Anyone bought a Tomtom device with Free lifetime map updates. I thought this sounded interesting, and read this on their website;

Lifetime – this is the useful life of the device, so means the period of time that TomTom continues to support your device with software updates, services, content or accessories. A device will have reached the end of its life when none of these are available any more. The useful life of the smartphone app means the period of time that TomTom continues to support the app with updates.

Am I being cyclical to think that Tomtom are likely to just stop supporting your device / app after 18 months or 2 years – which may equate to maybe 6 or so updates if they issue them every quarter, say?. So is it as good as it sounds?

Not sure how long Tomtom have been offering this but I’d be interested to know how you’ve got on with it if you’ve had one for a while.

Not sure about that one, but I had a similar free updates offer on mine.
I keep it in the car so kept forgetting to update it, until yesterday… connect it up: “as you haven’t connected in 12 months this offer is no longer available”. Hmm.

I’ve got the iphone app… bought it in 2009, and it has updated fine through the app store since then… gets quite frequent map updates as part of that.

Am I being cyclical to think that Tomtom are likely to just stop supporting your device / app after 18 months or 2 years – which may equate to maybe 6 or so updates if they issue them every quarter, say?. So is it as good as it sounds?

I’ve got the Android version, not sure they can just stop supporting it that easily, besides I don’t suppose the free maps thing is really costing them much money – they have to update the maps anyway, and given how good free alternatives like Google Maps are getting they’re limited as to how much they can charge their customers.

That said, the free maps thing doesn’t include radar warnings: if you want that you have to pay extra. It’s still an excellent product, though.

mogrim – Member

I’ve got the Android version, not sure they can just stop supporting it that easily, besides I don’t suppose the free maps thing is really costing them much money – they have to update the maps anyway, and given how good free alternatives like Google Maps are getting they’re limited as to how much they can charge their customers.

They’ll probably just do what CoPilot did, rename it to “TomTom Pro” or something and cease development on the ‘classic’ version that you have.

They also only offer the free updates to the original user account that registered the device. I found that out when trying to use a work one and they ceased to update it for free.

They’ll probably just do what CoPilot did, rename it to “TomTom Pro” or something and cease development on the ‘classic’ version that you have.

Probably, at that point I’ll just have to decide whether to go with Google Maps (and its data connection) or update…

besides I don’t suppose the free maps thing is really costing them much money

My guess would be that that was a very profitable revenue stream until the ‘free’ options came along from the likes of Google.

this is the useful life of the device,

That sentence is a massive get out clause in itself so I think you are right to be cynical OP. How does this product+offer compare to other Satnav’s on the market? If its premium priced I’d side-step.

We’ve got one that didn’t come with the free updates and they’d like to charge what we paid for the unit every year just to get the latest maps. Needless to say mine are about 6 years old and I only lose out every now and again.

I bought the tom tom app for my iphone 4 years ago, still getting updates so I don’t think there is an intention to deceive.

Products just can’t be supported forever, your local ford garage would struggle to maintain a model T. It is unrealistic to expect a technology company to provide support and updates for a system 30 years later. However if you are buying a current model I would expect many years decent service.

MSP – Member
Products just can’t be supported forever, your local ford garage would struggle to maintain a model T. It is unrealistic to expect a technology company to provide support and updates for a system 30 years later. However if you are buying a current model I would expect many years decent service.

That’s totally, fine, just don’t describe the products as having ‘lifetime free map upgrades’ or whatever then.