Wal*Mart and Tom Tom

[PA]

We have been on the road since the 11th July. Apart for 8 days in Alaska and cruising back to Vancouver we have stayed in Wal*Marts around 50% of the time. We have had no problems staying at any store. A couple of stores have No Overnight Camping signs up but just checking with the Customer Service counter usually says that is OK just the townl tells them to put that up.

I downloaded for Thomas (our Tom Tom GPS) a file containing all the Wal*Marts in America. We just put in the city then search for Wal*Mart nearby.

[norseman]

Where can one find this file? It would be extremely convenient to have, as I have a Tom Tom as well. 

Jan.

[Ned]

The POI Factory has this and many other POI files for various GPS devices.

[norseman]

Thanks, Ned! I guess there's a lot more stuff out there to put on a gps than I ever dreamed of... 

Jan.

[dgshaffer]

They have files for Flying J truck stops, KOA camp sites, restaurant chains, just about evey tourist attraction imaginable. You can even set your GPS to give you an audible warning when you're getting close to any one of them

[scottydl]

Although while enroute from IL to MI for vacation last summer, I was misguided to a Wal-mart by Marla (our Garmin GPS).  I needed a cotter pin for the tow dolly, did a WM search, and headed into a somewhat small town following every direction to that POI.  When Marla said "Arriving at destination", there was no WM in sight but luckily there was a fairly large hardware store.    So I still got the cotter pin.  I guess we weren't all that misguided after all.  I doubt a Wal-mart had been torn down at this location anytime recently - I still have no idea why that lat/long was labeled as one in my GPS.

My point is that GPS devices are not always 100% on.  Maps and a good ol' phone call can help you double check anything needed.  I use quite often the "Free 411" automated phone directory from Google to find particular stops.  The number is appropriately 1-800-GOOG-411 and is programmed into both my cell phones.

[Ron]

IT been my opinion that Garmin, since they started using Navtec, makes way too many mistakes and they seem to find not need to correct them.  I doubt they have ever corrected the location for Lowes that Jeff and I were looking for about three years ago.

[RV Roamer]

Had the same problem with a missing Walmart in Kingsland, GA and missing post offices (3 of them!) in the Tampa area.  Some of that POI data is just flat wrong, whether it came on the GPS or was added from sources like POI Factory.

One source of errors are the multiple schemes for writing lat/long coordinates. If coordinates are entered in one notation format but the GPS is using another, you will be taken to the wrong place every time, no matter whose map is inside.

Formats I know of include:
Degrees+minutes+seconds (traditional)    xx degrees, yy' zz"
Degrees+minutes.decimal minutes  xx degrees yy.yyyy'
Degrees.decimal degrees (all decimal format)   xx.xxxxx degrees