
TomTom ditches map updates for some sat-navs - edward
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/42859546
======
thephilsproject
Some product descriptions continue to state that maps on the devices will
update multiple times a year "for the lifetime of your device".

On its website, TomTom explains that "lifetime" means the "useful life" of a
device: "ie: the period of time TomTom supports your device with updates,
services, content or accessories. A device will have reached the end of its
life when none of these are available any more."

Updates will be available for the lifetime, which is defined as until we stop
providing updates.

(Unsure how to quote)

~~~
Spooky23
It’s amazing how companies are able to get away with bullshit like this with
virtual goods.

There was an article in our local newspaper about a dude who bought lifetime
brakes for his Mustang in like 1970 from JC Penney (!). To this day, he’s
still getting free brakes, I think Firestone took on the business. With tech
stuff, they would declare the lifetime to the be average lifetime of a brake
pad!

~~~
mikestew
_There was an article in our local newspaper about a dude who bought lifetime
brakes for his Mustang in like 1970 from JC Penney (!). To this day, he’s
still getting free brakes, I think Firestone took on the business._

Can confirm as an ex-Firestone mechanic from shortly after Firestone picked up
Penny's repair business (in fact, the shop I worked at used to be a Penny's
auto repair). If a car rolled in needing brakes, and they had the lifetime
warranty, we put brakes on it. I was never tasked with trying to find ways to
wiggle out of it. Nope, it was "hey, mikestew, '72 'stang out there, check the
brakes. It's lifetime warranty, so if it needs anything we don't need to call
customer, just put it on and let me know what you did." And because a
"lifetime" job required that the customer buy calipers and rotors in addition
to pads, Firestone covered everything. Rotors are shot? New rotors for you, no
charge! Caliper frozen? New caliper, on the house!

Haven't worked for Firestone in about 25 years, but we still take our cars
there for lifetime alignment (I can do brakes myself). No bullshit, no fine
print, take it in once or twice a year, no questions asked. And I'll tell you
why Firestone doesn't mind: they'll more than likely find something else that
needs work (not trying to rip you off, folks, that's just the nature of
mechanical things) and make some money off that. My personal observation was
that folks also never took it back for an alignment until it needed tires, and
therefore money in Firestone's pocket. IOW, Firestone's bean counters were
counting on customers not actually using the warranty, and they were right.

Tilley clothing is another one who honored the lifetime warranty on two of
their hats we had for twenty years. Filled out the form, paid eight US dollars
shipping, new hats in a few weeks. My only complaint is that the new hats
are...different. I dunno, maybe after some break-in they'll be like our old
ones. Tilley claims to be like the Craftsman tools of old: if you're in
possession of a hat, you're covered under warranty even if you didn't buy it.
"Put it in your will!", they say. I assume that's true, because they never
asked us for any proof of purchase.

~~~
icantdrive55
There's a huge market out there for honest auto repair shops.

I'm a former mechanic, and usually astonished at what most shops get away
with.

I've seen $1200 tune ups. (Six cylinder Ford Vallant, and the shop owner told
my friend business was slow that week, and he needed money.)

To a Franchise owner at Aamco (San Rafael, ca) who told he the tranny was
going into limp mode when he test drove it, and then brought me into the
office to look at the cutaway model. (It was never even driven because he
didn't have the key. Plus--when he realized I knew the lingo; he started
kissing my ass. He knew he was caught. He was a new franchise owner, but
that's no excuse.)

My point is there's some real business opportunities out there. An honest shop
is gold. Its a very tough business though. I've even met some people who sware
their "guy" is the best. They are usually the ones who are being taken the
most.

~~~
mikestew
_To a Franchise owner at Aamco_

You know, I've been seeing investigative reports about Aamco's crooked
dealings since I was a kid watching Morely Schafer on _Sixty Minutes_ , and I
am not a young man (in fact, I think Morely's dead now.) So I am continually
amazed when I see Aamco in the news _again_.

It's not like there isn't good money in running an honest shop. I wasn't a
mechanic for all that many years, but of those years I've known one mechanic
that I wouldn't send my sister to. The rest are just working class dogs like
the rest of us, trying to make a nice middle-class living. The other Firestone
I worked at while I was going to school, as a "tire changer" and not mechanic,
the manager was a every-time-the-doors-are-open church goer, and lived it.
There would be no ripping off of customers in that shop. That shop made plenty
of money.

So I dunno, maybe transmissions are a different business. And there will
always be those for whom the good living of auto repair isn't good _enough_.
Sure, I make a ton more writing software, but there are days I'd go back to
turning wrenches. Much like software, someone has a problem, and I got a great
deal of satisfaction out of solving that problem for a reasonable price.
Personally, I never saw any compelling reason to be dishonest.

------
grecy
How any company thinks it can continue to make money selling maps is beyond
me.

I have just driven the length of West Africa from Morocco to South Africa[1]
using Open Street Maps loaded onto a $50 Garmin GPS[2]. The accuracy and
completeness of the maps is nothing short of _staggering_. The tiniest town in
Burkina Faso, Gabon or the DRC has _every single_ road, walking track and
intersection, perfectly mapped. It's the same for all the countries.

On the entire 40,000 miles I can count on one hand the number of times the OSM
map did not perfectly reflect the real world. It happened so infrequently it
was always cause for celebration when it did.

[1][http://theroadchoseme.com](http://theroadchoseme.com)

[2] [http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/](http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/)

~~~
jlgaddis
It's ~$800 per year for map updates for one of my cars, a Nissan Altima SV
(and that's just an SD card that, of course, must be installed by a
dealership). As you might guess, I've never paid for them. In the worst case,
the girlfriend (who actually drives the car), just uses the Maps app on her
iPhone when she needs it.

Contrast that with Harley-Davidson who is notorious for "nickel and diming"
and charging outrageous amounts for otherwise regular products. I can just go
to their website, download a file to a USB flash drive, plug the flash drive
into my motorcycle, and it'll update everything -- including the GPS
navigation system and maps.

It just seems backwards to me. I probably wouldn't pay _anything_ for map
updates for the car (and I don't for my truck, either), although I might if
they were cheap enough. OTOH, I absolutely _would_ pay for updates for the
motorcycle but even H-D doesn't charge for 'em.

As long as navigation is available for free on everyone's mobile phones, I'm
not sure how automobile companies expect to make much money from map updates.

~~~
nikanj
It boggles my mind that Harley-Davidsons come equipped with USB ports, and
require software updates. How do the grumpy old-timey bikers deal with the
modern complexity in their bikes?

~~~
jlgaddis
Heh, well, it's (mostly) optional. You can buy a new bike off the showroom
floor and ride it for years without ever updating anything or, really, even
_using_ any of that new-fangled techno-electro-logical crap. :-)

Modern Harleys, however, have a _lot_ of electronics available, if you want to
take advantage of them. I've got a touch-screen unit that includes GPS
(including turn-by-turn navigation), SiriusXM satellite radio, Bluetooth (for
phone calls or playing the music on my iPhone through the bike's very well-
equipped "Infotainment" system), a USB port (for updates and playing MP3s), a
security system, a garage door opener, and so on. Other models might have CD
players, CB radios, etc. The lower end/cheaper models typically don't have
much more than a speedometer. Some of these are, easily, $50,000 bikes,
though.

The software updates are dead simple, too. Download a file to a USB stick,
plug it in, turn the ignition to accessory, and... wait. It shows the
progress/status on the screen and takes maybe 10 minutes from start to finish.
Someone like me (more "tech-y") usually gets the USB flash drive set up when
an update comes out and then we all just pass it around when we get together
for a ride or something. Others don't care and don't bother ever updating.

Even the "grumpy old-timey bikers" like their tunes. :-)

------
dspillett
_> On its website, TomTom explains that "lifetime" means the "useful life" of
a device: "ie: the period of time TomTom supports your device with updates,
services, content or accessories. A device will have reached the end of its
life when none of these are available any more."_

This is very weasily legalise and quite contrary to what the customer is
likely to interpret "lifetime" as meaning. They guaranteed the device would be
kept updated for its useful life, but as soon as they stop updates the
device's useful life is over so they can arbitrarily define what "lifetime" of
the product is long after its sale.

If the term has not been adequately and obviously defined to the customer in
this way they might be liable for refunds on the bases of the product not
matching reasonable expectations. Even if it has been defined that way in
EULAs and similar for all time, there may still be valid claims against them
for deceptive advertising and bait & switch.

Of course they'll probably get away with it though, the same way for many
years ISPs got away with using the word "unlimited" to mean "unlimited except
for any limits we currently apply and might decide to apply at any time in the
future", though not without losing some face.

I own a TomTom sports watch which I've recommended to people in the past. I
will no longer give unguarded recommendations[1] and when it comes time to
replace it[2] I will seriously research competing options and most likely
discount TomTom products unless there is an astronomical cost/value difference
in their favour.

[1] if any recommendation at all

[2] which will be soon due to an event involving unintended high-velocity
contact between myself and the pavement which has resulted in a damaged screen
and probably a reduction in moisture resistance

~~~
oh_sigh
I got bit by this same thing recently. I bought new windows for my house, and
a selling point was they came with a lifetime warranty against manufacturer
and installation defects. I only found out after reading the fine print that
"lifetime" in this sense meant 10 years

~~~
stephen_g
Wow, pretty sure that would be totally against our consumer law in my country
(Australia)...

~~~
bruce_one
It's not an uncommon practice in Australia (from a high level). (Never looked
into the legalities though....)

One example I know of is that Kathmandu offer a "lifetime warranty" on their
goods, but that lifetime is their definition for how long that item is
expected to last. As an example they might say "rain jacket x has a product
lifetime of 5 years"; so a warranty claim at 4 would be covered but one at 6
years would not (if the staff act 100% in accordance with the policy). (These
numbers are entirely arbitrary and not based on their policy.)

It's actually surprisingly inline with consumer laws, but consumer law has a
"reasonable expected lifetime based on what you paid for the item" type clause
(such that a $15 jacket has a different lifetime to a $800 one).

It's worth remembering for things like expensive TVs that only have a short
warranty, because it often pans out that the expected lifetime (because of the
price) is higher than the manufacturer offers, but they still have to cover
the fault (because of consumer laws).

(It's not accounting for a retrospective change though...)

~~~
dspillett
The TomTom situation is worse than that for some (many?) users though. This
isn't a device losing support because it is at the end of its physical life
expectancy, or because of tech advances in th eX years since the customer
bought it (as some of the devices are still available to buy), but because
they can't be bothered to keep it up-to-date. They could at least maintain a
slightly cut down version that does work on the older designs, for instance.

If someone bought one of those devices in the last year or few I would hope
there is a case for it being returned as "not fit for purpose". You could
argue that it still works with older maps, but in some cases this could
potentially be dangerous. In the case of a sports watch like mine not getting
updates wouldn't be a big issue (I might not get new features, but the old
ones would still work, I could still use it as a distance tracker and to tell
the time) but for a mapping the device up-to-date maps are an essential part.

For devices still on shop shelves, any sold near a statement that updates are
a feature are actively being mis-sold. Who picks up the hit for having to sell
these devices off cheap: TomTom or the retailer? Some retailers are going to
be as irritated as the end users.

------
yitchelle
I am currently shopping for a new car. Most of the salefolks I came across
actually recommended us to stay away from dedicated GPS devices, (built into
the car or stand alone). They actually recommend for us to use our smart phone
and coupled it with Apple CarPlay or Android Auto.

~~~
ams6110
The fewer electronics the car has the better IMO. I much prefer climate
control and radio with knobs and levers, no screens thank you (hard to get
away from now thanks to silly requirement for reverse camera).

Fortunately the cars I buy are old enough that they pre-date the introduction
of screen-based controls.

Navigation much better on phone. Always up to date, no extra costs.

~~~
spike021
I wouldn't say the reverse camera is a silly requirement. At least in my car
the lens has a pretty wide angle/fish-eye effect which allows me to see around
cars on either side of me before I'm able to see them with the naked eye + my
rear-view mirror.

~~~
sand500
Also add that it is way harder to see out of the rear windshield in newer
cars. IMO a back up camera is essential and the top-down view some newer cars
is pretty nice.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
The high beltline fad is ridiculous for what it does to visibility but a rear
view mirror isn't absolutely necessary. Trucks manage fine with a fully
obstructed view.

~~~
sand500
Other than backing up into the trailer or a loading dock, I wouldn't think
trucks have to back up often and even in those two cases, there hopefully
isn't a lot of pedestrian traffic around.

Now a neighborhood driveway or Walmart parking lot, even the rear view mirror
in a older car isn't good enough for me.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Plenty of utility vans and pickups with service bodies have no rear
visibility. They back up all the time.

~~~
s0rce
Back up camera is super handy to hitch up a trailer on a pickup/truck.

------
mi100hael
Me before reading article: "these are probably 15-year-old devices with 2
users still clinging on"

 _> Many of the affected sat-navs are still available online at a number of
retailers._

Well OK then. No more buying TomTom.

------
ris
This is where purchasers of Garmin sat navs are laughing because their map
format was reverse-engineered years ago and OpenStreetMap on garmin satnavs is
quite a well trodden path:
[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map_On_Garmin](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map_On_Garmin)

~~~
netsharc
It makes me wish I had more time, to start a project to reverse engineer the
TomTom format. And maybe even generalize it for all sorts of devices, for
example car makers also have their proprietary formats (probably they just use
their supplier's format, whichever 3rd party that is).

~~~
ars
The best part of the TomTom map is what they call "IQ Routes" where they have
timing info for each road, for each 15 minutes of the day.

Without that there's little point in using it.

------
kawsper
Bad experiences like these will most likely drive (no pun intended) more of
their customers away from dedicated GPS-devices and onto using smartphones
instead.

~~~
g09980
Why do people (outside of special applications perhaps... planes? military?)
still use these devices?

Had one in a rental car recently, after battling with it for a bit reverted to
trusty iOS Google Maps.

~~~
khedoros1
\- Operation outside of reliable cell connection.

\- A call or text at an inopportune time doesn't inhibit navigation.

\- The dedicated UI is simpler and doesn't change; my GPS is about 8 years old
and has stayed the same the whole time. Every Maps app I've had has changed a
dozen damn times since then; I value the stable interface more than the
bullshit bells and whistles. It needs to show me directions and be otherwise
unobtrusive; a phone doesn't do that.

\- Sometimes I turn my phone off to eliminate distractions

\- Sometimes I'll hand my phone to my kid to play a game

A phone does a thousand things, but none of them as well as a dedicated device
can do 1 or 2 items from the list.

~~~
reaperducer
> \- Operation outside of reliable cell connection.

This. I just spent the entire weekend outside of cell range. And I can't
always download maps in advance because I rarely know where I'm going from day
to day.

~~~
Const-me
> I can't always download maps in advance because I rarely know where I'm
> going from day to day.

Can’t you download offline maps for the whole country?

On my phone I have two sets of offline maps for my + neighbor countries.
Microsoft is free, Garmin was one time purchase. Both work OK without
Internet.

~~~
lightbulbjim
Yeah, I'm not sure why it's such a common complaint that phone service is
required for navigation. There are plenty of apps available which let you
download whole countries/regions for very cheap, and can do all of their
routing offline.

~~~
exodust
Because people will typically use Google maps, and Google only provides one
month of offline map data before it demands to be put online again to
"refresh" that data.

Honestly, the way Google changes the goal posts and rearranges the furniture
within its own apps, I stay well clear of that mess when I need consistency
and reliability. My phone remains a phone when I'm driving and need an
uninterrupted, non-internet, non-phone navigation device.

------
btilly
It is easy to criticize, but I see their point. Over time we are adding more
and more information and detail to mapping data. How does that work out if
your older device does not have the resources to store/manipulate that much
data?

They have no good options. They can send the update, and break the device. Or
leave the old data be and let the device slowly downgrade. Or pay a fortune to
replace who knows how many devices. Or try to maintain two versions of their
data indefinitely.

~~~
pebers
They can ship a downscaled version of the data for older devices. Standard
algorithms like Douglas-Peucker are simple to implement and the quality is
bound to be good enough (certainly better than the alternative, which here is
nothing at all).

Yes, that's some work. But a build pipeline to produce varying qualities of
assets is not something TomTom should be a stranger to.

~~~
btilly
How do you choose which points of interest to throw away when downscaling?
That data set is continuing to become richer and more complete over time.

------
oldcynic
_> TomTom explains that "lifetime" means the "useful life" of a device_

Not the lifetime they think it is, but the same "lifetime" that every
manufacturer of products uses. It's not like you're going to get a much longer
life from a phone as they also turn off updates at some point.

What is a little surprising is people still haven't learnt to a) distrust all
MarketingSpeak and b) Google before purchase to find out how long the "new"
product has been out.

~~~
nothrabannosir
_> What is a little surprising is people still haven't learnt to a) distrust
all MarketingSpeak…_

I hear you, it’s frustrating that companies keep getting away with this. On
the other hand: people don’t live forever. There are many thousands of new
people each day. Each of whom have to relearn all the unwritten rules of
society, while tribal knowledge withers with every changing of the guard. This
is an inherent inefficiency in a market free of regulations, where consumers
learn whom and what to (dis)trust.

I think, at some point, it’s more zen to accept certain behavioural quirks of
the market as axioms and focus on how to work with them, instead of against
them.

Sorry for turning this into yet another anti libertarian rant :)

------
knodi123
I got a rental in new zealand, and the included tomtom sent me to the
hospital. Seriously, I was following directions to an RV park, but wound up in
front of a hospital. The RV park was a kilometer away.

It was also woefully (and I mean extra-frustratingly) out of date in Dunedin.
And yet it was online with a fast 3g connection 8 hours a day.

Point being - looks like maybe they skipped map updates a while ago. :-P

~~~
knodi123
oh, another funny one - was heading to the botanical gardens in hamilton (a
pretty big and highly populated city!) and it navigated me to the gated
employees-only service entrance, not to the public entrance about 2km away on
another side of the park.

------
jayflux
I’ve had the Tom Tom app for many years now (iOS) and have always had free
updates. I’m guessing it’s harder to support dedicated devices that will
eventually be hard to maintain than it is to just update an app on Android iOS
so this news is no surprise to me.

Is there much point in buying. A dedicated sat nav anymore? It’s literaly
cheaper in the long run to use an app

~~~
banana_giraffe
The Tom Tom app no longer has updates. They've moved to a new free app that
limits it's usage to a set number of miles a month, with a subscription fee if
you want unlimited miles.

~~~
photojosh
Didn't see this comment before posting much the same thing further up.

I haven't used the TomTom app in years although I've had it since the Treo 650
and then iPhone. Fired it up again. Subscription fee is now $20/yr but they
gave all owners of the old app 3 years free. That means I've got 11 years of
updates for my original $80 purchase. Not too shabby.

------
rb808
I really like having a dedicated GPS box and keep my phone free. What would be
great is dash mounted GPS that uses my main phone as a hot spot for traffic
updates. Actually I can use an old phone for that now that I think of it.

------
DonHopkins
Maps are big and expensive, and so is the bandwidth require to distribute
them. So it's not a huge surprise that TomTom's weaseling out of updating maps
on old devices.

When I worked at TomTom around 2007-2009, they had just gone deep into debt
buying Tele Atlas to acquire those maps for a hell of a lot more money than
they originally expected to pay:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13747015](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13747015)

>The stunt that Garmin pulled of was, in my opinion, an ingenious head-fake
that cost TomTom an enormous amount of money, almost a billion euros, and at
the same time saved Garmin a whole lot of money by enabling them to
renegotiate a better deal with Navteq, who was faced with losing their major
customer if they didn't lower their prices.

TomTom was paying Akamai a lot of money in bandwidth charges so customers
could download subscriptions of bigger maps more often. So I developed and
tested a prototype using BitTorrent DNA to distribute them, but Akamai ended
up lowering their prices because they didn't want to lose all those fees to
BitTorrent.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7601083](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7601083)

>It turned out that BitTorrent would save TomTom about a million euros the
first year, and more each year, since TomTom was distributing larger and
larger maps, more frequently by subscription, and of course they hoped to get
more customers over time. (See:
[http://www.sadtrombone.com](http://www.sadtrombone.com) ...)

>But then all of a sudden, out of the blue, Akamai unilaterally lowered the
prices they were charging TomTom, saving us a lot of money immediately,
presumably to prevent us from switching to BitTorrent (after I had made a bit
of a scene at Akamai's GDC booth, in front Travis Kalanick and their sales
people, about just having talked Bran Cohen and acquired a quote and beta
testing agreement from BitTorrent, and insisted that Akamai tell me what their
prices were and when we could start testing -- that may have motivated them to
unilaterally lower their prices).

>So in the end, TomTom middle management decided to can the BitTorrent
project, in spite of the fact that it was the TomTom founder Pieter Geelen's
idea in the first place, and he'd been micromanaging the entire project and
user interface all along, to make sure it would not just save us money, but
also not have a negative impact on usability or customer perception.

------
mwexler
I love my TomTom. With a locked phone (Thanks, AT&T), I can't afford to abuse
data when I travel. My TomTom works in both US and Europe with free map
updates, and has gotten me through mountains, valleys, cities and towns. I
also use CityMaps2Go and download various cities, but I will very much miss my
TomTom when it stops selling to consumers and updating maps.

(Or I will, at least until I get reasonable data costs internationally.)

------
LorenPechtel
100+ comments and nobody missed what's really going on: The old units don't
have the resources for the new maps.

I've got a Garmin and can see where they are coming from: A few updates ago my
unit demanded that a SD card be installed before it would load an update
because the internal memory wasn't enough.

------
m-p-3
Thank god for OSM volunteers. My Garmin GPS which is totally out of support
can still use OSM data that has been converted to a compatible format from
here. [https://www.openmapchest.org](https://www.openmapchest.org)

------
Feniks
Lifetime subscription. Well I guess if you use a goldfish as your standard
lol.

I do feel a bit for TomTom. Bought a €120 nav set 3 years ago and the thing
still works like a charm. Haven't spent a dime because of free updates and the
road network here is already matured so nothing changes much.

------
jacquesm
This sucks because TomToms voice navigation is hands down the winner of
everything out there and their display is placed much better (on the
windshield) than the in-car navigation systems. I like dedicated devices that
do one thing and do it well.

~~~
philfrasty
„...voice navigation is hands down the winner of everything...“ not sure if
serious?!

Bought my grandmother the most expensive TomTom model (GO 6200 for approx
$400) last year, great big display, hands down the worst voice assistant I
have ever used. „Landsberger Street, Munich“ was turned into „Luxembourg“ or
similiar. Google Maps voice recognition seems far superior to me.

~~~
jacquesm
I don't see what voice recognition has to do with it (maybe you meant voice
synthesis), but my tomtom doesn't read out the street names at all, just works
with distances and turns, so maybe that particular model (or maybe newer
versions of the tomtom firmware) have that 'feature'?

I'll consider this a warning to wait as long as I can with upgrading my oldie,
it's still working well though. 7 years and counting...

------
jondiggsit
TIL TomTom is still in business.

~~~
gramakri
It's still useful in rental cars. Travellers may not have a working phone
number to use mobile phone maps.

~~~
gruez
offline maps? google and here both offer that

~~~
TeMPOraL
Did Google start offering off-line maps _with navigation and pathfinding
support_?

~~~
gervase
This was first rolled out in 2015:

[https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/11/navigate-and-
search-...](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/11/navigate-and-search-real-
world-
online.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/MKuf+\(Official+Google+Blog\))

