In a recent post I questioned whether TomTom had lost its ethos. The post was written against the background of a long list of unsatisfactory dealings with TomTom – one issue took a year to resolve – and a current problem with the map update service.

I have written this post because it may help other TomTom users to resolve similar problems.

Update 19 April 10: If you are looking for background information on this bug and a permanent solution, please read this post. If you want a quick fix, please page down and read the very useful comment by Philippe Teuwen.

Update 7 June 10: When I tried to operate my TomTom from TomTom Home v. 2.7.4.1962, I received an error and was unable to carry out the procedure sent in by Philippe (see above). Looks like I am back to deleting mapsettings.cfg and following the more cumbersome procedure explained below.

Update 14 December 10: After updating maps on my TomTom, I noticed that manual deletion of mapsettings.cfg (as described below) seems no longer necessary. TomTom loses this file all by itself. Still without warning to the unsuspecting user, though.

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I am using a TomTom Go 940 Live and have subscribed to the map update service, which entitles me to four map updates a year. A few days ago, I updated my maps using TomTom’s own software, TomTom Home. The process itself was painless but also unsuccessful. After the update, my device was stuck in a loop at the start-up screen and stopped working.

Looking at the support pages on the TomTom website, the scenario of SatNav devices not starting up is a common and frequent problem. The website hosts a list of procedures for this situation, which follows a trial and error system: Try this, if it does not work try that, …

TomTom insists on demanding that users should be their own software engineers. Myself, I am not too bad with computers but there should not be the assumption that computer proficiency is required to operate a device that is supposed to work out of the box.

I tried all of TomTom’s procedures without any luck and got into touch with TomTom customer services. They suggested that I delete my maps from the device and my computer, downloaded and re-installed the lot. This is a simple procedure, if time consuming, even over a reasonably fast Broadband Internet connection, and it solved the problem. As a side effect, I had lost all my favourites, custom points of interest (POIs) and home address. Restoring all of my personal information manually would take hours. I know because I have had to do it before.

With experience gained from previous problems, I know that the home address is quickly input and the POIs are easily copied across from the backup on my computer onto the device. The problem re-occurred, however, when I also copied the mapsettings.cfg file back onto my TomTom.

This leads me to suspect that the culprit was an incompatibility of my new maps with the existing mapsettings.cfg file. The problem could have been resolved much easier and in far less time by simply deleting the mapsettings.cfg file from the device. If the file is missing, the device creates a new, blank mapsettings.cfg file. As this simple task was not suggested to me by TomTom support, I suspect that TomTom are not aware of the cause of this problem. Annoyingly, TomTom support did not warn me that I would lose my custom POI files, too.

Would it be too much to ask that TomTom makes the mapsettings.cfg file compatible with map updates, routinely told customers what information will be lost and how to restore it?

Mapsettings.cfg is a small file, which contains the home address, favourites and recent destinations. Seasoned TomTom users will know that mapsettings.cfg is a troublesome file, which is lost just about every time a problem occurs and some problem solving procedure or other has to be carried out. In the past, copying an existing mapsettings.cfg file back onto the device worked, but not now.

I have actually long stopped using favourites for storing my addresses and use custom POIs instead, which are easier and more reliably restored in case of something going wrong. My only grievance with POIs is that they are slightly more awkward to access than favourites and that it is not possible to sort them alphabetically rather than by distance from the current location.

I wish that TomTom support would start offering solutions, which do not always involve deleting large chunks or everything as a first step and which are not randomly trial and error but based on a more sound analysis of the problem. And I really wish that TomTom would stop being so liberal with my time.

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Some years ago, when personal satellite navigation first became affordable, I bought my first TomTom, a One model. It worked faultlessly and reliably. A lot of my work is performed on location. For some obscure reason, most of my clients seem to live in places, which require the skills of a sleuth or the cunning of a local postman just to get there.

Reliable navigation is indispensable in my line of business and TomTom seemed the right choice. I liked the look and the fact that it is a European product. Even the TomTom ethos seemed right. That was then, when TomTom products still worked and before the company lost its ethos.

Last year, TomTom ran a competition. They were asking for an article on how to behave like a local, once you got there, wherever, presumably using their SatNav. I have always been dismayed by this country’s inability to produce decent cafés and wrote a piece on how to take coffee like an Austrian – and promptly won a new TomTom, the then top model. I was thrilled. The new model offered so many additional features, it looked good and I had actually done something to deserve it.

I donated my old TomTom to a local branch of Cats Protection. I am told it is very useful in their frequent rescue operations.

At the time, I was already subscribing to traffic updates, which were delivered via mobile phone data. On route, my TomTom would inform me of traffic problems and offer an alternative. One of the seductive features of my new TomTom was the handsfree function for my mobile phone.

I quickly discovered, however, that there was an annoying incompatibility between traffic updates and the phone’s handsfree function, which meant that I could have one or the other but not both.

TomTom, however, were advertising that both features would work together. I believe that if you promise something, you have to deliver. I wanted traffic updates and handsfree.

Over the next ten or so months, I spoke to TomTom tech support many, many times. I already suspected that what they were promising did not work but I can be stubborn. I was also naïve in thinking that they would realise their mistake and release some software fix and that would be the end.

The end? There was no end of complicated technical procedures that TomTom asked me to perform. They thought it was completely normal that I should spend hours trying to resolve their problem. Once unimaginable, it has now become the norm that the burden to get technical equipment working is on the user and no longer the manufacturer or supplier. Think of computers, Broadband, television sets, anything. If it goes wrong, you are out in the cold.

When I once mentioned to my contact that TomTom were being very liberal with my time, the answer was a surprised “but I thought you wanted to get it to work”. My contact could not comprehend that I resented doing his work.

The issue went on and on and I would, every few weeks, spend hours resetting, reformatting and setting up my TomTom. Of course, the problem was never resolved. What I found most frustrating was the fact that TomTom seemed to imply that I was being unreasonable in expecting the device to work as it was supposed to. TomTom even tried to tell me that the problem was with my mobile phone when it was on their list of compatible phones. Still is.

I wrote two letters of complaint but never received an answer. It is not necessarily the number of complaints that a business receives, it is the way, in which these complaints are handled that says a lot about the company and the people running it.

One day in June of this year, completely unexpectedly a brand new top of the range TomTom 940 Live arrived in the post. Surely, I told myself, this device would work properly. In a way, I had won but there was a sense of emptiness because there was no cover letter, let alone an apology. Another indication of a misguided understanding of the terms service and customers.

To me, clients are everything. My service philosophy is simple: I treat every client as if they were my only client.

TomTom, in common with probably all other large corporations, really let their customers feel that they are nothing.

My new TomTom worked well – until today, that is. I am paying to get updated maps four times a year. Today, I was informed that there was a new map and I decided to install it. The procedure is straightforward and should be simple and painless through TomTom’s own software, TomTom Home.

It was simple enough but something went wrong. No, I did not do anything wrong. I am quite sure of it. Now, my navigation device is stuck in a loop, where it will display a startup screen, turn itself off, on again, display a startup screen … you get the idea.

There is extensive documentation of devices stuck at startup screen on the TomTom website. A common problem, presumably. If a problem keeps occurring, would it not be better to fix it?

I went through TomTom’s problem solving procedure: I performed a soft reset, deleted and re-installed the application, backed up the device, formatted it and restored the data. We are still stuck in a loop.

I have contacted customer support, who will take two days (excluding weekends, of course), if not longer, to respond. I know that they will tell me to reset my device to factory settings. I know because this is their standard answer to all technical problems. It does not solve anything but it stalls the customer, who cannot be entirely sure that it does not work after all.

You see, TomTom technical support does not listen to your explanations and analysis, they go straight to page x of their procedures manual entitled “re-set device to factory settings”.

I also know from experience that this particular operation will result, yet again, in a total loss of all my personal settings and addresses. More time-consuming work for me to get it all back to the way it was. But that’s allright, according to TomTom, because I am the customer and I have the time.

What a way of spending a Saturday afternoon and there is not even a solution in sight.

Comments and useful advice are encouraged …