Thought I'd just tell you about "my repair" at TomTom. My TomTom One XL worked perfectly ok but stopped recognising the RDS - TMC unit when I plugged it in. I contacted TomTom through their website and they gave me a returns number, a box and a prepaid bag in which to return it, even though it was out of warranty. After three days they returned a brand new One XL and RDS unit. Best of all, it had the whole of Western Europe on it; the original had only UK and Eire. I am quite impressed!
Similar experience my friend had, his tom tom was having problems charging up, when I looked at it the socket was loose because it had come away from the pcb, with a bit of surgery I could have fitted a new socket so he contacted tom tom to ask about a spare socket, they offered a repair so he sent it off a few days later, he got a new one sent back, don't know what maps he got with it but its a very good service as it was outside the warranty too.
Similarly I have a (rather dated now) (510, although it's labelled as a 710) tomtom that failed a while outside "warranty". Power switchery, I think. My dealer sent it back to TT for an estimate for its repair. A few days later it came back, fixed, at no charge.
We've had one for sveral years, and it's always worked very well except for one occasion. Guess which one that was?
Yes, it was the time we went on holiday to Italy (by plane), and had organised a hire car midway through to transport us from Venice to the centre of Rome. Having checked we had up-to-date maps on the satnav I packed it without a second thought, only to find to my horror that for some bizarre reason, it wouldn't take any power from the hire car and didn't work at all.
Never did find out the reason - the TomTom was fine at home when we got back - but boy did I enjoy that drive through the Rome rush hour. Not.
I've had "support" experience over the last few years with Magellan, Garmin and recently TomTom.
Magellan took ages to tell me to get lost.
Garmin was helpful and competent.
With TomTom, daughter wanted an urgent Satnav for someone who was an on-your-bike you quango-site government victim. It had to have Homer Simpson as the voice. Research showed this had to be a TomTom, so I got one (Halfords (spit) with a bait and switch European maps offer, but that's another story), got it home and rang support to find out how to purchase and do the voice change without getting the unit registered to me rather than the recipient. The English-sounding rep hand held me through the whole process and de-registered me at the end. Inevitably, something went wrong, probably at my end, so he logged it as a fault and cancelled the charge for the extra voice. I have to say that I was really surprised and impressed.
SWMBO and I did one short trial run with Homer. Not sure about the long term, but our little trip was really fun.
I have likewise had excellent help from Garmin for a hand held GPS. For that reason (and the fact that the Garmin was the only equipment to take grid references) I bought a Garmin sat-nav for my car. Unfortunately the route finding abilities of the Garmin left much to be desired - the basic problem being that it was wildly over optimistic (by a factor of two or more) about what was possible on single track roads leading to endless 'short cuts' that took considerably longer than sticking to classified roads would have. The timing of the directions also left much to be desired.
I eventually junked the Garmin and bought a TomTom which is much better in almost every aspect. However it, like the Garmin before it, has thousands of junctions coded with the wrong priority and also one or very odd quirks such as advising keeping right to avoid driving into a bog standard roadside lay-by on the A66. But what really gets my goat about TomTom is the £26 or so that Halfords (and others) want for the swan-neck mount for deep windscreens. OLh yes, and using lat/long for out of the way places is a bit of a pain.
We have a cheapy Myguide Satnav, it seems to also like doing this, though I imagine they all do it to a certain extent, depending on the weighting given. It also seems rather pessimistic on Motorways.
I don't know if fancier ones allow it, but some way of tweaking the the way it chooses the roads would be useful. And a way to learn over time how long you take over certain types of roads.
Ditto, doesn't all the mapping for these things come from a couple of companies (Navteq and someone else?), so I guess the same problems will occur with multiple manufacturers.
It is some time since I switched but my memory of the Garmins (the hand held had a rudimentary road map and much the same routing software as its car borne cousin) was that the average speeds on major roads were on the high side but, unlike those for single track roads, achievable in light traffic. I formed the distinct impression that Garmin didn't really care whether the road was a single carriageway or a single track, it still got an average speed circa 40 mph. TomTom by contrast claim their average speeds are based on real drivers. I don't hang about and I now find that I get a cushion in the ETA which covers all but the worst of unexpected traffic jams.
Both the Garmin and the TomTom allow you to chose fastest or shortest and I think to avoid Motorways but Garmin's shortcoming is the values it gives to individual lengths of road. Fastest can't be worked out without having both time and distance in the equation.
Probably. It is a feature I find irritating rather than misleading under most circumstances but again Garmin falls short of TomTom in not displaying as many minor side roads along the way and sometimes even a prolonged look at the display (not to be recommended while moving) leaves the next turn uncertain.
Oh sure, ours does that sort of thing. I was thinking of some way to tell it to give greater weight to choosing a route that say uses more major roads over side roads.
I suppose what I mean is some sort of 'sensible route' function. Like the way as a human you might look at a shorter, but wiggly route and say nah, it's easier and hardly any longer to go on some more major roads.
Ours seems to choose a wiggly route even if it might theoretically save you just 30 seconds or something I reckon.
If there is no intention of stopping on the way, then Venice to Rome is a much easier, quicker and less stressful journey, especially at the Rome end, by train rather than driving. Around 3.5 - 4 hours door to door, I've not driven it in less than about 6 hours.
I don't have any need to use one in the UK, but sat navs have transformed my driving abroad, there was an ongoing police operation (with road blocks) in Italy about five years ago which we got caught up in. We had no real idea of precisely where we were as it was the usual case of some sense of direction, following the road signs out of the city with the aid of the satnav along for the ride (no detailed city maps were to hand)
Simply ignoring the original planned route, and choosing an avoiding route of roughly similar direction by a finger in the air with the aid of the sun got a new route recalculated by the Tom Tom in seconds, we repeated the exercise then when we ran into yet another road block, the Tom Tom recognised that a certain area of the city was now not to be used and we quickly had a route via a heap of backroads out of the city.
There were no diversion signs and even with a detailed street map it could have taken us a long time to navigate round the obstructions.
That the Tom Tom works in narrow streets with tall buildings either side is staggering. The relatively new at that time Garmin handheld GPS I use as backup when sailing is truly hopeless on land, either in streets or under tree cover.
Our cheapy car satnav seems to work ok in narrow streets as well. Leastways i've never noticed it not working.
The handheld Garmin GPS's can vary. Those with the high sensitivity aerial/receiver (what ever it is exactly) seem to work well. Don't use it in cities much, but my Vista HCx works well under tree cover.
Nah, the lighter itself worked. Yes, the TomTom has an internal battery but must have been flat (this was a few years ago now). Not unusual as (a) we don't use it all that often and (b) SWMBO will persist on using it just off it's internal battery without charging it, as it's a fiddle to plug in the cable .
Yes indeed. I and a friend were looking for a summit in woodland a few years back and my older Vista soon lost lock while his later version had no problems.
I suspect that you will find that it's refurbished, not "brand new"[1]. That's how most suppliers operate. It is also possible that had there been zero refurb stock that they shipped a new unit to save time.
[1] The standard of refurb nowadays is exceptional. I've had refurbished computers and phones that were indistinguishable from new other than a "refurb" sticker in the battery bay.
I have both TomTom on a smartphone and a Garmin satnav. In the UK it's a
50:50 thing. I can't find anything to recommend one over the other. In Italy it's a clear win for the Garmin, not least because the TomTom interface is bloody fiddly to use compared to the Garmin and because for some reason TomTom maps seem to be permanently wrong compared to the Garmin. I can route using the Garmin to the multitide of small farms, restaurants, hotels and B&Bs located on "Strade Bianche" in Italy. TomTom sort of gets one vaguely into the area then gives up. The postcode database in Italy and the UK also seems suspect. The garmin will, using postcode alone, get me to within around 100 metres or so of the destination. TomTom does some bizarre things including taking me to the industrial estate next door to the one where my customer is located (i.e. completely the wrong postcode).
There are various chipsets for GPS reception they vary both in the number of satellites they can track and the sensitivity of the receiver section. Modern chipsets knock the spots of early designs that really did need clear line of sight to the satellites.
Teleatlas, are owned by TomTom now, Navteq by Nokia.
I have a Marks and Spencer own brand with Navteq maps, having used if for a year I can see why they were selling them off in a sale for under £50. Never chose 'slow car', 'omit motorway' routes, especially in Italy: slow country road over hills fine, white road OK, cart track? and eventually a field with some vague trace through the grass, and 100 yards along the bed of a not quite dry stream to regain the road.. It's just as bad on UK roads; tends to direct 'keep left' onto slip road, roundabout, and back onto road, when its own map shows a perfectly good underpass or flyover.
Normally they strip the guts out of the returns, test and repair as required, bung into new casings and repackage in new box with new manuals etc. The cost is in the guts not plastic moulded casing or packaging.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.