especially if you don't know the name
> of a district within a large town or city.
>
>
> Er, I don't see much difference.
>
>
> TT3 did this - TT5 5 is limited to 80 miles.
>
> TT3 required one less menu as it was possible to route journeys without
> the need for the GPS to be connected.
>
>
>
> Agreed - but TT5 is not perfect.
>
>
> Updated maps yes, more accurate maps no. The maps are still years out of
> date.
>
>
> Debatable. If TT had provided updated maps for TT3 I would still be
> using TT3 because in my view many of the features they removed in the
> TT3 to TT5 upgrade were a lot more useful that the ones they added. I
> was already using full postcode lookup and POI warnings via third party
> software with TT3.
>
> TT3 was less buggy than TT5
My apologies, I was referring to the upgraded TomTom Go software (from
v4 to v5). This is a substantial improvement exactly as I stated. None
of the listed options were available in the original Go, either as
standard or add-on. I think the original Go was a good but flawed unit.
With the v5 upgrade, it's now an excellent unit.
I can't comment on pre-5 versions of Navigator, as I have no experience
of those, outside of the Go unit. I do have Navigator-5 on an Ipaq, and
I'm very happy with it.
--
WH
| |
| larry.gold@ntlworld.com 2006-01-29, 5:48 pm |
| TT5 with the postcode i find works OK
I would say out of 10 journeys it will get you there on 8 ot of 10
And you could get a upgrade not sure if you still can
On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:37:45 GMT, " Pete" <me@nomorespam.com> wrote:
>Does anyone know if TomTom ever reply to customers who have wasted cash on
>their products. Don't get me wrong, its not bad, but when it constantly
>sends you to a place twenty or thirty miles from where you want to be, it
>makes you doubt its capabilities somewhat.
>
>I got the AA software which is really accurate finding postcode locations,
>but the user interface is about five years behind TomTom's. The best thing I
>got is the Navigator 4 I got on the laptop. Ok in the Transit, but not much
>good in the car.
>
>Anyone know if TomTom 5 is any good and do they offer a cut price upgrade to
>poor unfortunates like me?
>
>Cheers
>
>Pete
>
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