PLUS traffic is broken

Maybe you should try a snail mail instead of email. That's what I did today. I think that a snail mail letter makes more of a statement than an email....at least IMHO.
 
TT still has not acknowledged the issue to me - their latest is the TMS fix.....

Thank you for taking the time to contact TomTom Customer Support regarding PLUS services. We are always happy to help.

We do apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you with being unable to use Traffic via PLUS services. We have researched into this issue regarding our services which are active with no problems and we believe it could of been caused by a bad download of the map to your device. There are two major files on the map that make traffic work and it seems as if they didn't download the complete information that you need to use our service. In order to correct this problem, please view the troubleshooting steps below:
 
tt_ttf said:
TT still has not acknowledged the issue to me - their latest is the TMS fix.....
Click to expand...

Copy the files as described, and retest. Then respond with "it still doesn't work" (assuming it won't, since no one else got it working).

When I call them they always point me to the two files, and I say "look at the old support notes, I tried and it didn't help".

My suspicion is that globally, LIVE/HD traffic subscribers (which had the 2-file issue) far outnumber American PLUS subscribers. So their developers probably have way more "missing two files" calls than American PLUS calls.

Per the person I spoke to, their engineers instruct all customers to try the 2-file fix and map reinstall first, and then after it doesn't work they tell you about the PLUS outage.

They say "the outage doesn't affect everyone", but I think they are confused. The 2-file fix gets the green circle showing again, and many users probably assume their traffic works. Especially if they live in NYC or Sanfran which has lots of sidestreet PLUS traffic and may not notice the highway outage. Those in cities like Boston that have mostly highway PLUS info notice the outage much more.
 
I checked those files a couple of weeks ago and they are 4.76mb and 123bytes each so they are fine and I told them that over a week ago - new person responded who did not bother to read the thread.

I added the link to the main traffic thread, referenced #2 and copied one of the TT responses in this thread.

I just want to make sure that my name gets added to the list to make sure the full weight is there.

I am sure that lots of others are being stalled the same way
 
It looks like it's compatible and it's from DeliBaker's seller.

I'll let you know, I just bought one.
 
FINALLY!!!! Only took 3 weeks and the same silly boiler plate fixes that do nothing.

The response this morning from TT Support.

Thank you for taking the time to contact TomTom Customer Support regarding Traffic via Plus Services. We are always happy to help.

We do understand that you are frustrated with being unable to use the Traffic service and being unsuccessful with resolving it. We have found this troubleshooting step to fix the Traffic issue but there are still some things we are looking into. Since you have done the troubleshooting as we requested, as seen in the Forums, we do not have an estimated timeframe for when this issue is resolved. We will extend the service of customers to compensate them for the outage once it has been. We appreciate your patience while we work to correct this issue. We will contact you as soon as possible when we create a update to make Traffic enabled again.

This an issue for both RDS-TMC and PLUS services. and regarding the TomTom Forums, it's not an official site of TomTom. We would not recommend trying any troubleshooting step or taking consideration of what others may post on there. Every customer may have a different problem and/or resolution that we may offer. We do apologize if reading this information on the Forums may upset you due to the information we sent you to try more troubleshooting. We have submitted this data about Traffic up to our Corporate Office and they are diligently researching into the situation for us.

Not sure I like the tone of the comment about this forum and frankly if they had anything that vaguely resembled s/w QA and didn't break and unbreak and break again features, we wouldn't need forums like this to try and keep our devices running.

But at least I now have the right issue acknoledged
 
Well I don't think RDS-TMC is messed up at all, at least not for me, I did a test this afternoon and on the RDS-TMC there were 71 traffic incidents, with Traffic PLUS there were 14. I'm going to stick with RDS-TMC until they figure out what's wrong. Nobody seems to know when that will be however.
 
tt_ttf said:
The response this morning from TT Support.

Thank you for taking the time to contact TomTom Customer Support regarding Traffic via Plus Services. We are always happy to help.

We do understand that you are frustrated with being unable to use the Traffic service and being unsuccessful with resolving it. We have found this troubleshooting step to fix the Traffic issue but there are still some things we are looking into. Since you have done the troubleshooting as we requested, as seen in the Forums, we do not have an estimated timeframe for when this issue is resolved. We will extend the service of customers to compensate them for the outage once it has been. We appreciate your patience while we work to correct this issue. We will contact you as soon as possible when we create a update to make Traffic enabled again.

This an issue for both RDS-TMC and PLUS services. and regarding the TomTom Forums, it's not an official site of TomTom. We would not recommend trying any troubleshooting step or taking consideration of what others may post on there. Every customer may have a different problem and/or resolution that we may offer. We do apologize if reading this information on the Forums may upset you due to the information we sent you to try more troubleshooting. We have submitted this data about Traffic up to our Corporate Office and they are diligently researching into the situation for us.
Click to expand...
At least we know how much respect and influence our forums have at TomTom. Apparently not much at all. Perhaps a little jealous that we can often help fix problems faster than they can? Or that our troubleshooting advice is better and more timely in many cases?
 
InfojunkE said:
Well I don't think RDS-TMC is messed up at all, at least not for me, I did a test this afternoon and on the RDS-TMC there were 71 traffic incidents, with Traffic PLUS there were 14. I'm going to stick with RDS-TMC until they figure out what's wrong. Nobody seems to know when that will be however.
Click to expand...

Tomtom has no control over the RDS-TMC server, so the only time people would have an RDS-TMC bug is if they have those bad 2 files. I'm sure that's what's confusing Tomtom support into responding that way.

The PLUS issue is definitely on the Tomtom server, otherwise it could have been resolved by us restoring our backup maps, applications, etc.
 
Well if TomTom are reading this we have a few little sayings in the UK such as "People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" lets take a quick look at the time it took a forum to identify and solve the UK Traffic loss due to the new v835 map installation being messed up by that lovely (sic) TomTom Home software:

Thursday 20/08/09 v835 map appears for download.
Friday 21/08/09 A number of reports that HD traffic not working (in UK)
Friday 21/08/09 We knew the problem was specific to the map
Saturday 22/08/09 First reports of RDS-TMC not working
Sunday 23/08/09 tmccodes.dat was identified as one of the problems
Monday 24/08/09 The full fix to resolve the messed up files had been posted on the forum.

Four days to identify and resolve the issue (two of which were a weekend), this solution was supplied to TomTom via e-mail, I know that as a fact because I sent it! - Some three to four weeks later TT CS are still telling users to delete files, format the device/ clear flash/ re-install everything - All this serves to do is waste 1 to 2 hours of someones time, Even the advice they sent tt_ttf on the 16/09/09 is still poor, OK they have identified the two files are at fault but then come up with a stupid way to try and resolve the issue, the fault isn't the download its the way Home installs files to the device - Considering TomTom have been supplied with all the information on what fixes the UK Traffic issue they still send out rubbish which I find incredible.

We have another saying I tend to use quite often in the UK "You can lead a horse to water, but your can't make it drink"

I also think your USA issue is more likely to be server side, although while we were using Navcore 7 in the UK nobody had any useable Traffic data for any version 7 released - Yes every release messed up the Traffic data so all delays showed as one minute, only with the arival of Navcore 8 was this issue resolved so don't expect a speedy closure to this - Mike
 
I am able to connect to their server for traffic, but there is none reported for a number of routes where other services show delays. i also checked while operating my GO from Home - same results. I have often done the latter before making a trip to get latest traffic, so the server with the traffic info may really be messed up. My usual problem is getting and/or staying connected to the Plus Server data connection when on the road.

TomTom's attitude with respect to forums is surprising given its potential impact on their reputation and sales. I have a Smart Phone (Pharos 137), and initially their participation on their own hosted forum was pretty bad. However, someone at Pharos woke up (probably a marketing person), and not only did the tech people get behind their own forum, but they also showed up on Howard Forums and responded there also with fixes and instructions on exchanging units on occasion.

I am going to stay on 8.302 app and 830 map until this mess get fixed, as traffic has worked most of the time. For the record, the Pharos pairs with data pretty good - did not even have to do manual setup (selected HTD Touch Diamond as closest WM 6,1 device).
 
No changes in Boston, still broken:
- Tomtom has a green circle
- Incident icons show up fine
- Highway flow is completely missing
- Sidestreet flow shows up on 1-2 roads in rush hour.
 
It appeared that plus traffic was briefly working in the Chicago area, yesterday at around 2:30 PM CDT. I had highway flow traffic. This morning no more highway traffic but it looked like there was some flow traffic on side streets. Either way, it seems like something is happening.
 
My RDS-TMC antenna came in today, after I got home from rush hour. I'm not sure how to tell if/when it expires, but it is definitely working. Traffic is being reported on all the highways. RDS-TMC doesn't hide traffic alerts when the roads match IQroutes speeds, so Boston highways are all yellow/red/orange.

I'm going to take a look whether Tomtom is smart enough to not add the traffic delay to the IQroutes delay, and properly replace the IQroutes road speed with the RDS-TMC speed when calculating routes and arrival times.

I can't really tell whether the antenna replaces the cell phone, or if the sources are added together for combined info. I'll check in morning rush hour if sideroad info shows up, since Clearchannel doesn't have sideroad coverage so it would mean the Tomtom combines the feeds.

Well worth $13, but these wires will be a nuisance in my car.
 
Last edited:
mvl said:
Well worth $13, but these wires will be a nuisance in my car.
Click to expand...
Consider connecting it to the car aerial via a home made splitter, this not only improves signal reception but it gets rid of the wires strewn all over the dash - If you want any details on how to make one let me know - Mike
 
This morning, my TT reported that roads along my route were closed and asked if I wanted to recalculate. Strange thing is, I had the Red X on the screen. Maybe it was old info from yesterday, but at least it had it at one point. :)
 

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