LIVE Services, HD Traffic and other Services

[JHFE]

@Zsolt (and DITTE, whom I understand is monitoring this "thread")

On Saturday, May 12, 2012 at 1:45 P.M. (Eastern Daylight Time) in Great Neck (Long Island), New York, USA, it took 28 minutes for my LIVE Traffic to connect on my GO LIVE 2535M (which has App 11.037).  It appears this problem is not limited to "rush hours" in the greater New York City area.

[Zsolt Elite Voyager]

Hmm..so far most of the reports came about rush hours. Best to drop a mail to TomTom, to make them officially aware. Include the same details. Not much to do with me as I am just a user like you. Just follow the instructions here:

http://discussions.tomtom.com/t5/GO-800-1000-2000-Via-Start-20-40/Contact-Tomtom/m-p/163775/highligh...

The rest is down to TomTom and AT&T.

[JHFE]

@Zsolt,

Thank you for your reply.  I have sent a private message to Ms. Ditte on this matter.

[PODMAN]

Just posting to keep this issue alive on the tom tom forum. My commute last night in DC was horrendous and I finally got the traffic update after nearly 30 minutes of sitting in traffic.

[TT1]

Same thing for my rush hour trip in RI.  Didn't get my traffic updates for 30 minutes and I was already sitting in traffic.

[JHFE]

Today (May 15, 2012) beginning at about 4:30 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, my LIVE Traffic service on my GO LIVE 2535M (which has App 11.037) "lost its connection" completely beginning from south of Exit 2 on the New Jersey Turnpike (milepost 12.8) (Woolwich Township, New Jersey) until north of Exit 5 on the New Jersey Turnpike (milepost 44.1) (Westampton Township, New Jersey) [my AT&T cellular telephone service was constantly available during this time period] .  My LIVE Traffic service remained "connected" (with only minor, sporadic interruptions which quickly "reconnected") during the rest of my trip from Washington, D.C. to New York City.

[Kex]

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Mycroft wrote: ... when customers are paying $120 a year for a service ...

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Just to make this clear: currently, devices capable of receiving LIVE Services sold in North America have one year of service included with the purchase of the device. After that first year of service, the cost has been reduced from $120 per year previously (which I used to pay), to $60 per year. This reduction in cost was effective about a year ago (in the spring of 2011), and was also applied to older devices using an earlier version of LIVE Services (which did not have HD Traffic at that time, since traffic information was being provided by TrafficCast instead, not TomTom - it was not nearly as accurate, nor did it cover so many side streets, for those who are wondering).

Any discussion here is friendly speculation as to why connections may be slow for some users at certain times of the day, but these connection delays are not affecting all users (myself included).

[Mycroft]

LOL.

I apologize for misstating the price.  I had forgotten about the decreased price.  But the fact that I thought it was 120 shows you that I've been paying for this service a long time.   I bought my 740 Live in July 2010 and I had trouble free service from that time until around November.  I just checked my credit card and I've paid $170 in Live fees since I bought the device, which is more than the device actually cost.  I'd almost rather they raised the price or stopped giving away the service than to have such issues.

I'm glad you are not experiencing the issue, but I think that it's clear from the other posts that there is a problem here.  I have no knowledge of the underlying architecture of their traffic service but I notice a lot of the people having trouble are on the east coast.  Maybe it's a east coast vs. west coast thing.  Maybe the traffic service uses separate servers for different geographical locations (which may make sense since traffic information is by its nature local), or maybe it's a time-zone thing.  I never have trouble when it's 5:00 PM or 9:00 am in CA.  My troubles are around 5am PST and 2pm PST. 

Whatever the reason, my live renewal is coming up in June and I have a feeling that I'm not going to renew.  It's a shame really, because I LOVE my Tom Tom.

[Ditte]

Hi guys,

I'm sorry for not having an actual update for you. We're still investigating this issue. If you have any additional information you think may be helpful, please feel free to post it here or send me a PM. Don't forget to include your Serial Number

Thank you,
Ditte

edit: Now = not. Sorry for that mistake

[TT1]

I'll send you my serial number later this evening.

Can you be more specific on how Tom Tom is investigating the issue?  Who or what group is doing this? This issue can clearly be reproduced so I'm a little dismayed that it hasn't gotten beyond "investigating".