Very Disappointed with Tom Tom POI's

Joined
Dec 19, 2007
Messages
5
Just took the Tom Tom on the first trip outside of my hometown of Las Vegas. We went to Phoenix, AZ. I'd say that at least three of every four POI's we wanted to look up were not there. At one point, I pulled into a shopping plaza and looked up all POI's near me. Only one of the fifteen or so businesses was listed.

Back in Vegas...today we did some driving around. Searched for four different POI's...a bank, a restaurant, a clothing store, and another store...it found ZERO out of those four. We also managed to drive somewhere where there were quite a few roads that have been there awhile, and Tom Tom said there were NO roads anywhere close.

In comparision, the bottom of the line Garmin I had three years ago probably found 9 out of 10 POI's I searched for.

Am I missing something here?

I LOVE the features that Tom Tom gives you for the money, but it doesn't do me much good if it can't find the places I want to go!

FYI, I have the latest Tom Tom firmware and North American maps.
 
I agree

I agree. The POIs are very difficult to find on TomTom GPS units. They are not organized well at all. For example, with the TomTom One, you can only search for "Restaurants". So if you try to look for a specific cuisine you are out of luck as it only returns the first 3 pages of restaurants near the location you are searching. If you are approaching a city you are unfamiliar with and you type in the name of the city you would like to stop to eat in, the TomTom software will find about 15 restaurants that are closest to the center of the city.
I remember using a Magellan in a Hertz rental and I had the choice of picking various cuisines. Garmin also seems to have their POIs well organized, even in their Nuvi 200.
I have also noticed how many POIs are missing or in the wrong location
The breadth of the TomTom POI database and POI searching is one area where the TomTom scores very low compared to their top two competitors. . I think the North American market is a newer market for TomTom. Maybe if they are successful in their acquisition, the quality of their maps and their POIs will improve.
 
I agree also. If I want to look for a chinese resaurant around me I can't even do that. I'd have to know the exact name of the chinese place which ain't happening. Both Garmin and Magellan have specific categories for Chinese and even something as simple as Fast Food. I can't wait for TomTom to get with the program and start categorizing their POI's better. But on the positive side IF you know the exact name of what you're looking for my 720 seemed to have everything in my area. It actually had a few more POI's that my nuvi 350 didn't have.
 
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Agree with all opinions above.

I absolutly MUST have depenable POI's. As a commercial driver, my daily trip plans revolve around fuel stops,breaks,place to shut down for sleeping purposes.

Years ago, using TT on a Axim PPC.....I began downloading and making my own POI files. That method will deffinatly yield dependable results.

Search out all the various POI sites and you'll actually get to benifit from its use. Virtually every catagory imaginable is available for download.
 
I too am VERY VERY upset with the lack of POI on the TOMTOM 720. I cant even find a single bed bath and beyond or linens n things with this unit, yet with a $200 harmon kardon am able to find many more POI. What gives?

Another upsetting fact is that the 920 seems to have more poi than the 720 I am debating in upgrading to the 920, going with a different unit all together, or what i would like is to keep it and update with new POIs.

Guess I will try downloaded POI from this site and figure out how to do all the custom edits and what not...
 
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I too am VERY VERY upset with the lack of POI on the TOMTOM 720. I cant even find a single bed bath and beyond or linens n things with this unit, yet with a $200 harmon kardon am able to find many more POI. What gives?

Another upsetting fact is that the 920 seems to have more poi than the 720 I am debating in upgrading to the 920, going with a different unit all together, or what i would like is to keep it and update with new POIs.

Guess I will try downloaded POI from this site and figure out how to do all the custom edits and what not...

I can say that putting the bigger POI from the 920 to the 720 works great.

However, as many others have said, POIs are organized pretty bad.

I want to search for POI by ZIP - can't seem to do this
I want to search for POI by Restaurant Cuisine - can't seem to do this
I want to get another page of 15 results after searching POI by City - can't seem to do this either

Not sure if I am going to return the unit, but POI is probably the 2nd most important thing (just below actually getting from A to B). These limitations really make me reconsider. Let's not even talk about how amateur-ish all the graphics are. Looks like a 3rd grader designed them.
 
I can say that putting the bigger POI from the 920 to the 720 works great.

However, as many others have said, POIs are organized pretty bad.

I want to search for POI by ZIP - can't seem to do this
I want to search for POI by Restaurant Cuisine - can't seem to do this
I want to get another page of 15 results after searching POI by City - can't seem to do this either

Not sure if I am going to return the unit, but POI is probably the 2nd most important thing (just below actually getting from A to B). These limitations really make me reconsider. Let's not even talk about how amateur-ish all the graphics are. Looks like a 3rd grader designed them.

how do you put the poi's from the 920 to the 720?
 
I started downloading custom POIs in place of many of the built in ones on my TT 720. OVerall, this seems to work better and be more accurate depending on when the download source as last updated.
 
I agree also. If I want to look for a Chinese restaurant around me I can't even do that.

You have far more than you think in POIs.. Its just badly categorized and too much data to display, at least with my 720. Use the categories as basic. Once you choose city or restaurants, just start typing in "CHIN" and all your restaurants will be replaced with Chinese restaurants in your current location.

Person who asked about Bed Bath etc. Same thing, start typing Bed Bath with the space and it will filter to those locations. Nothing I haven't been able to find by further refining with a string of text. If you have voice activation, you can speak it and do same vs. using touch pad.

Don't depend on the categories and whats just populates.. Your saying a machine is smarter than you if you just trust whats in front of you, its not.. WAY WAY too much data to fit on display so you need to refine it.

In fact refining my search is the only way I use the POIs.. Never by category alone. I generally pick a city, then type in partial match, say Mexican food, MEXI and now I have pages and pages of Mexican food. If your insistent on have it all categorized, plug it into your PC and start updating. Myself it works just fine as is and I can find most anything. I don't need tons of categories to sort through, just refine my search and be done. :)
 
That only works if the name of the restaurant has Chinese or Mexican in it... If the restaurant is called Look Ho Ho, it won't find that restaurant because it doesn't have Chinese in the title...
 
True but if I had an inkling that the name was Ho Ho, I could do same.

I've found plenty of good restaurants using Chinese or Mex. More do than do not and I can over look a few. If its an outstanding dive, I would have known and again found.

I prefer search as it filters out what I don't want. I rarely ever use POI unless I've added one by recommendation of another party. The data is on the GPS (US phone book), to categorize it all under POIs, would waste too much time. Spend more time navigating a phone book if you will vs. calling 411 and getting number. Same concept.. Search gets you more hits on what you want than browsing POIs. Start adding too many POIs its simple clutter..

I think most of us know what we want just need some help thus search works better. If it didn't find 10-20% but found the other 80%, I can live with that and so can my taste buds. ;)

I find most Chinese and Mex places include the fact they are. They don't wish to be confused with Thai or something else. Again if a hot little dive, someone will have told me to even know if it and I have enough now to search. When I'm driving I prefer the 411 approach vs. browsing the phone book and why seach works and works better! JMO! :)
 
True but if I had an inkling that the name was Ho Ho, I could do same.

I've found plenty of good restaurants using Chinese or Mex. More do than do not and I can over look a few. If its an outstanding dive, I would have known and again found.

I prefer search as it filters out what I don't want. I rarely ever use POI unless I've added one by recommendation of another party. The data is on the GPS (US phone book), to categorize it all under POIs, would waste too much time. Spend more time navigating a phone book if you will vs. calling 411 and getting number. Same concept.. Search gets you more hits on what you want than browsing POIs. Start adding too many POIs its simple clutter..

I think most of us know what we want just need some help thus search works better. If it didn't find 10-20% but found the other 80%, I can live with that and so can my taste buds. ;)

I find most Chinese and Mex places include the fact they are. They don't wish to be confused with Thai or something else. Again if a hot little dive, someone will have told me to even know if it and I have enough now to search. When I'm driving I prefer the 411 approach vs. browsing the phone book and why seach works and works better! JMO! :)

The truth is when traveling in a city I don't know, I do not have any recommendations. Sometimes I do not want to search on my current location, but rather a big city I am going to be in after a couple hours.

Also, lack of categories wouldn't be that bad if I could hit "More Results" or something like that, or could search by zip to further narrow it down. But neither of these options are available, and they absolutely should be.

The simple fact is that trying to search for restaurants in a city like Los Angeles, will randomly give you about 15-30 results, and that is it, usually based on some arbitrary city center (thus the need for zip search).

I think the biggest issue with every GPS I have used (Garmin, Magellan, TomTom, Navigon, others) is that the actual database of POIs is poor and not kept up to date (even those claiming several million). The TomTom insults me further by making it hard to even get a poor set of results.
 
The truth is when traveling in a city I don't know, I do not have any recommendations. Sometimes I do not want to search on my current location, but rather a big city I am going to be in after a couple hours.

You can do this.. I don't have my GPS in front of me but choose POI by location/city and start typing in name until it appears. Then again if looking for Chinese do Chin and it will populate for the city/town you chose not the one your in.

It will list them closest to furthest which is easy enough. If you know your 200 miles out and 1st one says 203 miles, essentially its 3 miles away once you get into town. Your not driving all over or across a town you don't know.

I agree in large cities a zip filter would help some but so far most anything can be done with search.

I do this often! I'll look up a place to eat at my destination LONG before I've even arrived. I can wish all I want for better POI navigation but being a Geek myself, I would rather cut through the many POI topics and get to what I want quicker with search and touch pad, than click category after category and scroll eventually getting to the same results. The later while seems simple took more time and attention off the road personally.

Think of Search like Googling.. Master it and you can find anything quickly and route it.. Save the POIs for the exceptions. JMO of course! :)
 
It will list them closest to furthest which is easy enough. If you know your 200 miles out and 1st one says 203 miles, essentially its 3 miles away once you get into town. Your not driving all over or across a town you don't know.

I just noticed this tonight. When I search for a POI, it was giving me weird distance amounts. Like a Tims that is only a couple KM away from my current location wasn't even on the first page of POIs.

So I just clued in... When you search for a POI in a city, it's giving you the distance from wherever the GPS thinks is the centre of the city. In order to get it ordered in distance from your current location, you have to choose "Near me".
Damn, you learn something new EVERY day! Glad I stopped on this thread!
 
Just took the Tom Tom on the first trip outside of my hometown of Las Vegas. We went to Phoenix, AZ. I'd say that at least three of every four POI's we wanted to look up were not there. At one point, I pulled into a shopping plaza and looked up all POI's near me. Only one of the fifteen or so businesses was listed.

Back in Vegas...today we did some driving around. Searched for four different POI's...a bank, a restaurant, a clothing store, and another store...it found ZERO out of those four. We also managed to drive somewhere where there were quite a few roads that have been there awhile, and Tom Tom said there were NO roads anywhere close.

In comparision, the bottom of the line Garmin I had three years ago probably found 9 out of 10 POI's I searched for.

Am I missing something here?

I LOVE the features that Tom Tom gives you for the money, but it doesn't do me much good if it can't find the places I want to go!

FYI, I have the latest Tom Tom firmware and North American maps.
I have a 930 and have the same problem with cusines. My Garmin, which I use in the US in my vehicle, has restaurants by cusines but my TomTom 930 does not. Real annoying. I only use mine for international travel and in the US with rental cars
 
This might be a slight detour on this thread, but over the weekend we took a trip and I ?discovered? the "Find Alternative Route", via POI, Along Route feature. Very nice! We used it twice to find a restaurant along our route... of course, sorted by distance from our current location... and of course, between our current location and the destination.

The Find feature worked well when we wanted a specific restaurant (by name). I wasn't looking for a restaurant by genre, so I wasn't bothered by the lack thereof. I agree, though, it would be a nice feature. (I guess that would be sub-category?)

// Joe
 
I don't think teleatlas sorts restaurants by cuisine (not sure). Every cuisine-searchable device that I have seen so far has been navteq-based.

Tomtom has a different approach to a solution - they launched google searching on their x40 devices. I assume google's sophisticated engine has no problem with cuisine searches.
 

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