What does "useful life" mean?

[diggeryo]

I own a TomTom One XLS. The time of year has come for me to renew my map update service. However, I see TomTom is offering (or will be offering soon) a lifetime map update service for only $100.

This is defined as:
"You receive up to four non-transferable map data updates per year until the product's useful life expires or TomTom no longer receives map updates from its suppliers, whichever is shorter."

What exactly is the "product's useful life?" Does this mean until my TomTom device doesn't work anymore? Or is it a definition that means TomTom can decide that, even though my device still works, after a pre-determined number of year (say, two, for example), they can say it's "useful life" has run out, so I won't be getting any more free maps?

 

[Thom]

I would define "Useful Life" to extend until the day it becomes a paper-weight...

But that's just me. I'm still using a 3 year old OneLE with the original map in my second car...

 

[gatorguy]

I don't think anyone knows. It could be until they're no longer offered for sale (discontinued) or until the installed application will no longer support new maps. Or until it dies. TomTom has left it vague, and clearly doesn't intend to post specifics. On a Garmin it's until it gives up the ghost. There's 4 year old nuvis happily receiving lifetime updates, and even a firmware update this year. But I don't know if TomTom thinks the same way or not.

 

[mikealder]

The main issue with a car based GPS unit if used and handled correctly is down to battery life, anywhere between two to three years is about all you can expect from these sort of batteries and in most cases they are far from easy to change.
Your average user certainly won't feel at home opening a unit up even if guides on how to change batteries are made available on the internet such as this site - Mike

 

[gatorguy]

I know what they've posted in the legal's. And that would suggest that once a device has been discontinued (no longer supported by TomTom) the service life is over. But is that really what they mean? Or is that once TomTom can't service them anymore. If so then, strictly speaking, the service life was over the day you bought it. TomTom does'nt service the devices themselves, offering no hardware repairs for faulty devices (Tho there is a company they send returns and old unused stock to for refurbishing). OR is it once the onboard memory isn't sufficient to hold the latest maps? Several models are approaching that already.

See what I mean? We don't know specifically how the useful life is determined. Apparently with the way it's worded, whenever they feel like it.

 

[rcacs]

My wife defines it as:

"As long as I am bringing home the bacon, I have a useful life"

Cheers!

 

[GeePeeEss]

TomTom's definition

"Useful life means the period of time that your TomTom Product is serviceable and/or supportable by TomTom, including but not limited to, your TomTom Product having sufficient memory or software to accept updates to the original map data."

 

[GeePeeEss]

http://www.tomtom.com/en_us/legal/terms-and-conditions/index.jsp

 

[Andy_P]

Which is rubbish....

What they REALLY mean is
"Useful life means the period of time that TomTom are still prepared to service or support your TomTom Product, given that we have just realised all the money we can save by abandoning a huge number of loyal customers with models that are just a couple of years old."

 

[canderson]

To be fair, TomTom is still finding ways to break up the bigger new maps to make them loadable to the really vintage units. And let's face it, it's a challenge to figure out how to parse things to get a USA map on a 512M unit! So thus far, they've treated us OK in this regard. Nothing says that this will continue, of course.

To my mind, the problem is (and always has been) on the "service" side. There never HAS been any "service" in North America. If it's still under warranty and they have some returned units in stock to ship to you, you get another like you had. If not, they offer you something else. But beyond that, we've ALWAYS been on our own here.

 

[Andy_P]

To be fair, TomTom is still finding ways to break up the bigger new maps to make them loadable to the really vintage units.

But the vintage units all had SD card slots.... Even on the really vintage ones there's no problem updating, If you can find yourself a 4GB non-HD SD card..

TT shot itself in the foot when they tried to save a few pennies by dropping the card slot in the more recent ones. They then skimped on the internal memory fitted and subsequently created this shambles all by themselves.
It should have been abundantly obvious to them that they were not leaving themselves enough room for the maps.

 

[canderson]

True for the majority, but not all of the 'vintage' units had SD slots, either. The original ONE Classic and the ONE 3rd were all 'slotless', for example. I agree that they shouldn't have made any like that after those, though. Still, they've at least offered a mechanism for the small memory model "regional" editions to handle map areas, even if the segmentation game is a PITA. So far, I don't know of any models that aren't supported with new maps every quarter, even those that date back 7 years.

 

[Andy_P]

So far, I don't know of any models that aren't supported with new maps every quarter, even those that date back 7 years.

True, but if a map install goes wrong for any reason, you're on your own as far as TT customer support is concerned.

They'll happily take your money for the new map, but now they won't help if their own software installer bricks the unit.

So I guess we are back to your first post and the poor "service" side.

 

[canderson]

True, but if a map install goes wrong for any reason, you're on your own as far as TT customer support is concerned.

Yes, that does bite. At least somewhere along the line, they caused Home to badger the user about having a backup, which most of the time, will include a clean copy of their current map. Before that, it was depressing to hear an out-of-warranty user arrive here with, for whatever reason, no map and no backup -- though it still happens from time to time.

They'll happily take your money for the new map, but now they won't help if their own software installer bricks the unit.

I DID see a post here the other day where C.S. had pity on some user whose unit was bricked during an update and provided them with a map. However, we very rarely hear reports of this here.

So I guess we are back to your first post and the poor "service" side.

Yup. I have even made some serious inquiries about means to clean the problem up in our market, down to the point of having TomTom offer physical repair services here, but nothing seems to have come of it. Honestly, the difference in the way TomTom treats the N.A. market and the way Garmin treats this market is like night and day when it comes to after-sale support and service. A properly run service organization can be a profit center for the company while, at the same time, keeping users happier. It should be managed as a win-win in the business model, but it's not.

 

[Nextourer]

So I take it we have no definite answer and TT won't give us one either?

For my ONE New Edition, would the "useful product life" be the time it stopped giving updates (I basically went from Navcore 6 to Navcore 7. Once Navcore 8 was out, we were SOL). That basically lasted 2 years. Does anyone have a unit older than that with lifetime map/traffic? Does it still work?

 

[dhn]

Lifetime maps are available for the following models:
http://www.tomtom.com/en_ca/services/other/lifetime-traffic-updates/#tab:tab4

 

[TTvia1405]

Honestly, I don't think $100.00 for LTM is justified while brand new one is about $110.00 with TM and all the goodies come with it .

I bought my VIA1435TM for $105.00 from Amazon "with new account" ..
Just shop around ,

 

[Nextourer]

Lifetime maps are available for the following models:
http://www.tomtom.com/en_ca/services/other/lifetime-traffic-updates/#tab:tab4

Hey dhn,

good to see you're still around!


I know but right now i'm still running a 2007 North America map (they gave it to me with that map guarantee instead of the USA_Canada that comes with a ONE) and I'm tempted to upgrade the map in my ONE (5 years is a long time!) but I don't know if I should.

 

[dhn]

Where would I be?

I would think the mapping for your neck of the woods will have improved in the past 5 years, don't you think?

But, if indeed your current maps seems to get you where you need to be without issue, then ...... ???

 

[Nextourer]

Where would I be?

I would think the mapping for your neck of the woods will have improved in the past 5 years, don't you think?

But, if indeed your current maps seems to get you where you need to be without issue, then ...... ???

I don't know... I kinda disappeared :whistle: heh.


Oh yeah the roads have changed a lot since. The question is whether it'll have the new toll bridges, will it have deleted the toll from the Coquihalla? what about the twinning of the TC-1 in SK?

Also, the mapping was off for the TC-1 near Thunder Bay. Do they fix roads where nothing has changed?


That and I'd like a newer map anyway. I'm "due" for one. I got a new car with nav which is why I've put it off for a bit but now that they're both getting "old", the TT has the older map so I figured I'll update that first (plus it's cheaper. You don't wanna know what Toyota charges for theirs)