TomTom Ignores Mac OS X (looooong post/rant)

[Consultant]

Hi All,

I'm afraid this is going to be a bit of a rant, so apologies, if you're not interested tune out now!

Last week some knob smashed my car window, whilst it was parked in my driveway next to my house and stole a 910, traffic widget, remote, power lead, and everything else tomtom except for the cloth case. For all of you who are thinking I shouldn't have left the thing in the car, I take your point, and acknowledge that you are correct (however, in my defence I live in a very quiet neighbourhood, in a cul-de-sac, where people who don't belong normally stick out like sore thumbs).

After the initial anger, and swearing, I called the glass people first, followed immediately by a call to TomTom, my thinking was, I had to connect to the internet every time I plugged it into TomTom HOME, and my brand new maps had just been authorised over the internet, I'll simply make it awkward for the plank who'd stolen it, by asking TomTom to de-authorise the new maps they'd just authorised. No such luck apparently, according to the TomTom support dude, information flow is one way only, downstream, no (useful) information is sent back to TT to make this a possibility (TomTom if you're reading this there may be a good feature in this for you). That said I would imagine a significant amount of sales revenue comes from people replacing stolen TomTom's so perhaps is more lucrative, than helping to prevent it? Cynical? Perhaps....

The TomTom support guy suggested I should have locked it with a pin and owner information, then no one could have used it, I wasn't aware of this feature. Surprisingly TT doesn't tout this in the feature list or make a very big deal of it, which is surprising when considering how many are probably stolen every week. So I dug out my TT 700 in the nick of time, a week later and it would've been on eBay, and hooked it up to my Mac, fired up TT HOME, and followed the online instructions, got an error, rebooted Mac, TT HOME and TT GO, tried again, error!. Tried this through several iterations, with different configs, and was greeted with an error each time.

I then spent a long time, filling out a ticket, explaining everything I did, the procedure I'd followed, the error message, the OS versions, map versions, in fact every piece of information I could lay my hands on in order to get this resolved and submitted a trouble ticket.

2 days later, I saw a response in my email inbox, I opened it up, and found a canned response pointing me at the web page that tells me how to put a pin on my TT GO, the very first page I'd looked at a few days earlier, which I'd taken great care in including in the initial trouble ticket, so they knew I'd followed their recommended procedure. Feeling a bit ignored I rang the support desk, who I told about the ticket that no one had read, and responded with something technically correct but completely useless. He sympathised and asked me to hold while he read the ticket fully then he would work with me to get it resolved.

15 minutes later after exchanges like:

TT: You've got a GO300?
Me: No, it's in the ticket it's a 700!

TT: So what version of Windows are you running?
Me: I run Mac, it's in the ticket!

TT: What version of Mac
Me: It's in the ticket 10.5!!
TT: Oh, we don't have all the information from the ticket available to us...
Me: Then why do you ask for it, if you can't use it?

TT: Now let's turn the TT on so we can establish what OS version it's running.
Me: No need, it's already in the ticket.
TT: Well we'll do it anyway just to be sure......
Me: Sigh.....

He asks me to hold and goes to talk to the 2nd line guys..... 3 minutes later.....

TT: "Is it an old version of Windows you're running???"
Me: Pardon!?!? I thought we just discussed the whole Apple Mac thing??
TT: Oh... right .. yeah... can you hold again while I go talk to 2nd line again??
Me: Sure.. no probs.

Another few minutes go by.......

TT: Hello, sorry to keep you.... it doesn't work?

We then got into a conversation about how it probably never worked in version 2 of TT HOME, and how I'm probably not the first to hit this since the 2nd line guy knew the answer off the top of his head. I asked when they were going to put something on the site to let other users know, he told me that they probably want to spend the effort fixing the problem rather than letting people know about it, that might be affected. After a few more minutes he agreed that if they hadn't fixed it after this long (since HOME v2 was released) then I should probably not wait for it to be fixed and instead use one of my Windows machines (which I have none of) to lock the TT 700. The guy said he'd pass my feedback along to people that could make a difference, although if my support ticket was anything to go by, the chinese whisper will start as "TT Support Could Do Much Better!!" and reach it's destination as "TT Support Couldn't Be Any Better!!"

Long story short, the support was a bit pants and the lack of interest in fixing what amounts to a major broken feature because it only affects Macs is additionally extra pants!!

So, instead of considering a TT GO 930T to replace my stolen 910, instead I shall be doing the rounds to see what other companies have to offer, and will be reluctant to actually recommend them to anyone else in the future. Apols for the long moan, and thanks for sticking with it (and if you didn't you're not reading this bit anyway!)

The End.

[mikealder]

Next time you get the run around like you highlighted above try a post on this forum, the answers will generally be more intelligent, applicable to you specific problem and will get you an answer that works - just a though, but bear it in mind should you end up in this position again - Mike

[Darren]

As satnav is a receive only device there is no way for TomTom or anyone else to disable it in much the same was as you couldn't disable a portable FM radio receiver. When we start to see two way connected devices with GSM radios and SIM cards we can hope that they will look at this functionality.

As for the PIN Lock, forget it, it takes seconds to defeat by installing new firmware, something anyone can do. PIN locking is pointless anyway as it doesn't prevent the theft.
_________________
Darren Griffin

[Consultant]

Hi Darren,

Just a couple of points I wanted to clarify in regards to your response.

I understand that in normal operation, GPS is receive only, however, TT when connected to the HOME application passes anonymous usage data back, in adddition to any map sharing you've done, and also sends data back and forth when authorising new maps. My thought was that if many of these are being stolen for resale, then you can probably assume with some degree of certainty that the end user will at somepoint plug it in to HOME and update it. It would therefore be relatively trivial to create an authentication scenario, where if reported stolen and appropriate user identification has been done, that a TT could effectively be turned off. Especially since the serial as far as I can tell is hardwired.

On the second point, it's a shame that the pin isn't a little more resilient, although having a pin doesn't prevent it from being stolen, it would make it pointless stealing it, since it wouldn't be able to be used, therefore diminishing the success rate of the aforementioned "scrotes", but as I said originally, I wouldn't be surprised if the replacement of stolen TT Go's didn't account for several percent of new sales of the device, therefore TT has less motivation.

Thanks for replying to my post both you and Mike!

Regards

T.

[Darren]

That's a fair point, one I confess I hadn't considered!
_________________
Darren Griffin

[sgould]

I'm not clear from your initial post what you are trying to do with the Mac and TT Home. I have a 700 and a Mac and I have installed Mac upgrades. The only thing I can't do is use the "Operate my GO" option.
_________________
TTGO 700 (dead)
iPhone 3GS + TT holder
iPhone 5 (hers!)
Western Europe Map
Eastern Europe Map
Kenwood DNX-4210DAB with Garmin maps

[Darren]

The facility to set a PIN on the unit requires doing from HOME. The option is not available on a Mac.
_________________
Darren Griffin

[Consultant]

Indeed, as Darren said, the ability to add a pin and lock it is a part of the functionality of "Operate My Go". It's the only way you can set the pin.

T.

[gardenshed]

and even setting one is useless as you can access the tt via a pc and remove the pin without using home etc, and if you cant work it out, there are good and bad things about the internet google it

[sgould]

Ah! Yes, I worried about not setting a PIN until I realised that it was virtually useless.
_________________
TTGO 700 (dead)
iPhone 3GS + TT holder
iPhone 5 (hers!)
Western Europe Map
Eastern Europe Map
Kenwood DNX-4210DAB with Garmin maps

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