We're all here for your convenience

Barbadosbelle - wasn't it awful on Friday?

I remember being in a horrendous queue in this city when an HGV, the word was that the driver was following SatNav, was sent on detour that involved an inappropriate bridge built long before SatNavs were thought of, & caused absolute havoc whilst he was trying to reverse back from the approach. (in v heavy traffic as the city was grid-locked that day too).

I was stuck on a mini-roundabout for 2 hours, crying (I had 3 boys to pick up from after-school activity) with shoppers & dogwalkers passing by oblivious.Would have given everything I had for a mobile phone.
SatNavs have marginally more commonsense these days.

One of these fine days, the evening news will feature a video clip of ohe of those mega-monster trucks driving right over Beachy Head and the voice-over will say "........the driver - who miraculously had only minor injuries - said that he was only following directions according to his Sat-Nav........."

Our small town fb group is full of "is this yours" pictures of parcels outside a house, where the intended recipient has been told it was delivered, and they have no idea where it is. We do not seem to have the same problem (touch wood), but Google and satnav both insist that we live in the street behind.

How rude. I have never and will never use a satnav. I’m convinced they lower your IQ by at least 20 points. Present company excepted.

Sat nav? Mine guides me wonderfully well on all manner of journies, until I turn into the road where I live! It then tells me to turn right immediately! I don’t,I stay on my road as I live at the very top, but all the way up I am being told to do a U turn if possible, even as I Drive into my garage, every time, without fail!

Sueinkent

How rude. I have never and will never use a satnav. I’m convinced they lower your IQ by at least 20 points. Present company excepted.

I just hope you are never far from home when your DH is taken seriously ill and the ambulance is taking him to the nearest A&E , which is 55 miles away, leaving you to make your own way to the hospital over many miles of country roads with only a post code to guide you. Sure, I first checked it out on my road atlas, but after that I used my satnav to negotiate my way through road diversions, cross roads without signposts, plus, of course, all roads going to one place only - and that a place you wanted to avoid.

FranP

Our small town fb group is full of "is this yours" pictures of parcels outside a house, where the intended recipient has been told it was delivered, and they have no idea where it is. We do not seem to have the same problem (touch wood), but Google and satnav both insist that we live in the street behind.

We get that one too and I don't think anyone else is getting my parcels - but I've certainly had to reunite parcel and owner a couple of times myself (as they turned up at my door). By now - if I get a wrong delivery...I put up a notice myself about it on a local FB page....though I've yet to figure out how to convey the message "Please fetch it promptly" - as I've had people a two minute walk away take their time to fetch it whilst I hung around waiting for them. All suggestions welcome as to a suitable way to phrase "I've been kind enough to put out a message to find you - so don't leave me waiting around...fetch it right now or some other convenient arrangement for me - not "whenever whenever sometime" to suit you".

Goodness knows I sympathise with deliverers trying to leave anything here. I think it's a West Wales thing - but certainly happens in the town I'm in that there are groups of streets near each other all with the same name as each other!! It's beyond me why that is the case - but it seems to be that when those several streets have been built the builder refers to them as "x estate" and then puts that as a streetname on every one of those streets in that little mini estate.

I've had so many visitors get lost en route to my house for the first few years I was here that I learnt what were the best possible directions to the foot I could give anyone (making it the least likely they'd get lost) and I explained to every personal visitor/delivery firm I could the gist of the wierd system here. At the least I had/still have to explain to them that my road does have a name and what it is and that, where they are looking for the road name I've given them they will see a plaque giving housenames instead (which I think they seem to remember because I tell them why I think the plaque is wrongly done and that one house - ie mine - has changed name since I bought it). They're probably telling themselves "Oh yes - a group of Welsh housenames instead of the road name and one of those names on the plaque is wrong - it's English now".

By the time the firm or friend concerned has had it explained why it's such a mess-up they obviously figure out their own ways through the lack of logic that got used. I think the delivery firms may now finally be using that "What3words" app or the like - and I swear that was probably invented in this area. They tell me there are houses even more difficult to find - as they haven't got either a number or a name up anywhere and at least mine has got a name (albeit different to the one on the road sign).

It's a sight more logical than it used to be - when I could direct half the town to my house by them saying "OoooH.....you live next door to x.....oooh!". Yep X was a right nuisance who knew half the town...

FranP

Our small town fb group is full of "is this yours" pictures of parcels outside a house, where the intended recipient has been told it was delivered, and they have no idea where it is. We do not seem to have the same problem (touch wood), but Google and satnav both insist that we live in the street behind.

Same here and it has happened to me - I was texted a picture of an unknown front door and told my parcel had been delivered.
We also had very many deliveries and people (district nurse, ambulance etc!) calling for a similar address nearby, hopefully that issue has now been resolved.

Clearly I wasn’t there and I don’t know what tone of voice he was using but based on the words used, by both of you, I would say neither of you should take offense.

If you use Google, Apple Maps or Waze on your phone and they are persistently taking you to the wrong place then you can report the error. Preferably do it when you're in the right location so that you can drop a pin. I had this with our town centre office that Apple and Waze were taking clients round the corner so that they missed the entrance to our car park. 10 minutes of fiddling around on the apps resolved the problem and it the apps updated a couple of days later.

amazonia

If you use Google, Apple Maps or Waze on your phone and they are persistently taking you to the wrong place then you can report the error. Preferably do it when you're in the right location so that you can drop a pin. I had this with our town centre office that Apple and Waze were taking clients round the corner so that they missed the entrance to our car park. 10 minutes of fiddling around on the apps resolved the problem and it the apps updated a couple of days later.

The sign on our garden wall, at eye height has the name of our road and the number in clear letters about 4 inches high. It is lit at night. Drivers regularly thank us for this.

Many of these drivers are on piece rates, or if an employee ,have to do a set number of deliveries in a day, regardless of how long it takes. I think that many drivers are expected to do 100 deliveries a day or more, that is roughly one every 5 minutes. Think about it.

M0nica - Maybe that's why delivery drivers don't have problems anymore finding my house - somebody somewhere did that at some point and hence even ones I've not seen before seem to get it right these days. So at least it's just friends now that I have to give very careful directions to - the worst one got halfway to the next town (ie miles away) the first time he tried to find my house.

sat navs the curse of modern motoring especially lorries. so many get stuck in narrow roads and lanes hardly fit for cars never mind big lorries.
Fil was in a home about half hour away and one day I noticed that nearby was a store that would be of interest to us so we decided to combine a visit with visiting Dad. carefully put the post code in the sat nav and set on. The sat nav took us to a remote forest!

labazs

sat navs the curse of modern motoring especially lorries. so many get stuck in narrow roads and lanes hardly fit for cars never mind big lorries.
Fil was in a home about half hour away and one day I noticed that nearby was a store that would be of interest to us so we decided to combine a visit with visiting Dad. carefully put the post code in the sat nav and set on. The sat nav took us to a remote forest!

Most lorries use purpose made satnav systems for lorries, but lorries are so big they end up blocking narrow roads as they make their way to agricultural businesses and their like. We used to live in a village on a uiet lane - except for the huge lorries coming down to the farm and the businesses occupying a lot of the farm buildings.

You have my sympathy labazs, we were on holiday in north Northumberland when DH was taken ill and the aambulance took him to a specialised A&E hospital 55 miles away just north of Newcastle. The paramedic wrote down the post code and I put it in my phone satnav and headed off . I do know the Newcastle area as I was ta university there a very long time ago, so when I realised I was on the Coast Road, I knew something was not uite right. It then took me through tiny streets to Whitley Bay. There was nowhere to stop until I reached the front when the Sat Nav announced I had reached my destination. When I looked at the screen it announced that I had reached The North Sea. Well, I had never put that in as my destination, and I could see the North Sea from our holiday flat!

I reset it and set off, it seemed very reluctant to give directions, but I did get to the hospital in the end and DH was discharged home and made a good recovery. But at times like that a malfunctioning satnav is very distressing.