Sorry I didn't get back last night. Poorly baby and all that.
Anyway. The bleeding thing is really, really annoying me at peak times. It changes its mind about route sooooo many times I hardly know where it is I am supposed to be going. The first 20 mins of my journey are a never ending stream of "new route found"
Yesterday it told me to turn into the city centre. I followed like a good little product tester. The radio said there was an accident in my direction and indeed I could see a huge queue of traffic ahead. It otld me to take the 4th exit form the roundabout so I did but I think there was one that wasn't an exit or something and it turned out I took the exit before I was supposed to. The directions were then terrible tbh. In a city centre full of no car lanes (NONE of which show up on the TomTom which led to some hairy situations of me having to change direction last min because the signage in the city was as rubbish as the TomTom for the non car lanes), one way systems etc you need TIME to prepare. But recalculation was slow, so I I didn't have time to get in the right lane so it had to recalculate so I didn't have time to get in the right lane...you get the idea? Then it started telling me to turn round. Yup. In a city centre full of no car lanes, one way systems and, well, a city centre it isn't exactly possible to turn round. To add to all of that it was constantly finding new routes for the later part of my journey so just when I thought I might be getting somewhere it would go "new route found" and the map of where I needed to go RIGHT THIS SECOND would vanish until I said "yes" and it actually understood me or I paused at a traffic light or something to press the "yes" button. ARGH! Eventually I managed to navigate myself out and once I had got onto a major road it stopped getting me to turn round and calculated my route home from there.
Other things annoying me. Is there a way to turn off toll roads as a permanent thing? At the moment I have to do it each and every time I go home from uni. I select home. It calculates fastest route, I have to turn off toll roads and then it has to recalculate. Annoying.
If you plot a route then how much variation and recalculation do you get or does it just follow that route regardless of traffic? This relates to the above question. There are several possible routes that don't involve the toll road but if I were to plot one of them and select that each time as a way to avoid the whole toll road avoidance faff on then would I still benefit from the traffic function?
In all honesty I am heartily sick of it at the moment. Even in the morning it recalculates 3 or 4 times on my way in yet has never, ever, not even once ended up directing me on anything other than my own usual route. On the way home it has taken me a variety of ways which is good. I wish there was a way of having more input though and being able to choose one of the ways more easily. TBH at the moment I pretty much just want it to take me on a couple of the routes one more time so I know them well enough to do myself as you can easily tell from the traffic situation in the early part of the route (which is the same regardless of which route you take after than) which way is going to be best.
If it didn't recalculate so often I wouldn't mind, I think it is useful being able to see where the traffic is and which routes to avoid but it just ends up making me feel like I don't know if I'm coming or going. I'd like an option to tell it to only recalculate if it will save me, for example, more than 4/5 mins. Generally when it recalculates it is only suggesting a saving of 1 min or so which frankly just depends on whether the traffic lights are on green or red. In rush hour traffic fluctuates so much that a minute is neither here nor there and it changes all the time, which I assume is why the blinking thing ends up recalculating all the time.
More positively we have used it several times for finding unknown places and that is helpful. Dh has become a bit of a convert having initially disliked it as ds1 has had lots of away games so they have been going to various rugby clubs about the region.
The finding places without the postcode thing is a bit of a apin I agree. I understand TomTom's explanation and yes, there is a lot of variety in place names etc but google maps manages! Though for some of you have you tried narrowing fields using the lists on the right hand side? Eg I typed in Metro Centre the other day and it didn't find it but if I used the fields on the right hand side to narrow down criteria it did then come up with it so I didn't have to find the postcode.