My email exchanges with TT customer support

Peter Kessler

Thought you'd be interested to see how my efforts to report map errors have proceeded. Tele Atlas are clearly the disgrace here, but TT could take a tougher line with them...

Customer 16/06/2005 12.43 PM
Hi - I reported approximately 40 incorrectly named streets in North London through your site three days ago. The form said that I would receive a confirmation email for every one of my reports. But I have had no such confirmation. Please send the acknowledgements as soon as possible, as I have no other record of the streets I reported. Many thanks.

Response 20/06/2005 01.49 PM
Dear Mr. Kessler,

Thank you for reporting these map errors.

On the form, as far as I can tell, it does not say that you should receive an email confirmation for reporting a map error. Even though you have not received confirmations, please rest assured that the errors have been reported.

There is no way for us to access these reports manually and send confirmations to you.

With best regards,

The TomTom Customer Support Team

Customer 20/06/2005 01.54 PM
You have not examined your own form carefully enough. AFTER submitting a map error, the following message appears:

'Thank you for taking time to report your comments on the map data of your TomTom product. Your feedback will be sent to our Supplier of Map data, Tele Atlas. You will receive a confirmation receipt of your feedback.'

So please give me the confirmation receipts for EACH AND EVERY ONE of my map error reports.

Thank you

Response 20/06/2005 02.17 PM
Dear Mr. Kessler,

You're quite right, I stand corrected.

However, I just looked into this for you, and the form that is used to report map errors links straight to the company that provides our maps - TeleAtlas. Any confirmation email would have come from them, not us. Also, the confirmation email would have been a 'standard' reply, something like 'Thank you for reporting this error', and would not detail the precise map error you have reported.

I understand that you would like to have receipts for these map error reports, but I'm afraid there is no way that these can be provided by us.

With best regards,

The TomTom Customer Support Team

Customer 20/06/2005 02.38 PM
Thanks for the quick response. I appreciate it.

But I've not received ANY confirmation email from TeleAtlas - detailed or not. Confirmation of receipt is a vital stage in the process of improvement.

So please would you provide me with direct contact details to the relevant person at TeleAtlas, so that I can establish whether or not they have received my reports. NB I do not mean contact via their website. If you cannot give me contact details, please explain why not.

This is why direct contact with a person at Tele Atlas is important:

TeleAtlas's website has a section for reporting map errors. It begins with these words: 'Tele Atlas support is unmatched in the industry - when you offer the best products and services, you must match them with the best support.' It then does NOT EVEN OFFER TOMTOM AS AN OPTION for making a report.

With thanks

Response 20/06/2005 02.50 PM
Dear Mr. Kessler,

I am sorry, but here at Customer Support we do not have the personal contact details of those responsible for these matters within TeleAtlas.

I know this is not the answer you are looking for, but I'm afraid there really is nothing I can do for you, other than recommend that you take it up directly with TeleAtlas through, dare I say it, their website.

With best regards,

The TomTom Customer Support Team

Customer 20/06/2005 03.05 PM
Does anyone in the TomTom organisation have contact with TeleAtlas? If so, please give me that person's contact details.

If you do not know, I am sure that you, as a TomTom employee, can find out.

Thanks again. I am pursuing this as it is a matter of importance for the quality of TTN, and I appreciate your shared concern.

Response 20/06/2005 03.11 PM
Dear Mr. Kessler,

I'll look into this, and see if I can find out more for you.

I'll get back to you as soon as I know more.

With best regards,

The TomTom Customer Support Team

BadTasteUK · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 30, 2004 Posts: 9

You GO for it! You ought to replace that Nicky Campbell bloke on Watchdog! :D
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BadTasteUK / TT7 on SE Xperia X1 / Maidenhead, UK

Tim Buxton · Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2005 11:29 pm Post subject:

Is this the form you are linked to? If so, every time I've submitted a report, I get a nine character reference number for it, but it only comes up on the screen once and when you navigate away from that page, that's it. (I guess you can go 'back' to it.)

I've taken to copying these references and saving them in a text file. If you click on the form where it says View Request status and then input this reference "W346quo47" without the quotes and click on Get status, it will take you to a report I submitted almost exactly a year ago.

Not good news to see that it is still Under treatment. Sad

If you click on Gatwick Tesco.jpg on the status page, you will see that it's not too hard to put right. The black road leads to a BUPA hospital!
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Tim

Peter Kessler · Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2005 11:54 pm Post subject:

That's a navigation cd report form on TeleAtlas's site. It doesn't permit reporting on PDA navigation. And TeleAtlas's section for PDA navigation doesn't allow you to report on TomTom.

Tim Buxton · Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2005 3:19 am Post subject:

Oops, sorry, wrong form. It's here. You can select Tomtom from this form (there are options for Tomtom, Tomtom GO, TomtomPalm, Tomtom 2 and Tomtom 3 if you select Great Britain in the Country field. You don't get these options if you select United Kingdom.
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Tim

Peter Kessler · Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2005 7:59 am Post subject:

Thanks, Tim. Didn't notice that particular quirk of the 'unmatched support' system.

Private · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 27, 2004 Posts: 39

The same thing happend to me!
I've reported 3 errors in Portugal and Spain 11 months ago on TT3 and TT5 has the exact same errors!!!!

Peter Kessler · Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2005 11:03 pm Post subject:

Today TomTom came back to me with the phone number of a UK representative, Serena Hamilton. I had a long chat with her, and although she sympathised she said that her role was liaising with client companies, not map errors. She referred me to Navshop, which is I think the retail front end of TeleAtlas. There I spoke to a Dutch man, Jochen Burtscheidt, who told me that it is, after all, TomTom's responsibility to respond to map error reports.

I read him the TomTom support staff's response on this subject, and he also sympathised with the situation. He explained that it is possible that TomTom even now are not using the most up-to-date maps, as the newest ones are very expensive. (He has no evidence for this.)

He also told me that the map development department is in Harsum, Germany, and even his own department can never get through to them. He even said that the customers' frustration was sometimes mirrored within the TeleAtlas organisation. He could not give me any number for the Harsum office.

So I found the number for Harsum, but rather than call them I decided to try sending an email directly to Alain de Taeye, CEO of TeleAtlas. Found a possible email for him, and sent it off this evening, telling him what sort of impression his company is making amongst its customers.

Let's hope I got the right Alain.

Peter Kessler · Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 11:08 am Post subject:

Got a reply from Alain de Taeye, and I'm glad to say I've also had a call from TeleAtlas confirming the map errors have at least been registered.

Here's de Taeye's response:

Dear Peter,

I take your remarks very serious and promise that you will be contacted directly by our European staff to get the error report information and to follow up on this.
Thank you for letting me know. As an aside, I would appreciate if you would use my TeleAtlas e-mail for further communication on this as I do not read my private e-mail as frequently as my business e-mail.

Friendly regards

semitone · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 11, 2005 Posts: 7

Keep up the good work Peter.

I think most of us accept that there will always be some errors, but there is no excuse for major roads to be missed and mistakes on motorway junctions etc.

Gadjet · Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 1:44 pm Post subject:

Well Done!

Most people would not take it that far.

Being a born (cynic) realist I beleive that Tomtom probably haven't updated the mapping data to the latest level because of their new PLUS services and map updates in the future, if we had the latest map data then they would cost Tomtom more and possibly lose short term future revenue from map updates.

Then again I might be wrong ........ :D

Gadjet
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www.gadjetsblog.blogspot.com

Peter Kessler · Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 1:54 pm Post subject:

I suspect the same. But Google maps also have all the same errors, so even if the Google maps are newer than TomTom's they still need correcting.

Spoke this morning to Edwin Scholle at TeleAtlas, who said that the teleAtlas data will be updated in their next version, but that it's TomTom's responsibility to choose whether they want to make it available to users.

MikeIB · Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 2:14 pm Post subject:

Reading this topic reminded me that I had subitted three error reports in June 2004. So I checked out their status and guess what.... they're all "under treatment". Hardly seems worth the effort to report the errors, even more so if TomTom don't decide to use the latest maps.

Peter Kessler · Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 2:25 pm Post subject:

Have you checked Google maps to see if your errors have been corrected?

MikeIB · Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 3:46 pm Post subject:

I've checked Google Maps. One of the locations correctly does not show a mini roundabout when TomTom did (but perhaps you can't see mini roundabounts on a google map?), another looks like it now correctly shows the revised junction layout, and the third still doesn't show the one way system I reported.

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