Classic British Flight Sim

Hi Chaps

When something is wrong and it's put right, it's worth a mention.

I bought a new 5" TomTom VIA135 from Amazon in their Christmas sale. It was to replace my aging TomTom VIA120 LIVE which was starting to feel tired. Also, the 135 is similar enough to the 120 that I knew may way around it.. no learning curve! I didn't start using it immediately.. only quite recently really and from the word go, I wasn't happy. The 120 came with free Traffic for 12months plus free UK/ROI maps for 12 months. For the past couple of years, I've bought map updates for it.. quite essential as I use it every day at work. The 135 comes with free Europe maps for the life of the unit so this was going to be a saving.

The first disappointment came when I downloaded the latest map for the 135. I appreciate I was downloading Europe (not just the UK/ROI) but it took a fair bit over 2hrs.. closer to 2 1/2 if I remember right plus a further hour to install From the outset, it was markedly slower than the 120.. something I really don't need. Had this been the only problem, it would have been bad enough but it wasn't. The 135 has a nasty habit of picking up spurious/unwanted characters.. especially when changing from letters to numbers. Hit (for example) B (for a Brum postcode) then tap the shift key and the keypad often picked up a 7 whether I wanted it or not. Fine when driving around Tamworth (B7*) but rubbish elsewhere. Coupled with the units slow speed, I often found myself back-spacing out the spurious 7 PLUS the preceding letters. Most frustrating A few days ago, I decided I'd had enough and went back to the 120.

Fearing my lot was shot having bought the unit in December, I still decided to email Amazon yesterday explaining my findings and that I understood I was outside the normal return period. Bless my soul!! Within a very short time, I received an email back from them saying that even though they didn't sell the unit direct (they fulfilled the order only) and that it was outside their normal return period, they would refund the cost. A further email arrived shortly after with a link to personalised return labels with instructions on what to do with them

I'm sure some of you will have absolute horror stories about Amazon and their returns policy but from my experience with them yesterday, all I have is praise. They 'did good'.. above and beyond really and are worthy of positive comment

ATB
DaveB

Well said Dave...I get superb service from them

I'm also a TomTom ViaGPS user and find it excellent...I enter ALL the destinations that I and my Wife need into Settings > Favourites and find they are very safe there even though my map updates are too big to do in one (they remove the old and then put in the new). Also the Nav Software can be updated and the Favourites remain safe. I also keep the Live Service current. My Wife travels a lot around the country giving "talks with slides" and the TomTom Via Live does the job perfectly...She hated the GPS when I first got it and would not ride in the car with me if I had "Serina" chatting away...Now she swears by it and it goes into her car for every trip!

My old Via120 Live has played up a couple of times.. not in the navigation itself but in the voice synthesis. At one point last year (after a map update I might add).. all of a sudden, Telford became Telferrid I thought the poor girl had caught a cold This cured itself with the next map update and normal service has resumed. There are however, a few names that it doesn't like. Places with an H sometimes produce a sort of 'kerch' noise.. depending on where the H is. I presumed this was the hardware in the 120 getting old but no.. I got exactly the same with the 135. Satnav Sally doesn't like saying UPPER either. There's a road in Tamworth that TM will be familiar with called Upper Gungate (there's a Lower Gungate too but that's by the by). This always sounds like IVOR Gungate every time she says it

I've never tried a Garmin unit or one of the many others on the market so I can't say how they perform. I've been very happy with the TomTom 120 though. It is FAR more accurate than our company satnav and the one that preceded that. Every now and again, it'll drop a clanger but by and large.. it's great. There are a couple of places it always gets wrong but so does the company satnav. One block of addresses on the Birmingham Road the Sutton Coldfield side of Shenstone (from Lichfield) always end up delivering you safely to just outside Lichfield.. NOT the other side of Shenstone Likewise.. the Lichfield Road heading toward Walsall. This bit of road has 2 sets of numbers on it so you can find a 230 Lichfield Road near Shire Oak and also one some 4 miles down the road toward Walsall. Invariably.. ALL satnavs take you somewhere inbetween How come we can navigate across the Atlantic.. round the world in fact yet satnavs can still send you to the wrong place despite inputting the correct post code

Top marks to Amazon anyway for their excellent service
ATB
DaveB