Navteq Maps

Oops, missed a typo. The last sentence should read:

This is among the reasons I think my GPS is just NOT doing the complete job although I love it a lot.

Don't wasted your time with the Map Reporter through NAVTEQ, they don't care about their innacuracies. I submitted a few myself, only to have the changes rejected saying it does not reflect real world, when clearly I was standing in the REAL WORLD when I took the pictures and sent them to them for correction.

Gotta wonder who they have working in those cubicles there. I have no faith in them. Wish they had a competent competitor.

This seems to be a common problem with the HUGH poi lists, regardless of manufacturer. My Magellan claims 6 million and has problems like that. I've heard it is because they take listings from some kind of business guide, where the owner lists his HOME address, for purposes of receiving mail. I've been tempted to knock on the door and ask where the "Wendy's" REALLY is!!

Two to three years is a relatively short period of time when it comes to things being updated in the database. Especially for the built in POIs, 5 - 7 years is a more realistic time frame for them to be changed.

As to incorrect street numbers, that's a whole different issue.

It's important to understand how the addresses are typically assigned. The map data doesn't actually "know" where every address is. It knows that a certain street segment has a certain range of addresses. Then it attempts to place those addresses along the segment using the addressing "rules" set up for that particular area.

This can result in the addresses being off. Sometimes they are off by a little. Sometimes they are off by a lot.

The GPS unit is a tool. Be sure that you remember not to think of the information as an absolute. It's a co-pilot. Not an auto-pilot.

NAVTEQ is terrible in small town Canada...

Larger cities are OK, but thousands of smaller towns don't have any street names or POI's... Google Maps uses up to date NAVTEQ data and is the same as what I see on all the NAVTEQ enabled units that I've checked. (It's the same on my Magellan Maestro and my Son's Garmin Nuvi

As an example, there's a town of 9000 people near where I live. It has quite a few streets, but only one is named. The link below opens Google maps showing what I mean.. Why would they show the streets and not bother adding the the street names ???

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=50.134967,-97.3...

I followed the link. That's really terrible.

I looked up the Navteq mapping process, and they mention 6 steps. The 5th step is Geocoding. It almost seems that these towns are stuck before the 5th step.

Just to add.. It's been like that for four years now. I guess NAVTEQ has little interest in the Canadian component of the North American maps.

I wrote NavTeq not long ago and asked them about some of these questions. Apparently it is the business owner's responsibility to fix their POI and NOT NAVTEQs.

This is NAVTEQs response:

Thank you for contacting NAVTEQ. We do not collect the points of interests. If you are unable to find a specific restaurant, station, or building it is because that business has not registered with Dun and Bradstreet therefore we will not have that in our information to sell to the manufactures who create the units and updates. Please let us know if you have any further questions.

NAVTEQ
Customer Contact Center
888.628.6277
nabc_english@navteq.com

So who does maintain the POIs? Perhaps they get into my GPSr by magic?

So it's not Navteqs probelm, and it's not Garmin's problem, and it's not Traffic.com's problem. I know! It's my #$*& problem!

Quote: "Two to three years is a relatively short period of time when it comes to things being updated in the database. Especially for the built in POIs, 5 - 7 years is a more realistic time frame for them to be changed."

I think 5-7 years may be realistic in the pencil and paper age, but this is the computer age now. So updates are more close to real time. I think it should be more like 5-7 months. Especially when people send them the data. Some of it may be correct, some incorrect, but a company of this size should have the manpower to handle the checking of this information. In seven years, some of us will be too old to drive.
This all goes to say Garmins business is so good they could care less.

Yes indeed, I might also add it is one that will not argue with you too!

You single out Garmin, but it's all of them, not just Garmin. What you see appears to be an industry standard, so trying to single out one brand and say that they are worse than any other is just a case of setting your expectations unrealistically high. Obviously Navteq gets its business information from an outside source, and if the POI you want is incorrect from that source, then it isn't going to be correct in the unit. To seek out and verify some 6,000,000 POI's and try to keep them all up to date would be a monumental task and would likely raise the price of the unit to a prohibitive level. It's hard enough to try and keep up with the streets and roads (as evidenced by all the complaints in those areas).

As long as my Nuvi keeps getting me from point A to point B and finds the odd restaurant or gas station along the way, I'm not going to complain about an occasional error in the POI database.

Except that many businesses move or go in and out of business in less than 5-7 years. By the time the correction gets into place, the business may have moved or may no longer even exist.

I find that to be the case so often that it's embarrassing to even bother using the POI data at all if anyone else is in the car with me at the time (and is just plain frustrating when I'm alone).

Honestly, 5-7 years sounds like a 19th century way of doing business. Even punched card tabulation which was introduced in the early 20th century could handle that faster...

If a business exists for such short period of time, maybe they aren't doing a very good job in the first place? While I haven't used the stock POI database a lot (I rely in the custom POI's for most restaurants and such), I have used it enough to feel that it's got enough correct locations that I can use it with the knowledge that it isn't perfect, but most of the locations will be there. And since most of the stock POI's have a phone number in the details, you can always call to confirm the address.

They are about as up to date as the local phone book. So many biz come and go you can't expect them to have them all correct. That is what custom POIs are for.

I've wondered for a while how some of the business listings in the HUGE POI databases are off by so much (as in, not even close). Just a few days ago someone posted the answer....in a thread on here, I think.

They use a national business directory for their input....Dunn and Bradstreet is one; there might be others.

The problem comes in when the owner submits the data to be listed. If the owner doesn't want sales calls at the actual store, he might list his home address or a mail drop. As long as the GPS companies get their lists this way, that problem will NEVER be "solved".

If Garmin and Navteq were intelligent souls, they would abandon the POI files completely and concentrate on getting the roads correct. I can't imagine how many hours must be spent checking documentation. Restaurants being the POI group that changes the most. They are constantly coming and going. Revolving door businesses would be a good way of describing them.

I wouldn't encourage Navteq or or Garmin to abandon the built-in POIs they've been providing. Despite the inaccuracies, I've found the fairly large database to be very helpful. Recently I purchased a cheap "backup" GPSr (Magellan Maestro 3100) that I could throw in a glove box of a 2nd car, and the pitiful <1M POI database is horrible compared with my Nuvi's. Other than maybe gas stations, one can hardly find anything else. I knew the cheapie unit would have this problem, but didn't realize that it would be that bad!

Eventhough some of POI are not accurate and I understand why it is not.

While I understand the previous postings, in my experience with the built in POI's, they are helpful in over 80% of my searches. I prefer to deal with the files on POI factory, however, when I need the information, the Built In Pois are generally helpful.

I once had to use the Map Reporter. They actually responded to let me know the problem had been fixed.
However, they also behave as corporations do, treat customers and consumers with utter disrespect. After all, we need them and not the other way round (in their view).

I agree with your approximation of how many POIs are accurate. Wish it was somehow better.

I think I read a comparison between a Garmin Nuvi model and some other brand/model (perhaps Tom-Tom) where they said something about a user-updated/correctable file or site that could be downloaded into the GPS. Sounded more like updating the built-in POI area than just the custom POIs or favorites.

Of the 10-12 that I submitted a few months ago, I only got one fairly immediate reply that they knew about that one update that I submitted. Silence on the others.

Maybe I just have OCD, but I thought NAVTEQ would be interested in getting this right, but their response sheds some light on why their data is sometimes off.

The street I live on is 1 block long with 5 homes on each side of the street. The houses are numbered in ascending order from E to W starting with 1106 and ending with 1115, odd on one side, even on the other. The parallel streets are the same, like the rungs of a ladder and there is no way they can ever extend further east or west. My nüvi says I'm located a 1161 and the range for the street that is only 500' long goes from 1100 to 1199 according the their map.

I sent them a simple diagram and this was the reply:

"RESOLUTION: No Change Necessary - Does Not Meet Specification
DETAILS: The address location you refer to is correctly placed in the database according to internal NAVTEQ specifications, "In North America, apply logical addresses by rounding up to the nearest one hundred, e.g. 1, 99, 101, 199." This specification will sometimes skew the address away from their actual location.

"We always welcome NAVTEQ Map feedback. Thank you for your help in making NAVTEQ Maps the highest quality most accurate maps available."

According to these specifications, they have created 100 addresses where there are only 10 and yes, I'm "skewed" to the other end of the block, admittedly a minor nit, you can see my front door from where they say it should be. This goes a long way to explaining why the built-in POI are sometimes a block or more away from where they should be while the user submitted POI listed here at the POI-Factory are often dead-on at the entrance to the business.

The bottom line is that Garmin (and the other GPSr manufacturers) can't ever be any better than the data they buy from NAVTEQ. At least they responded and within a couple of weeks, and we now know why this is the way it is.

Thank you POI-Factory for allowing us to build our own database of where stuff really is.