TomTom Go 540 Live

Believe it or not, I’ve been working for my current employer for 20 years¹. Loyalty like that is a rarity these days (or could I just not find anything better elsewhere)? Anyway, they’ve given up on handing out watches and simply give out gift vouchers instead (although a generous amount, I should add).

I’d been thinking for a while of replacing my aging TomTom One v2 – I was attracted to the larger screens and IQ routes features on more modern versions. I thought I’d get a TomTom One XL IQ, as this covered the bases, although secretely I’d have ideally liked one of the better models. Well, these vouchers were all I needed to upgrade my aspirations! I could use my vouchers at Halfords, and as they had a sale on at the time, it sounded ideal.

After much searching of reviews and looking at specifications, I narrowed it down to the TomTom GO 540 or the 730.

The 730 is the more “up market” model, but is the not the most recent. Halfords were actually selling this cheaper than the 540.

However, the 540, or more precisely the 540 Live, had one thing that I wanted and that the 730 lacked – voice control. My new car has a very steep sloping windscreen so to secure it in its ideal position at the bottom of the screen would put it out of reach. Of course, you still have to press an on-screen button to activate the voice control but the purcahse of a bluetooth remote would eliminate the need to even do that.

Anyway, I weighed up the reviews and general pros and cons, and finally decided to go for the 540. The Live services (at £7.99 a month) are steeply priced but offer regular traffic updates, amonst other things. After now using the 540, however, I feel compelled to try and find the money each month to pay for the Live services.

The only thing left bugging me is the on/off technical support from TomTom – they’ve often responded to me quickly on most questions but when it comes to swapping over the map update services (that I’m paying for) to the new device, they haven’t responded in over a week – even when I’ve updated the support call with a prompt.

1. yes, yes, I started when I was 12 [↩]

Just before Christmas I ordered a TomTom Home Dock. This is basically a little docking station that your TomTom can sit in on your desk, keeping it charged and updated. Nice. I bought it from a seller on eBay with a good rating.

When it turned up the USB socket on the dock was slightly out of alignment so my TomTom wouldn’t go on it correctly. I contacted the seller who supplied a return address for it. Oddly, it wasn’t his but the name of the company who made it – VIVO. I’ve had other TomTom products from VIVO.

So off I sent it last week. However, I was interested in how I was going to claim back my postage for having had to send it back, so I contacted VIVO at the address I was given. There was the problem… That VIVO make mounts for TV’s and have nothing to do with TomTom accessories. So who have I sent it to?

I’ve sent off an email to the eBay’er asking him what’s going on. If I don’t hear from him or I don’t get a satisfactory answer, I’ll be opening a dispute on eBay <bigger sigh>

And, just to top things off, the main car park at work today was completely full (I’ve never known that happen before). I refuse, as some people do, to park on the pavement or in a disabled space, so I ended up at the far end of another car park (which was nearly full). Not that it was far away, but it’s in a different Council area.

Someone remind me to make my next post a lot lighter and happier?

Update (16/01/2008):

I got a new TomTom dock from the chap from eBay. I’m just waiting for him to refund me my postage for sending the faulty one back… that might be a different battle entirely!