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TomTom Live Fuel Prices - Wildly Innaccurate!

 
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mcstorm
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Joined: Dec 17, 2009
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 4:55 pm    Post subject: TomTom Live Fuel Prices - Wildly Innaccurate! Reply with quote

Hi all,
Looking for some advice...

I've just bought myself a TomTom Go Live 550 at the pricely sum of £240. One of the main reasons for choosing this model was the Fuel Prices feature. Unfortunately the given fuel prices are wildly innaccurate!

I'm being told there's about 10 petrol stations in my area selling Unleaded at under £1 per litre, clearly this is not the case! Rolling Eyes

What's the script with this?

Any ideas? Shocked
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mikealder
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 6:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The fuel prices are often out of date or wildly over optomistic in terms of quoting far cheaper than is actually the price you pay at the pump, to be honest the service is a waste of time IMHO if I need fuel I pull over and fuel up, the odd pence saved here and there simply isn't worth the hastle and I don't have time to drive around to save 1P/L - Mike
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Don_Coyote
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 7:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Saving a penny a litre over a period of time will add up!

I have got onto technical support at TomTom trying to resolve the issue and this was their response:

"The fuel prices are updated once every 5 days and therefore can be up to 5 days old. However if the prices are more than 5 days out of date, please if possible fill in the information below. As you have said in your previous email, I know it is difficult to record exact locations etc, however any details that you could possibly provide would be greatly appreciated as all this data is passed on and it means we can resolve this matter as quickly as possible.

Thank you for your patience in this matter.

Fuel Station details:-

- City, Country:
- Street:
- Postcode:
- Lat/Long:

Fuel Price details:-

- Price reported on device:
- Observed on device on: [date/time]

- Price advertised at the station:
- Observed at the station on: [date/time]"



The problem seems to be with either their data supplier or the software is failing to ignore data that is more than 10 days old. I am not in a position to drive to each incorrect station to do the work of their data supplier, I suggested that they compare their data with that supplied by petrolprices.com.

The best approach would probably be if more people filed a fault with technical support, that way they might try and rectify the problem.
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andyhayes
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 11:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I just got a 940 and experienced just the same on a trip to Liverpool and back today. Must just be rubbish data to the point of worthlessness.

Would be a good feature if you could rely on it.

Andy
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DennisN
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 12:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Don_Coyote wrote:
Saving a penny a litre over a period of time will add up!

Only if you don't drive "there" to get it! How many miles will you get for 1p? How many 1ps will you need to get one mile?

My diesel van is fairly economical (the way I drive - gently, mostly) and for the 85,000 miles it's done, the fuel cost is 7.61p a mile (worked out over total cost for total miles). That's excluding VAT, so say 8.75p at today's VAT rate, 8.94p at January's coming rate. So divert one mile off route to get fuel and I must save 9p to make it worth while (say 10 litres at 1p cheaper - so my tankful of 45 litres could give me 45p - that's only just over one third of a litre). Like Mike, I fill up when I have to, at a garage at the side of the road I'm on. Often, I fill up at my local garage, which just happens to be on one of my most frequent homecoming or outbound routes and is also the cheapest fuel around here for several miles. But there are times when I fill up on the motorway - ouch, but at most losing the price of about 4 litres.

Frankly, when the price of fuel goes up by 2p I hardly notice it in my overall running costs. If I had paid consistently 2p a litre more for all my fuel this year, my running costs would have gone up by 0.17p a mile. If I had consistently saved 1p a litre, it would have reduced my running costs by 0.09p a mile. Some economies just ain't so.

Edit to add Sorry, I should have said I get average of 54.68mpg, say 12 miles per litre. Mileage since April this year 37,000 (had four weeks off on two holidays).
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If it tastes good - it's fattening.

Two of them are obesiting!!
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MikeB
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 1:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I needed some petrol the other day so I thought I would give the old 940 a chance to send me to the cheapest station around. Best price given was 83p a litre, worst was around 87p...

The data was more like 5 years old not 5 days!!! Evil or Very Mad
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DennisN
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 9:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Not bad memory Mike. On 18th December 2004 my fill up of diesel cost 84.9p a litre.
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Dennis

If it tastes good - it's fattening.

Two of them are obesiting!!
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Daggers
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 2:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The easiest way to find the cheapest petrol in an area is to use www.petrolprices.com. It's updated more regularly than TomTom even claim to update their figures.
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mikero
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 5:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

andyhayes wrote:
I just got a 940 and experienced just the same on a trip to Liverpool and back today.
Andy


That is quite an achievement! Actually returning from Liverpool and still being in possession of your SatNav!!
By the way, I am originally from Liverpool, just in case others are offended!
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tenorplayer
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 5:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Im from the wirral and get fed up of these stereotyped "jokes" perpetuating a myth.
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MrT
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 6:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Even if the prices are wrong, it is often the same garages in an area which have the cheapest petrol.
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DennisN
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 8:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Out of interest, when I wanted to fill up this morning I checked with my TT XLLive and it said my local garage diesel was 107p. When I got there, it was 106.9p which looks pretty accurate to me. It has fluctuated around this price for some time now, so I can't say it was today's price or a fornight ago's!

In passing, does anybody else get the same impression as me? When I do Google Search for places near me, it seems to give the distance as the crow flies - has meant a longish drive to somewhere less than half a mile away, but at the other side of a river or railway with no nearby bridge!! Rolling Eyes
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If it tastes good - it's fattening.

Two of them are obesiting!!
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AndyVaughan
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 8:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I use LPG and over the last 4 months the prices have been pretty accurate. As the price of LPG can vary by more than 10p per litre, I find the feature very beneficial when you are only paying approx 50p a litre if you choose the right place to fill up with 60l of LPG.

Edit: Just checked now and it is showing the cheapest near to me as 56p per litre, which is accurate as I filled up there yesterday at that price.
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Andy_P
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 10:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've got a complaint in with TT about this at the moment....


Quote:
Fuel prices in the UK are dreadful!

1.
The cheapest unleaded petrol I can get in the UK at the moment is around 107.9p
But my 940 ALWAYS has some "phantom" entries at the top of it's fuel prices list, suggesting that I can buy unleaded petrol at around 80-95p - I wish I could find them!
Following that are usually a load more entries that are still much cheaper than you'd ever find in reality. So you have to ignore anything that looks stupid.

For example, there are options to search "cheapest in area", "cheapest nearby" and "cheapest on route".
Looking just now, "cheapest nearby" has one BP station within 2.3 miles at £0.98 and the rest at £1.07p or £1.08p so you have to assume the first is wrong.
But if you look at "cheapest in area", it reckons the cheapest is at a a Tesco store 9.8 miles away at £0.81, and the next SEVEN are all under £0.90 and a total of 15 are under £1.

None of these are believable at all, and often the fuel stations with the cheap prices don't even exist!

So it's basically useless.

2.
Can someone explain this? When I go to check the fuel prices, it says on screen that it is downloading them from the server, but if I then connect to Home immediately after, one of the updates it offers is to download the fuel prices.
Is it doing the same thing twice?

3.
UK fuel prices are usually shown in pence and the price is almost always "something and point nine of a penny" so what we would see on the sign (and on the pump) is something like - "107.9p".
However, prices are shown on the TomTom in pounds and pence which is confusing and you've also no idea whether it has been rounded up or down, so when it says £1.07 you don't know whether it means 106.9p or 107.9p.

Please can the display be changed to match what we are used to seeing at the petrol stations and on the pumps themselves?
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