How do you find an address if you don't know the area?

jweaver · Regular Visitor Joined: Apr 11, 2005 Posts: 135

I have been using TomTom for a couple of years and have a question that I never thought of asking!

How do you find an address, when you don't know the district that its in..

For example, lets take "Court Road" in Bristol.. If you look under 'Bristol' its not there.. Its actually in 'Kingswood'.. But how would you know this, unless you knew the area.

In most cases, you do know the full address, but its not too much of a problem... But this week I was going to "Burlington Ave" in "Kew", but couldn't find it. Since I knew where it was, I had to 'Browe Map" to find it.

It turns out that "Burlington Ave" is in RICHMOND not Kew (Atleast according to TomTom)..

So how do you get around this? I am amazed that there isnt' some kind of search facility in TomTom?

Has anyone got any tips to work around this?

Jon

DennisN · Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 11:00 am Post subject:

Good one Jon. I occasionally get the same problem myself and it's a nightmare for a whitevanman delivering. Often, a road will show itself as "in" the town - I can sometimes get a suburban road from the urban city, e.g. Bristol .. Court Road, but a problem if it's not unique - may the saints protect me from High Street!!
Navigate to Bristol ... Court Road gives a choice of BS7, BS15, BS30 and BS36 and as a "local", I wouldn't know which is the right one, so anyone from outside stands little chance. I tried London ... Burlington Avenue and got zilch.

I hope somebody has a good tip for this one. The only ones I have are to ask the consignor for the postcode or the phone number of the consignee. Usually, the plonkers don't have either!!
_________________
Dennis

If it tastes good - it's fattening.

Two of them are obesiting!!

46jimbo · Regular Visitor Joined: Apr 24, 2005 Posts: 185

This is a major flaw in the TomTom system. I have run into the problem around the Toronto region where the map uses municipality names that aren't the same as the postal address!

I believe that with the Garmin, you input the street BEFORE inputting the city. This way, you get a list of places that have that street and you can search through it, if you need to.

jweaver · Regular Visitor Joined: Apr 11, 2005 Posts: 135

[quote="DennisN"] I can sometimes get a suburban road from the urban city, e.g. Bristol .. Court Road, but a problem if it's not unique - may the saints protect me from High Street!!
Navigate to Bristol ... Court Road gives a choice of BS7, BS15, BS30 and BS36 and as a "local"quote]

Can you explain how you did this.. I know that its BS15, so this would certainly help.. But following your post, I can't actually work out what you are doing to get this list of options!

Jon

Oldboy · Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 3:25 pm Post subject:

jweaver · Regular Visitor Joined: Apr 11, 2005 Posts: 135

Ahhhhh.. So there it is.. The first reason to upgrade to TomTom6.

I am still using TomTom 5 because I have a Palm (Yes, I know there is a separate forum for this, but I knew I would get an answer here). TomTom6 just about works on the Palm, but its SLOW and unusable.

In TT5, as soon as you say NAVIGATE TO | ADDRESS.. You have to enter the 'City'.

I am assuing in TT6, when you do NAVIGATE TO | ADDRESS you then get another set of options, where you can enter the street first.

I guess I will have to live with this until I finally get around to buying a TT6 device, which I can't do at the moment, because my car has a "Heat Reflective Windscreen" which messes up the GPS signal and makes dash board devices unusable!

Jon

jzerocsk · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 02, 2007 Posts: 33

I posted awhile back with a similar problem about trying to find a bridge in the US without knowing what cities it connected. I mused that I ought to be able to at least search a limited geographic area (e.g. Show me a list of all Court Roads within a specified radius of Bristol), but it does not seem like a possibility.

The only solution I could come up with was just to plan ahead and check your destinations in advance.

uptowndisco · Regular Visitor Joined: Jan 06, 2005 Posts: 79

DennisN · Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 9:05 pm Post subject:

jweaver · Regular Visitor Joined: Apr 11, 2005 Posts: 135

Actually. I have a bit of egg on my face.

My "court road" example was from when I FIRST got my TomTom (V4) days and back then, I couldn't find a "Court Road" in Bristol. I soon found that "Kingswood" was my only option.

It turns out that since then, things have changed.. If I now try 'Bristol', as you say, there are 3 options, but this wasn't the case in my older version.

As you point, out, this still isn't ideal as if you don't know the postcode, its no use.. Also, my "Kew" example is still a problem.

I find it hard to believe that this hasn't been address by TomTom.. When you look at how little TT has changed since V4, it does make you worry that they have got a bit lazy and there is a danger that at some point, someone could bring out a "TomTom beating" product which could steal their thunder!

Jon

DennisN · Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 11:26 pm Post subject:

jweaver · Regular Visitor Joined: Apr 11, 2005 Posts: 135

Easy... Do it like Autoroute does it.

The more info you give it, the shorter the list.

You should have the option to enter "Street", then "District" then "City".. At any point have the chance to say "Done", where you will get a list which will be as long as the number of hits that it got..

Perhaps not under the default "Navigate To" button, but under some kind of "Search Feature"

Jon

StanStill · Regular Visitor Joined: Feb 27, 2005 Posts: 81

You have got have sympathy for the poor Coach driver who was being followed by a new driver when they were taking a party of schoolchildren to Hampton Court Palace in London. The lead driver navigated to Hampton Court with his TomTom and they ended up at Hampton Court which has a postal district of N1. He really wanted Hampton Court Palace which is near Kingston upon Thames. They found themselves in narrow streets where they could not turn round and spend several hours trying to find their way, one of the teachers even got off to buy a map! They never did complete the trip and returned the children to school.

ponti · Posted: Sun May 13, 2007 6:12 pm Post subject:

hello guys, i'm new and i have a small problem:)
i've got installed tomtom navigator 6 on my mda compact 3(htc artemis)
the problem is that i can't find some addresses in the uk. map version is 650.

i'm trying to find an address in town i live: andover
address of the house is clarence court(it's the name of the house) and the street is bridgestreet. when i put postcode sp103fd it finds different street: western avenue. can anyone tell me why is it so?
cheers for help:)

mikealder · Posted: Sun May 13, 2007 7:06 pm Post subject:

Welcome to the forum, postcode data can be wrong due to a number of reasons, in this instance Bridge Street is directly to the right of the actual found destination.
(try Browse Map/ Find/ Address/ Postcode - you can see the location is close to the one you want) - the nav unit will get you very close to the required point, house numbers are supported but not house names - Mike

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