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tomtom fuel updates
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playswell
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 3:25 pm    Post subject: tomtom fuel updates Reply with quote

I have a 940 and update it every day. I traveled last week to Norwich and asked for the cheapest fuel on the journey, it indicated a shell garage on my route off the M11 at 99p. I use Diesel and thought this is a great price, when I got there £106.9 That is a wide of reality IMHO why can this be so wrong? Question
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DennisN
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 7:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's another case of the TT marketing department hyping something they can't supply. I realise it says prices may be 5 days out of date, but it seems a bit unlikely that they have changed that much in five days.

I have to say this feature is difficult to believe. How many thousands of garages are there out there? How do prices get into TomTom's database? Yet another TomTom feature hidden in the mists of non-transparency.

They can't get the locations of a few thousand speed cameras right, so how would they get several prices from each of many thousands of garages? On the PGPSW list of Fuel places, there are today 10,242. If TT had all those (which I doubt), just how would they keep up to date with the prices? Somebody from TT making 10,000 phone calls a day? Or rely on the garages ringing in their prices when they change? Either way seems a bit cloud cuckoo land, don't it?
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Oldboy
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 8:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I use Petrol Prices.com. I find they have been accurate every time that I have used them.
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docdoc
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 10:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I noticed this for the last few days. TomTom appear to be having some major glitches on their servers. The HD traffic server is often down for long periods. And lots of people (including me) have suddenly had their live services terminated and have had to resubscribe with a different login i.e. using a different email address.

And as for the fuel prices, I've had some show up at 95p and thereabouts for the last week or so, when obviously this is not going to be the case. I suspect they have some old archived data that has made it into the live server data. Really a load of pants.
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dhn
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 10:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I believe some US users of the 740 Live service for gas found if you switch the type of fuel you are seeking (like unleaded to diesel) and back again, the unit refreshes with proper pricing for the initial selection. Maybe that works for you?
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Andy_P
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 1:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I seem to have to ignore the first 3 or 4 places in the list as their prices are WAY out.
As of tonight, the cheapest price for unleaded is around 105.9p, but according to TomTom, apparently the cheapest unleaded 'nearby' is £0.91p and the cheapest 'in the area' is £0.84p!

I think not..... Evil or Very Mad
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norm2002
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 7:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oldboy wrote:
I use Petrol Prices.com. I find they have been accurate every time that I have used them.


Thanks for this great link. I found somewhere near City Airport where I was on Monday with unleaded at 101.9p so I just checked that area on the website and it was exactly right. I've set it up for email alerts. Thanks again.
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Capvermell
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 3:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I was in Sittingbourne last night (Saturday 17th October 2009) and my TomTom 940 claimed there was an Asda petrol station selling fuel at 87.9p Of course I knew the price was nonsense but when I got there the petrol station and/or superstore didn't even exist. It was just a normal residential road. Then when I scanned for petrol prices again I found another Asda store 1.5 miles away showing unleaded at 102.9p

Also I tried to go to a Tesco superstore in Faversham and entered it as a Waypoint on my existing journey but the TomTom then sent me down an incorrect dead end side street where there was no Tesco superstore and then told me to turn round when I reached the non existent waypoint as though I had got there (although made it no announcement to say I had reached the petrol station Waypoint). The actual Tesco superstore was at least 0.3 of a mile away on a different road.

Compared to when I first had the unit for a long trip to the north of Scotland (Shetland Islands) from the South East in June the petrol price data is actually now a lot worse and is now showing prices 20p lower than current prices that must clearly date from several months ago and not a week or two ago. The data could be made accurate by doing a deal with petrolprices.com who do seem to be able to keep their database updated properly as it is the only thing they do. But as usual complacent TomTom management doesn't care and thinks that flashy marketing will make up for a deficient product.

The promised real time sharing between users of new mobile camera van locations is a complete lie and simply does not ever occur (also knowing it does not occur most Live unit users will give up on trying to send back a report when they see one). If it did we should have a completely different and far louder warning sound for those currently active mobile camera locations. Also the general size of warning signs and volume levels of speed cam warnings is totally inadequate and you should also have a feature not to warn you of speed cams on roads you drive regularly (eg M25 J10 to J16) where getting warnings every few hundred yards is very irritating.

This is before we consider the 940 not doing basic things like giving you your total distance and average speed over a journey since a point at which you last zeroed those records. Garmins have been doing this for ages.

As to not giving you a warning of a jam on a road where traffic is normally fairly slow at that time of day I don't find this at all acceptable as I just hate sitting in jams and would rather drive five minutes longer on a road without jams. In any event it seems to me that I should be able to set the traffic speed below which I am warned of a jam rather than TomTom thinking it knows what is best for me. TomTom's dumbed down approach of not giving customers enough control of how the units work (if they want it which I certainly do as there could be default options that are never touched for others) is at odds with their marketing pitch of being the leading edge satnav devices on the market.


TomTom's marketing men seem to live in a dream world of sef denial and won't accept the real truth about the deficiencies of their products. This is the main reason they are never addressed due to utterly grotesque corporate complacency and the marketing men and not the technical guys ruling the roost at TomTom Evil or Very Mad
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Andy_P
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 4:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sums up a lot of people's feelings, Capvermell Crying or Very sad

TomTom were world beaters when the first models came out, but they have "rested on their laurels" ever since, despite many people offering suggestions for new or improved functionality
(I know all my suggestions have been wonderful! Laughing ).

Most of the innovations they HAVE introduced are good in theory but simply don't work properly (e.g. MapShare, Fuel Prices, mp3 Player, handsfree, IQ routing, RDS Traffic, etc. ALL have uncorrected issues).
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Capvermell
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 4:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Andy_P wrote:
Most of the innovations they HAVE introduced are good in theory but simply don't work properly (e.g. MapShare, Fuel Prices, mp3 Player, handsfree, IQ routing, RDS Traffic, etc. ALL have uncorrected issues).


TomTom seems to be ruled by marketing people who believe their own PR and who presumably threaten any technical boffins there who tell them that there are serious technical deficiencies with the services they already offer with the sack.

I am also pretty disappointed that on the country lane network between Horley/Crawley and the A24 in Surrey that I regularly use I am constantly told to turn left or right where there is only a sharp bend in the windy country road and no junction and yet at a straight ahead crossroads where you are meant to STOP and the other traffic on the crossing road has priority the TomTom says nothing and hence in the dark at night could cause you to have a crash if you began to rely on the unit too much.

This is before we take in to account my home address being misspelt by one letter even though the Royal Mail postcode database (used by all credit card companies and banks etc for their mailings) has always had the spelling correct all along for the 12 years I have lived here. I had to kick up one hell of a fuss with the CEO of Teleatlas the the TomTom main Board members by email to get that name change implemented in their main database instead of only reported by Mapshare and then ignored by TomTom.

But then Garmin lacks IQ Routes, Mapshare and HD Traffic so it was a Catch 22 decision when I came to buy a Satnav unit.

The deficiencies over the inadequacies of the speed cam warning symbols and the lack of user control over the symbol sizes or the volume of the warnings used are especially disappointing given the supposed deal with RoadAngel (who have a far better end user interface for giving these warnings on their own devices). I also feel the much touted real time mobile camera van report sharing is a complete lie and this along with various other inadequacies, constitute genuine reasons for claiming it is not fit for the purpose. Then the map updating policy is completely outrageous as why should you have to pay for map updates you never download if you don't update for say two years. I also can't see why the costs of maintaining an electronic map database should be so much higher than those associated with maintaining a database for a printed paper atlas.

I accept there is a market for a dumbed down satnav units for the technophobes but the Go series is meant to cater for tech-heads so why on earth does it disappoint from so very many different points of view....
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Andy_P
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 8:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Capvermell wrote:

The deficiencies over the inadequacies of the speed cam warning symbols and the lack of user control over the symbol sizes or the volume of the warnings used are especially disappointing given the supposed deal with RoadAngel (who have a far better end user interface for giving these warnings on their own devices). I also feel the much touted real time mobile camera van report sharing is a complete lie and this along with various other inadequacies, constitute genuine reasons for claiming it is not fit for the purpose.

Well we know the answer to that one!
Don't use TT's database, use the one from here.

Capvermell wrote:
why should you have to pay for map updates you never download if you don't update for say two years.

Not sure I'm with you there.... Confused

You don't pay for updates you don't download.
If you want a new map after two years, you just buy it.

The map update service is additional to that, and I think is a pretty good deal financially..... *IF* you decide you always want the latest version and aren't bothered by the small number of noticeable differences between each.
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Capvermell
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 9:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Andy_P wrote:
Well we know the answer to that one!Don't use TT's database, use the one from here.


I am using the speed camera database from here but there is still no way to enlarge TomTom's miserably small warning symbols. And your data set has already had to be manually re-linked once for the warnings after TomTom could only offer a Factory Reset as a way to overcome a problem with carrying on my HD traffic subscription after the first free three month subscription came to an end. Although your camera database can have verbal warnings these are often rather a pain in the neck in high density camera areas (eg M25 J10 to J16) and I would still like to have large warning signs that cover a lot more of the TomTom screen and cannot be missed if the radio is turned up or the TomTom's volume turned down.

Quote:
You don't pay for updates you don't download.
If you want a new map after two years, you just buy it.


Yes but the problem is the one off price of updating the maps. Its 140 pounds to get both a new European and North American map for my Go 940 unit - over half the original purchase price in my case. I don't think that is a fair reflection of the cost of maintaining the maps. Instead it is merely merciless monopolistic exploitation of the captive customer base who cannot shop around as they can only use TomTom maps on their TomTom units. Also TomTom does a shockingly bad job of gathering or maintaining local speed limit data. Last night I found they didn't even have the speed limit for the main dual carriageway spur from J4 of the M2 in to Gillingham!

I don't know why TomTom even consider supporting something like fuel prices that change all the time when they can't manage to maintain or support relatively static data like speed limits properly.

Quote:
The map update service is additional to that, and I think is a pretty good deal financially..... *IF* you decide you always want the latest version and aren't bothered by the small number of noticeable differences between each.


Only if you accept that the pricing off the one off map updates is reasonable. Even for a TomTom 940 unit the one off new maps look expensive. For a basic TomTom one unit owner they must look like daylight robbery in relation to the price of a new replacement TomTom unit.
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flyguy26e
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 23, 2009 6:42 pm    Post subject: Fuel prices Reply with quote

DennisN wrote:


I have to say this feature is difficult to believe. How many thousands of garages are there out there? How do prices get into TomTom's database? Yet another TomTom feature hidden in the mists of non-transparency.


Perhaps this will help. I use the USA fuel price service. According to TT, these prices are derived from credit card records collected by two companies, who derive and then provide the price information to TT. The delay from the sale price to the information being available from TT can be up to 5 days. If I recall correctly, the largest part of the delay is how promptly each station transmits it's sales - low sales and independent stations tend to be very slow.

My experience is the system works well and is useful to me, but with glitches:
1) "outliers" - stations reported with prices substantially lower than the others. Almost invariably, these stations don't even exist, and I've learned to ignore them.
2) not all existing stations are in the database, and sometimes these stations have a better price or location.
3) rarely, a real station is in the wrong location.

Unfortunately, the fuel price service is not part of Mapshare, so there is no way to correct these problems. That is the major weakness in the system, IMO.
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Capvermell
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 24, 2009 11:19 am    Post subject: Re: Fuel prices Reply with quote

In the UK my experience is that TomTom seems to collect price data electronically via online link for petrol prices at most of the very largest sites of the big petrol companies like Shell and Esso (Exxon to you guys in the USA) but does not have such automatic links in place with some smaller independent sites of these brands and with many small garages in more remote rural places selling non major fuel brands like Murco. This is more problematic at a time when fuel prices are not changing fast as you then cannot spot those prices that are not current fairly easily (as you can do when they are moving fast and there are prices in the list that are 20% too cheap so obviously are wrong)

When I was in the highlands of Scotland in the summer I established with a garage on TomTom's petrol price list in the remote rural Scottish wilds but with a wildly out of date price that TomTom telephone them once a month or so to get the latest price. But it was a very hit or miss affair and sometimes was not even once per month.

In my view TomTom should only list live prices for garages where they have online links with an automated system that is constantly and reliably maintained. Any data more than 48 hours old should be automatically excluded from their database and no price shown against that garage (even though they should still be listed by distance to stop anyone running out of fuel who needs petrol urgently).

It is also unacceptable that TomTom rounds data to the nearest whole penny when petrol is sold in litres at prices quoted to an accuracy of 0.1p as a general retailing practice on UK forecourts.

The phantom forecourts scenario is ridiculous and I really don't see how this goes on when garages close down and new garages start up only comparatively infrequently.

Another vital feature regarding petrol stations (or gas stations as you guys in the USA call them) in remote rural areas that TomTom still lacks is the opening hours of petrol stations. At 2am in the morning with a tank almost empty it is no good to be directed to a nearest petrol station 7 miles in one direction if the nearest petrol station that is open at that time of day is 15 miles the other way. We do of course have a particularly odd tradition in the UK of automated unattended garages never taking off here (even though they are hugely popular in Italy on somewhere like their Mediterranean island of Sardinia) and so the problem of garages in remote rural areas being closed for long hours in the UK is particularly acute. Perhaps this is a scenario that the Dutch owners of TomTom are unfamiliar with as I believe more small filling stations in Holland often remain open for fuel 24/7 using unattended credit card swipe machines.
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Andy_P
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 25, 2009 5:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Good post, Capvermell!
If TT are only ringing some garages once a month or so, no wonder its a mess!
Your suggestions make good sense.
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