Maps (Has quality control taken a back seat?)

I've reported 5 or 6 street spelling errors to Garmin via their reporting process that will pretty soon be over a year ago and still not corrected. I just reported an error on the 2014.30 map that has a machine shop business located on my residential street - don't think so.

I don't think it's gotten worse, just not gotten better.

I have had the GPS take me down some very strange routes when I'm in shortest distance mode and not fastest time.

It wants to take me down some cow path or the location is on the other side of the street. Happens quite often.

Most recent map update changed some of my usual routings to 10% longer or more. After a time or 2 the usual routings seemed to have returned.

From my perspective, things have gotten better. I notified them that a road near me is not a straight across drive, but rather a left turn, then a immediate right turn to stay on the same road. 2 updates later, they had it right. They have been very prompt at updating the new roads, and streets near me. It took a year, but that was about par for the course!

Having just completed a trip from Florida to the Dallas Texas area, and then on to the Houston area and back, I can tell you that Garmin must be in a state of dillusion. I made the mistake of updating to the latest maps and software upgrades, and it was the worst trip ever as far as the directions provided by the Garmin 2460. It was always tring to take me in the wrong direction, or take me directly through the Dallas traffic at rush hour instead of staying to the southside and then cutting up, it was late notifing me of upcoming interchanges several times. I basically had to ignore the directions being given, and depend on my vague knowledge of the Dallas Fort WOrth area, as well as the Houston area. I think after this trip I am about ready to go to the OSM maps and forget about the "crappy" Garmin maps.

@newjade, Would you please tell us the routing technique you used to set up destinations?

Did you enter a destination in Houston; then when going on to Dallas, enter a destination there; then when returning to Florida, enter your home as the destination.

The reason I ask this is because you seem to be describing the situation that often occurs when someone calculates a "Route" and then reverses it to return. There are several threads on the troubles that you can get yourself in when you "invert" a route.

Will be interested in how you set up your routing. Thanks

while Tom Tom does some weird stuff too...I got away from Garmin a few years ago...their routing is about 95% the way I'd do it all over the country...in 41 years behind the wheel I've driven all over this country, literally a million miles or more, and have a pretty good idea how to navigate most of it without help...Garmin maps are crappy...period.

There is a Bridge near me that has been closed for 10 years and so the road does nto go thru.

I reported it njo less than 4 times and it still has not been corrected.

So in my opinion, the quality control and reliability of the maps must be taken with a grain of salt.

They usually get me where I want to go, but once in a while I have to detour or look at my Google maps on my Android phone to arrive at my final destination.

Prior to purchasing a Nuvi 2595 a few weeks ago I was using the Navigon App on my iPhone. Comparing the detail provide by both systems in my opinion the Navigon App is better for detail and directions than the Garman Nuvi 2595.

That isn't to say the Nuvi 2595 has some nice features the Navigon App doesn't have, but I just think its a bit lacking in quality.

On major highways they get updated quite quickly. The Cabrillo Highway (Hwy 1) tunnel was updated in 2014.30, about 6 month after it opened. On the other hand, there was this obscure road in Hercules that has been rerouted five/six years back and it was just recently been updated. These two updates happened shortly after I submitted error reports. I am not sure my submissions have any effects though. The exit numbers on the Freeways are updated promptly, once they are assigned and posted.

Routing for my driving around town or short outings, <2 hours drive, have been quite reasonable, both in the choice of routes and the locations of my destinations on the correct sides of the streets.

Interestingly, the routes that I built ( one for each direction ) worked pretty well, with the exception of the changes to the original routing that the GPS unit did itself when I did not put in enough points to force the unit to go the directions that I wanted it to. The issues with routing showed up once in the DFW and Houston areas, when I put in places that I wanted to go to, and it would send me in the opposite direction, or send me down roads that are not even open to through traffic, but are private roads, and tell you to exit on an exit that you passed 1/4 of a mile ago. I finally got to the point that I stopped the navigation and just used the map as a visual aid. I am not a happy camper right now with Garmin, so I am glad that I am in an off season for travel for the next few months. That will give me the opportunity to download and "play" with the OSM US maps. I have used the OSM map of Costa Rica, and it was flawless on our last trip down, so I am hoping the US map will be as good.

Thanks for the reply. I suspected it was due to routing.

The problem one will have with "routing" is that a "point" that works going one way can cause the unit to do some pretty screwy "routing" when going in the other direction.

If you happen to tell the unit to go through a point that might work going west because the point was on, say, a one way street along the route will cause, at a minimum, what amounts to a u-turn when on the return route.

I think the unit was doing its best to get you to the "exact" points that you told it to navigate to. It had no idea that you really wanted to "pass close by" the point because what it thought you told it to do was to "go to this point"

Hopefully your experience will be helpful to others reading this thread.

Additionally, I would suggest reading the posts near the bottom of
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/41696

Garmin maps are constantly wrong. Speed limits are outdated. Routing has gone from mediocre to just plain wrong.

May have bought my last dedicated GPS.

We have changed to Navteq maps on my latest GPS. To be honest Garmin and Navteq are getting very close to being rubbish. TomTom look very inviting for the next GPS, they can't be worse.

When it comes to traffic, well that's non existent, at least TomTom has a good traffic here.

To be honest, my next GPS will be a TomTom.

I can't count the number of Garmin GPS's that I have sold for them but now I can no longer recommend them, they really need to improve their maps and traffic. In the next update would be great, that would be a great day for us all

jgermann, you keep saying routing was the issue, when I plainly stated that the issue had nothing to do with routing. The issue was that once I had completed the route that I had built, and was in the Dallas Fort Worth area, when I entered a POI as a destination, the routing that the GPS chose, was crap. It tried to take me down private access roads, took me in the wrong directions and gave late guidance on exits from the interstates. I have downloaded the latest OSM map, and tried to reinact the same destinations using both the new Garmin map and the OSM map. The preliminary results are very favorable for the OSM map over the Garmin map. I plan to keep "playing" with the OSM map as an alternative to the crap that Garmin is now putting out.

Wow. What you've described is EXACTLY what I've been finding out about my TomTom Pro Truck 7150. Exactly.

Although when I notified them of the problems via "Map Share", they have (on occasion) corrected it. I know this for a fact since I've driven by several locations that I previously reported and I haven't seen anything weird, like hopping off the Cross Bronx Expressway West just to take a ramp and hop back on it.

Yup. I've seen the same exact thing with my TomTom. Some reported changes have gone unheeded for 6 months now. Although some corrections have been made.

And yeah, I never us the "shortest distance" mode since it's a can of worms just waiting to take me down some really weird roads.

In your OP, you did not say anything about entering destinations within Houston and/or Dallas when navigating in those cities, so I made a bad assumption. Sorry.

Since you are doing some simulations, we will be interested in what you determine. The places in Dallas and Houston should still be in your "Recently Found". If you can remember some of the places where the Garmin tried to take you in the wrong direction, we would be interested in whether you are able to determine differences in the "maps" that would have caused the problems - such as one way streets, etc.

We are living in times, where quality control is not important. What counts is price. So we got low price and corresponding quality. But you can't complain about quality of cheap stuff, right?

If you compare prices of GPS unit and maps from 6-10 years ago you will see, that they dropped 2-3 times. As did quality of maps. Just be extra careful when driving and you will be ok. It is just sign of times.

What am I doing wrong. I have a new 2557 and have not had anything but good routs, correct maps, accurate arrival estimates and all the right speed limits and school zones.

Are we talking about the same thing?

Did you enable toll avoidance? My experience was that if you try to avoid toll, the routing basically goes berserk.

The last map (2014.30) has a few areas where the Garmin will tell us to exit the highway only to get right back on again. Not sure if it's the map or routing...

I have the same issue with sometimes the Garmin will tell me to exit off a ramp just to get back on again.
For what it's worth, the new Here.com's map data under the Map Creator is MUCH more accurate than the latest published maps. I really hope all of these changes that Here has (Navteq) will quickly be updated into the next map update.

I agree. Nobody should rely blindly on their GPS. Especially since it appears no matter what brand you own, they are all doing the same goofy things these days. There is no "perfect" GPS out there... the best we can hope for is "decent".

There seems to be a priority for various errors. Years ago I reported some newly implemented small one way streets near me that have yet to be incorporated. Meanwhile changes to major routes get updated within a year of reporting. My guess is the more heavily traveled an area is, the quicker the error will be fixed.

I suspect that this may be a common cause of slow response to inputs of errors. I am only guessing, but I suspect that Garmin processes reports of bad street data in roughly the same way that TomTom does.

A couple of years ago I was told by someone at TomTom that the people at the mapping company from whom they buy their data insist on confirming reports of errors before they will change the maps, and heavily traveled areas are reviewed first. If there are a large number of error reports, lightly traveled areas may not get reviewed for a long, long, long time.

In addition, the map companies apparently only update their info quarterly, and then another quarter or two is spent by TomTom processing the data themselves, so some error reports may not reach our devices until LONG after they are made.

Of course, this justification does not explain how previously correct data becomes erroneous, so I take it with a grain of salt.

- Tom -