Very elementary POI question

I see that my question was also asked (by mledyard) just a few days ago. I guess I didn't use the right search keys.

As I understand the answer, custom POIs are more current than the standard ones, and they can be retrieved more quickly and reliably.

These are more up to date, I have a Chilis Restaurant by our house and it's still not listed also our Buffalo Wild wings is a no show, Chilis has been here for 4-5 years now.

Mostly because the list of Walmarts supplied with the unit is woefully out of date, inaccurate, and incomplete. I'll give you a good example, go to the Walmart website and look up the store located in Altavista, VA. Now try to look it up on your Garmin, it isn't there.

Using the Walmart supplied location, you will never find it. It's 5 miles away from the geocoded location and on another road.

Most of the stuff that POI's have been created for don't exist in the Garmin, Tom Tom, Magellan or what-have-you POI base. I know that almost none of the COE campgrounds are in the POI data base. That's why I created a POI file for them.

Most of the POI's files that have been created here cover make up for woefully inadequate or even non existent information.

On our yearly travels in North America, it is VERY time saving to know where the food stores are on our route!

Love especially the Walmart POI's

The built in POI's are intended to be a sampling of POI data. Most units contain around 6 million POI's. There are far more than 6 million businesses/attraction/etc. in the U.S.

At least twice, on a trip to Florida a couple of years ago, The built in POIs on the Garmin sent me to Walmarts that didn't exist and likely never would. It sent me to the wrong location for a restaurant that we were looking for, but thankfully, the phone number was included with the POI and I was able to call them.

The built in POIs can be in error, through no fault of Navteq, that makes most of the maps. Walmart could give an address that uses a suburban area, as the city, instead of the name of a the larger, defining municipality. The street might be recognized, in the GPS ar a county road, instead of a street, due to changes that have not filtered down to Navteq.

I have made a couple of POIs on POI Factory, based on data supplied by either a website or by the manufacturer, and it was necessary to actually hunt out some sites by looking at their own website maps and/or satellite views.

As a result, the custom POIs are likely more accurate and timely, but even these could have errors, if they simply Geocode based on an address.

i trust the poi's from this site not my garmin

I have found all of the POI files downloaded from this site to be comprehensive and accurate.

Accuracy is priority if you do a poi to be uploaded. Trust is important.

Let's assume I've just left Santa Fe and I'm heading up I-25 towards Denver... I've set a location in Denver as my destination. Since you mentioned Walmart, let's pick them for an example. I know I'm going to need gas in the next 150 miles so I turn to my nuvi and ask Jack to find a Walmart with a gas station along my route. He shows me the Walmarts with gas on either side of I-25 and no others, so I pick one, select Go! and then select add as a via to my route and I'm done. I don't know how to do that with the built in POI but since one of our members, Aophiuchus has put this file together for us, it's a snap.

Falcao has nailed it, accuracy is a priority for us. If we find an error or ommission, we work together to fix it today so that we have a better file listed here tomorrow morning.

As mentioned above, in many cases the custom POI files are more current. In many cases I have used my GPS to find a store that has closed or moved. Usually the custom POI will show the correct store location.

Also there are some custom POI's, such as the Greasy Spoons and Burger Joints, Hot Dog Shop, non-Chain Pizza, or Offbeat Tourist Locations (and the list goes on . . .) that are not easily found by a GPS.

One of the most valuable POI's, the redlight camera file, is a great resource that you will not find embedded into the software of a GPS. Although I am a very careful driver, it is good to know the location of these incriminating devices.

Because a lot of guys and gals have nothing to do with their time, so Miss POI has banished them to a life of POI files until their sentence is over.

Now really, is it not wise to have it and not need it rather than need it and not have it?

Don't you prepare for war in times of peace?

One day you WILL need a POI and kick yourself for not downloading the files, since your three month old GPS with it's one year old map does not show the Wal-Mart that just opened 3 months ago which is three blocks away from where you are, but show the address of the one that closed six months ago six miles away!!!
Get the picture?
Whew... That took a lot of brainpower to finish this post.

Thanks very much for your comments. Given the amount of data that Navteq collects, it's understandable that some of it would be out-of-date or incomplete. I guess I'll start using the POI files instead of the built-in ones.

When you buy the gps the built-in pois are updated, but if your gps has 2 years some pois are no longer valid. This way you have the opportunity to update many pois without updating the new maps.
If you do this for 3 to 4 years you save on maps to buy a new more updated gps with updated software.
Just an idea.