Dilemma

DennisN · Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2015 8:55 pm Post subject:

They've got 8 days left of Q1 2015.

Like I said earlier, why do they bring out the new models with third party POIs disabled and start promising to enable it at some time in the future? Is the OS re-written so completely that any trace of the former POI functionality is completely missing? Did nobody in the "latest model" development team hear anything about third party POIs whilst they were blindly working away on them?
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Dennis

If it tastes good - it's fattening.

Two of them are obesiting!!

Guivre46 · Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2015 12:06 pm Post subject:

My view has always been that TT is trying to reduce the demand on customer services by reducing the number of calls, the range of calls, and the training they need to give CS staff. Everything they have done has reduced the ability of owners to access their own devices.
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Go 530T - unsupported
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DennisN · Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2015 12:20 pm Post subject:

Hah! They have reduced the demand on customer services by reducing the functionality of their devices - if they don't have a particular function, customers can't complain that it doesn't work properly!
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Dennis

If it tastes good - it's fattening.

Two of them are obesiting!!

Kremmen · Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2015 12:55 pm Post subject:

When I decided to get a digital traffic replacement unit for my Garmin 2597 that only had TMC RDS traffic I did look at TT units.
Unfortunately the removal of third party camera POI's was a deal breaker so Garmin it was.
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JimmyTheHand · Frequent Visitor Joined: Apr 16, 2005 Posts: 386

AliOnHols · Pocket GPS Verifier Joined: Oct 15, 2008 Posts: 1942

The fact that the latest, new Android TT smartphone app does not allow for 3rd party POI's does not bode well for their promises of "it'll be added sometime soon" for the PND's, methinks.
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Android with CamerAlert, OsmAnd+, Waze & TT Europe.
TomTom GO 730, GO 930, GO 940 & Rider2.
SatMap Active 10 & 20.

DennisN · Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2015 8:46 am Post subject:

I just don't understand TT's attitude here. There are surely a great number of TT users who have over the years built up a store of their personal POIs which they can no longer add to these PNDs. I'm thinking of myself, with POIs for regular delivery points, sales reps with customer databases, service and maintenance engineers. There are surely lots of organisations with multiple employees involved in this and with a sickness absence, the replacement person can no longer pick up a POI database to stick on their own satnav. It's not as if TT's own POIs are great - in my Renault van is a built in TT with a POI database of Renault service dealers. I don't know about any others, but my own dealership is wrongly placed and you'd never be able to wander round a bit to find it near wherever the satnav takes you - because it's the wrong side of a postman's footbridge which my van can't use. The last time (a long time ago - once bitten twice shy) I asked my Live device to guide me to a Tesco supermarket diesel forecourt, I ended up in a housing estate with no supermarket anywhere in sight.
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Dennis

If it tastes good - it's fattening.

Two of them are obesiting!!

IanS100 · Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2015 2:06 pm Post subject:

Andy_P · Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2015 1:48 am Post subject:

It is quite astounding to think that way back in 2004 TomTom produced a ground-breaking, almost world-beating device (the GO) almost out of the blue, with a fantastic level of functionality and a stunning user interface and menu system.

For a while, I watched as they improved on the design and added new features. It was a great time to be in touch with them and to have a tiny part in steering the development.

Then they introduced the brilliant LIVE system, but it never QUITE fulfilled its promise... it was a fantastic concept, based on the best delivery system they had at the time but was held back by poor quality data. In fact, everything was like that... a great concept, but penny-pinching on the actual content (duff speed cams, totally fictitious fuel prices, traffic info that was often wrong and only covering some roads)

Then it all started to go wrong. At a time when the hardware was getting faster and more reliable, and screen technology was improving too, suddenly they seemed to stop caring what the public wanted.

"NAV3" came along and it seemed things were being done slightly differently "under the hood" but there was nothing new for the customer and in fact a lot of things were missing.

Then there was a bright new hope when it was announced that they were starting from scratch with an Android based system (NAV4). Yippee! look at all the customisation possible with Android, we may be able to have third-party apps running on it soon...

What happened? Everything on the development side was farmed out to the Far East, all the best programmers were lost, product managers were hired who seemed to have NO idea what the existing customer base wanted or needed in new models.

We've ended up with devices that are technical marvels, but they just don't do what we want them to do any more, and the user interface is full of fiddly little bits and pieces that may be fine on a phone, but crap when you are trying to poke the screen or see what you need to see, in a moving car at a distance.

Just one example... On every "old style" TomTom, I knew that to "take me home" I just needed to tap anywhere in the top left corner of the screen three times... I could do it without looking. Similarly, if I wanted to mute the voice sound, I just needed to tap the screen three times in the bottom centre.

But on a new one, to 'go home' I had to tap a precise little icon position to get into a scrolling menu, then scroll along to something off the screen ("My places"), find "Home" in a list, wait until it had drawn me a map to show me where I live (Grr!), and then poke an even smaller little steering wheel icon (even if I was on a bike) that was in a different part of the screen every time, just to get it to start finding a route. Madness!

After a lot of complaints, they have now finally added a "drive home" and "drive to work" button to the scrolling menu, but it's an uphill struggle to get something as simple as that changed.
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gazza70 · Regular Visitor Joined: Feb 28, 2006 Posts: 129

I found the newer tomtom go range is aimed more for your lets get the car out Sunday driver who don't care about 3rd party poi's
that's why I jumped ship to garmin ,
Wasn't sure at first but it's grown on me and I wouldn't look at tomtom again unless they listened to customers and developed a unit that had all the old features

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