How do we complete the bank Of America ATM file

I once contacted BofA about this issue providing all the locations they have and I received an email from customer support saying that it was not feasible and you would have to put a zip code to find location near that zip code.

sounds like a "boilerplate" answer customer service is supposed to give. They need to realize that this will actually HELP their business as people will be more likely to use their ATM's. I imagine that we would need to talk to someone "higher up"

I had the same issue with the CO-OP ATMs. I spent no less than 3 hours making several calls, and being transfered numerous times and was told every time that this was not possible. It was obvious in most of my conversations that the persons I talked to had no concept of why I needed a complete list of their ATM locations. They all seemed to think I was trying to package it and re-sell it back for a profit or had other nefarious plans. Obviously, a lot of these people have no concept of web communities where people share information and their skills freely.

At the end of each call when I got the person who was at the "top" of the heap and would refuse to forward my call further, I repeatedly faced the bureaucratic response of: "Sorry but there is no way of providing you with an entire list because (Enter any imagiable reason here such as: Private info, impossible because of database design, already submitted to somone else working on this last week, list not for sale, Garmin has the full list and has published it to all it's GPS already, etc...). Please use the web site to get the specific list you need." and "I am sorry that I cannot help you, maybe you can run the web page a couple of times and get all the results you need"

Needless to say this was frustrating. But that's the way it is and, automating a perl script to gather the info for you (Aka web scrapping) is not tolerated here, so you can just forget about that avenue.

Apparently, others on this site have sent written letters to various institutions in the hope to get the information or at least have the instituion consider it more seriously than a phone call(as opposed to throwing it away with the rest of the junk mail and phony business offers they must receive daily) but I have no idea how sucessfull that has been. Maybe that is the way to go?

Here my old thread on the subject: http://www.poi-factory.com/node/11759

A Request for Information is a way to ask people/corporations for Information that is wanted or needed. It's a fairly standard way of asking officially what you want or need. The request usually contains background on what is needed and why you need/want it. It also has a section of how it benefits the customer to provide such info. I have also included Links to this site as well as the Garmin etc site so they can see what/why I want the info. I Also included some screen shots of what the POI would look like etc..Now the question would be in such a large organization as a bank etc is trying to find out to whom you send it to?

The link below has a good template and may be of some use in this case…Just need to modify it For the task at hand etc.

Good luck – BTW the PDGA has responded very positively that I actually submitted a proposal for the request and not just an email etc..

http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/doc?rfi-template

Scott

Are there any examples available or template. The link you gave is very informative but it's a generic document.

Maybe we could use a document which has been sent by a member of this site (such as yours Frisbee Golfer) and which has generated positive results. Then all we'd have to do is fill in the blanks (i.e. originator name and address, destinator name and address, any other institution specific info/request). How about having one template hosted here?

That would certainly help streamline the process for those of us who would like to contribute complete and accurate database and who are willing to spend a little time dealing with the institution we are interested in... Who knows, we could even have a few of them send us updates regularly if we manage to convince them of the benefit of having their GPS coordinates available to the masses (That other thread I read about keeping tracks of downloads may become important in helping convince institutions to regularly contribute the data)

I have found the same problem with a number of other places I am thinking about makeing POI's. I was looking at a one and had to do it by either city ore each zip code in the state. to get a list and this was from their own website.

Anyone Know how I can post a Word Doc? I will try and post RFI in the forum so you can see the info I included..

I have been working on all the B of A's banks. I have about 12 more to go but they are huge. I tried writing B of A and they won't give me the information. I even went to their main data center in Phoenix, and no one would help. Also, their locator only will show the nearest 25 locations. If you're looking at a big city like Dallas, there are more than 25 banks. I'm currently working on Texas and Florida. Those will take a good month due to size. Florida has approx 1500 B of A's.

Now, here is the other problem. There are many BofA ATM's that are not associated with the bank locations. Some of them are inside airports, in theatres, etc. Pretty hard to get your GPS to work inside an airport. That is another large project that I haven't even had a chance to look at. Maybe someone else can take that one on until I get done with all the banks.

I had so many problems with B of A, with their ostentatious branch offices and tellers, and fees imposed on seemingly every transaction.

When I paid off their Visa, I found that they use double-cycle interest calculation, which had the hightest rate among all of my plastics, including the reward-generating ones.

I closed out all B of A accounts, which solved the ATM POI issue.

I just created a utility to clean up the raw input data (from the BofA's search page) and parse out the fields, but as you stated getting the list when it shows up to 25 per search is lame. So far I just search on a zip, grab the first 5 results and use my utility to dedupe, but there are hundreds in FL alone. How are you getting and handling the addresses for your POIs?

I've written a Perl script that automatically runs to get the CO-OP network ATMs. It enters a zip code and sets a search radius that cover an area a little bigger than the zip surface area in square miles. (The zip list is based on the 2000 census and contains all sort of info such as State, Zip Code, land and water surface area and even population density) Then the Perl script parse the results and only keeps the addresses with the correct zip and it does that over as many results pages as needed and dumps it into a csv file. Then all I have to do is run the geocoder and finally adjust the csv to my nuvi's liking. It even waits between page queries so as not to tax the web server...

But I was told that using it and posting the results on this site would be unacceptable because the technique is called web scrapping and it is frowned upon....

I had thought about doing the exact same thing, but why is it frowned upon. It's no different than going to the page manually and getting the addresses. It's just more efficient.

I agree, technology is all about being efficient. We're all about finding better ways to do things. Remember how to use DOS? Not so much for the average user anymore...

Well, I could not agree more but you can see for yourself what I was told when I offered to do it for the CO-OP ATM Network

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/11759

I really like this site and I don't want to get kicked off for doing something frowned upon. Otheriwse, I would have already published the the ATMs for a couple of states...

I first find every bank for the state by using B of A's locator using city and zipcodes. I then cut and past from the locator to my doc. This has the address for you from the locator. I then go into each bank from the locator to get the hours of operation and telephone number, I then include it into my doc. I then go into Mapsource and enter each address separately to get it's coordinates. This is time consuming but I have found other programs that allow you to put in all the addresses at the same time don't always give you the exact correct coordinates.

Wow, you do every address. I think time consuming is an understatement. Kudos to you. How "off" are the coordinates from the multi-entry sites? Is it just plain wrong, or is it just not quite as accurate?

Many are right on, others are 500 yards away and a few were miles away. I started getting people telling me the exact location is xxx so I just decided to do it the long way.

Here's a quote from a certification book I am currently studying:

"Ideas and facts themselves cannot be copyrighted; it is only the original aesthetic or artistic expression of an idea or fact that is copyrighted. For example, data and facts on a Web site are not protected."

This would indicate that using a bot to extract public facts and/or data and including it in a different compilation and format is legal. It is the presentation, format and display that is copyrighted, not the underlying public data.

That being said, defending such an action might cost thousands in legal fees in order to "win". Quite understanding if POI Factory decides to err on the side of caution. The only ones who "win" such disputes are the attorneys.

I agree that it's difficult. And while ideas are not subject to copyright, intellectual property is.

Original works of authorship fall directly within the scope of copyright regardless of the presentation or format. The categories of works that are protected are viewed broadly and not narrowly.

The data (which is different from facts) isn't in the public domain in the form that is being requested. The owners of the data have indicated that they consider it to be private. We should respect that without question. Especially since this site would likely cease to exist as we know it if the site couldn't voraciously defend and protect the intellectual property contained here.

Read here for more information about copyrights.
http://www.copyright.gov/

Plus the discussion was about spidering and scraping which is a different issue. And as the poster pointed out, US courts have determined that scraping and spidering can be considered criminal trespass. Plus it's extremely frowned upon by most website owners for a variety of reasons.

And I will reiterate that these are my personal opinions and are not meant to represent the ideas of the owners of this site nor the general membership.

Well, from my dealings with the CO-OP people, what I found was that they had no concept of what I was doing. Despite my best efforts and until the end of every calls, they were under the impression that I was trying to gain the data so that I could resell it for a profit. Which I am not. But to them, it seemed inconceivable that I would go through all the troubles of making a POI only to share it freely. So, all my conversations ended with them refusing to pass over the info because they did not want me to profit from it, hence the many excuses why the information was "protected" and not released...

This is why I sent an RFI to the association that I am getting my info from..I posted my template and I have revised it somewhat to include screen shots etc...and benefits to the organization..It also states that I will not use it for profit etc...

What's the link to teh RFI Template? I'd like to try this with CO-OP Network

I will have another revision completed later this week - I am including screen shots etc..

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/11942