Open letter to TomTom about address lookup (Navigator 3 GB)

big_zippy · Posted: Mon May 17, 2004 10:34 am Post subject: Whoops...

I forgot to mention that I was a very satisfied user of TT2. Even the girlfriend liked it!

SpeedCam · Posted: Mon May 17, 2004 7:08 pm Post subject:

Big_zippy,

Like you a big fan of TT V2, TT must be the only technology girlfriends & wife's like. My wife is most upset or questions why we not using TT.

One thing I do find disappointing is that TT have a free and very knowledgeable team her at PocketGPS, but they either ignore them or refuse to use their skills. As a result I feel there is no excuse for them to release such a poor product.

BoPeep · Posted: Mon May 17, 2004 11:57 pm Post subject: Feedback On Open Letter

Hi David,

Not using a navigation system myself, I obviously have no 'first hand' experience with TTN3, but have been interested to read all the negative comments on the upgrade and have also seen some of the problems on my boyfriend's system.

Therefore I have decided to take the same action as everyone else on this thread and send a copy of your letter to TomTom in the hope that every little helps.

If I receive a response from them, I will post it here.

I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say thanks for writing that letter, as I'm sure it took a very long time to compose! Clap

Regards,

Bo Peep.
_________________
TomTom 730
HTC Desire - Co Pilot Live Premium (Europe)

BoPeep · Posted: Tue May 18, 2004 12:05 am Post subject:

Speedcam,

Nah, some of us like other forms of technology as well, and sometimes we even understand it too - amazing, isn't it!! Mr. Green

Bo Peep.
_________________
TomTom 730
HTC Desire - Co Pilot Live Premium (Europe)

BoPeep · Posted: Tue May 18, 2004 11:32 am Post subject: Reply from TomTom to open letter

Hi David,

I have just had an email response from TomTom regarding the copy of your open letter I sent them last night. They say:

Dear Ms ****,

We apologies for the delay and thank you for your patience,

Currently our developers are investigating this. We are trying to find a solution asap.

Please watch our website for information regarding this.

We hope to have answered your question to your satisfaction.
With best regards,

The TomTom Customer Support Team

Bo Peep.
_________________
TomTom 730
HTC Desire - Co Pilot Live Premium (Europe)

bagmans911 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 26, 2004 Posts: 31

I now have two automated responses, none answering the open letter in any way!! I keep going back and opening the question to TomTom, but they send an automated reply and close the question!!! Very frustrating!

BoPeep · Posted: Wed May 19, 2004 2:54 pm Post subject:

Me too!

I have just logged into My TomTom again and updated the question by adding, "This question remains unanswered in any way."

Let's see what they have to say to that, but my feelings are that it will be exactly the same response as I got before! Confused

However, if the response I got was automated, they might want to go through their standard reply with a fine toothed comb and a dictionary and correct the various spelling mistakes. Rolling Eyes

Bo Peep.
_________________
TomTom 730
HTC Desire - Co Pilot Live Premium (Europe)

DavidW · Posted: Wed May 19, 2004 7:25 pm Post subject:

They've gone one stage further with my question - it's completely disappeared from my My TomTom! Is that what others are seeing?

I'm at a bit of a loss. My aim was to send a detailed description of the problem and then get lots of support for that description in the hope that TomTom would then make some kind of response to me that I could report here so that no further complaints were needed. I would, of course, have needed some commitment from them that they were going to do something about this problem.

I'm not at all sure we've had any success, except that Customer Service no longer seems to be trying to explain the broken behaviour as correct, normal or acceptable. It seems that Customer Service are simply providing a "not answer" and marking the question as resolved. That closes tickets, but it doesn't fix problems or satisfy customers. We have really not had any firm commitment from TomTom to do anything - just "we're working on it, watch our web site". I've certainly had nothing from TomTom other than the largely empty replies to my original post and the follow-up comments I made.

I figured out a way that TomTom could change the Navigator 3 program that would help a lot. I ran the idea past Oldie, with his experience of co-ordinate manipulation and similar, and he feels it would help a lot and would be pretty easy for TomTom to implement.

It's very straightforward. If the Navigator program is changed to sort all identically named streets by ascending distance from the centre of whatever you entered as the "City", that will improve the situation tremendously. The database contains the centres of all the towns, cities and partial postcodes in it (as you'll find if you enter a blank street), which is all you need, so all the information needed for this is in the current maps.

This doesn't fix the broken behaviour - I still feel strongly that Navigator should have each street correctly classified by town/city and partial postcode, which can only be done by issuing a new database and hence new map CDs. However, it does mean that if you get 48 identically named streets in your search result, the answer you were after should be one of the top three results and is most likely the result at the top of the list of results. If the town or city is missing from the database, entering a nearby town or city with this proposed fix will still be better than simply entering a county name.

Oldie confirmed that computationally this is very straightforward, using the local flat earth approximation (which is all that's needed - an approximation to the 'as the crow flies' distance is all you need for each street to sort the results), and it's not likely to add significantly to the time taken to find and display the results.

What's the point, though, of me writing this in more formal language and sending it to TomTom under these circumstances? The question containing my suggested fix will simply be closed unless they're prepared to get into proper dialogue with me. I've no assurance that anything I've written so far has got to anyone who can make a decision to fix the problem, or is attempting to fix it.

I was a software engineer myself until I became too ill to work. I have experience of running a beta test program from the developer's side, also of dealing with support calls that were escalated by the technical support team (even in the small firm I worked for, genuine problems did land on the desks of the development team, of which I was one - we did tell customers when they'd helped us track down an issue, and what we were doing about it). In addition, I've alpha tested (under non-disclosure) for a large UK firm, and beta tested numerous pieces of software.

I have offered to make myself available to TomTom to help in any way I can, and that offer still holds. I'm happy to test any proposed solutions - I'll even go as far as entering into non-disclosure with them if it's necessary to do so. The fact that I'm writing about that offer, rather than saying nothing, tells you that they haven't taken me up on this.

I know there's potentially some bad PR in admitting to a problem, and maybe there's some cultural differences between the British and those at TomTom in the Netherlands. Right now, so far as I can see, TomTom are sticking their heads in the sand and I'm not happy. I've spent a lot of time trying to help them help us - for what good? We've got to the "known issues" list - but that doesn't really help anyone much.

Whilst I had suggested earlier that we should leave this with TomTom, I'm not sure that's now the right approach. Maybe people should return to them again and express their frustration at the lack of any firm commitment to do anything. You can always send another copy of the open letter if your original question was closed or deleted - it's not as if the post that contains it will wear out!

If TomTom would promise to review this issue at a senior level and get back to me with their thoughts about what they're going to do, we can all stop hassling them (which would ease their support burden), and they'll not have the negative sentiment in these forums about Navigator 3 that they currently have. I appreciate that a timescale for a fix may be impossible right now - but a promise that something will be done would be a helpful start.

I have lost track of how many times I have recommended TomTom Navigator and how much free support I've given TomTom users in these forums. I've not made any money out of this - my participation here is not paid by anyone, nor have I any financial interests in anything to do with GPS, navigation or Pocket PCs. Right now, I'm disillusioned with TomTom's response to this.

I'm open to any advice or suggestions on what I should do from here. Should I, for example, send a fax to TomTom addressed personally to the CEO?

David

BoPeep · Posted: Wed May 19, 2004 8:15 pm Post subject:

At the moment my support request is still open and the status is showing as updated. I am expecting that sometime in the next 24 hours I will receive a carbon copy of the reply I posted in my last post in this thread and then it will be closed again.

This is my first dealing with TomTom customer "support" and I have to say I am very unimpressed too! Evil or Very Mad

Their customer relations skills leave a lot to be desired... Obviously this is a very important issue to a substantial number of their customers and yet they choose to ignore it. They have obviously not read the book "How To Win Friends And Influence People," which is a very good read recommended to me by my boyfriend some years ago. This book would tell them that facing up to a mistake or problem and trying to rectify it wins more favour than denying it exists! Hmm, maybe I should send them a copy... Idea

Personally, I think you should go ahead with the fax David, as we seem to be getting nowhere by any other means. Sometimes it's better to go right to the top - they may sit up and take notice then. I will carry on doing my part and keep on sending them the letter every time they close my support request. I'm sure they will get bored of it soon, especially if everyone does the same, and they might eventually decide to look a bit closer at the situation, if only to stop the continuous emails! Wink

Bo Peep.
_________________
TomTom 730
HTC Desire - Co Pilot Live Premium (Europe)

dmac · Posted: Wed May 19, 2004 8:24 pm Post subject:

Send him an email David, his add can be found on TT homepage.
I have mailed him in the past and received prompt and helpful
response.

matt_e · Posted: Wed May 19, 2004 9:44 pm Post subject:

I am getting standard responses (not actually 'automatied' as the wording changes) that do not address the problem I have asked about. It's very annoying. I have just responded to 2 outstanding questions with "You do not seem to have understood my question...". I have just resubmitted all 3 of my open issues for a more adequate response.

grrrr Twisted Evil

Matt

tom9851 · Posted: Thu May 20, 2004 7:27 am Post subject:

David, I agree with both Laura and dmac that you SHOULD make e-mail/fax contact with the CEO at TomTom. I have to admit to being very surprised at the lack of progress on this issue. The response you received initially from TomTom after sending your letter led me to feel that there was going to be a positive outcome. I am a bit perplexed trying to understand what is going on because surely this problem is damaging their reputation and they must be losing business to their competitors.
If you feel that it would be helpful for us all to resend that letter to TomTom, perhaps it would be a good idea if you could make that request here so that we can all respond together and that surely will have a greater impact and perhaps that will make them sit up and start to take this issue more seriously! You have my support and the support of many others on this forum.

Tom

ahmurray · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 12, 2004 Posts: 15

Glad it's not just me.

I used TT2 fairly extensively and had no problems with it at all apart from the occasional street name it didn't recognise (understandable as they were mostly new)

Was particularly looking forward to the Postcode functionality in TT3, as I usually have the postcode of the places I need to find (clients or hotels)

Used TT3 in anger for the first time last week and found it sadly lacking - dropping the BT connection to my 2210 very regularly (always at a critical moment) and also the problem detailed in David's excellent post - I entered the first 4 characters of the postcode but was presented with a list of identical street names with totally different postcodes. I thought I was doing something wrong at the time, now I now its a TT3 issue.

Life is too short to keep upgrading drivers and patches - I reckon I will go back to TT2 and stay there till the above issues are fixed.

Ali

SpeedCam · Posted: Tue May 25, 2004 9:39 pm Post subject:

It looks like the Open Letter has failed and TomTom have no intention of fixing this.....

I think they have seriously under estimated the impact of this error, when I was a happy TT V2 customer I recommended their product to a number of friends who all purchased the product.

Since the release of TT V3 the same friends have asked me for my view, and as a result not purchased the upgrade.

TomTom's problems are only going to get worse, now they have introduced the Traffic functionallity, they have two different versions of the application to maintain and support. They are currently struggling with just one....

Syt · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 29, 2004 Posts: 16

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