TomTom Discriminates Against Mac users
In the past, if you wanted the latest map for your TomTom, you went to TomTom’s website, paid for it and downloaded it. Now TomTom has changed it so that it is only possible to download the maps using its ‘TomTom Home’ software.
Not a great problem, except that the latest maps can only be downloaded and installed using the latest version 2 software. Unfortunately, TomTom hasn’t bothered yet to release version 2 for Mac users, who are stuck with v1.5, so Mac users are excluded from using the latest maps unless they can find a Windoze PC on which to install Home and use to download the maps.
To make matters worse, the new maps are currently on offer at discounted rate until the end of January 08, so by the time TomTom get their finger out and release version 2 of Home for Mac, this date will have passed, and Mac users will have been effectively excluded from the offer.
Q: why is version 2 required to install a map, something version 1.5 was perfectly capable of doing previously?
Q: why can’t the map be downloaded directly from TomTom’s website as was the case if the past?
Q: why are TomTom being so slow to release version 2 for Mac?
I contacted TomTom, suggesting that since they’d failed to get a Mac version out in time for the offer, they should extend the offer for Mac users. The response was:
We’re doing our best to come out with an update as soon as possible so every customer could download maps and updates using their own pc or mac.
But for now unfortunately indeed there isn’t much our mac customers can do for downloading maps besides using a different windows based computer.
Which roughly translates as ‘tough’.
The correct customer focused response would have been “we appreciate the inconvenience the delay in getting the Mac version released is causing our valued Mac based customers, so we have extended the discounted map offer to those customer for a period of one month after the software is released.”
I wasted over 2 hours today in trying to find the download for the Iberia map I had purchased. I was responding to TomTom’s promotional email. Fortunately, I have TomTom’s help number (08451610009) which is a local call, even though the help centre is in the Netherlands. Staff were courteous and helpful, but it was the 2nd employee who informed me that maps were no longer available for the Mac. I asked him why this was not mentioned in TomTom’s promotional email, but not surprisingly, he didn’t know the answer.
It was just as well I had their phone no. because any attempt to submit a query online today resulted in the response “email requires a value” which is a new term to me. I was told that their server is being “temperamental” today – believe that if you will!
TomTom need something to concentrate their collective mind on sorting out this discrimination. How’s about every Mac owner phones the Help line to complain, daily? And what about 10,000 emails (if email no longer requires a value!)?
Lorimer Burn
I just received an automated request to “tell us how we did in answering your query”, so I told them what their correct response should have been.
TomTom have just released Home v2.2 including a Mac Version.