Maybe someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong but here's my biggest beef with the NAVI. I often want to go to the nearest store of a certain name. For example, last week I wanted to go to the nearest Circuit City. I knew it was nearby - just wanted the directions. Here's what I tried: (its prompts are in mixed case, my typing is in uppercase)
It then waited for more letters so I clicked List to see the choices and it showed:
Code:
List
CIRCUIT CITY
CIRCUIT CITY CAR STEREO STORE
CIRCUIT CITY CENTRAL DIV
I clicked on the first one and got:
Code:
Sub-categories
Appliances-household-major dealers
Appliances-household-major rpring
Auto parts
I clicked on the first one and it gave me a place that was 252 miles away. So I cancelled, when back to the list and scrolled to get the full list.
Code:
Cellular phone
Computer Software
Electric Contractors
Electronic Equipment-Rtl
. . . goes on for awhile . . .
The last one sounded good so I clicked on it and got a bunch of places, the first being 20 miles away. But I knew the nearest store was much closer - more like 7 miles. So I cancelled, wasted some time trying the others but they started giving places in Idaho, Texas, etc. (I'm in Maryland.) So I cancelled back all the way to the original list and finally scrolled down to see the full list of everything beginning with Circuit City. Well, it was substantial. I ended up trying all the things that sounded plausible like:
Code:
CIRCUIT CITY EXPRESS
CIRCUIT CITY ROADSHOP
CIRCUIT CITY STORE (this was to a place in Missouri)
CIRCUIT CITY STORES (Ohio and another place it simply said was 2158 miles away)
CIRCUIT CITY STORES INC (then went to Florida)
CIRCUIT CITY SUPER STORES (another in Florida)
CIRCUIT CITY SUPERSTORE
Some of these led to submenus. For examples, the CIRCUIT CITY STORES INC led to a submenu of:
Code:
AUTO PARTS/SPLS-RTL-NEW
ELECTRONIC EQPT/SPLS-RTL
I tried each of these individually and they simply had one entry each. (Both over 100 miles away.) And I'm skipping all the ones that sounded unlikely, such as CIRCUIT CITY NORTHEAST DIV and CIRCUIT CITY SVC DEPT.
Finally, I gave up in disgust. While typing this, it occurred to me to try search by category, so I tried:
Code:
Places
Categories
Advanced
Electronics-eqpt/spls-rtl
At this point, it prompts for
Code:
Name
Sort by Distance
City Region
I knew that the Name would be fruitless and I am now at home, so I knew that they would give false results, so I tried City Region. Entered "Rockville" and it claimed there were none in Rockville, instead giving me one in Bethesda a fair distance away.
Now you may say, ok, the store simply wasn't in the database. Perhaps, but it seems unlikely since the one I was looking for is a HUGE Circuit City and has been there for years. And since there were so many damn categories and variations on the name, I'm thinking I just didn't know the "right" way through the NAVI's database.
You may also say this is just a one-time thing, but to the contrary, I was looking for the nearest Home Depot last night and I went through the same thing! Lots of variations in the Home Depot name and then as I tried some of them, I would get sub-categories which made the whole task unbelievably complex.
I've run into this a number of times. I try to search by name and just get annoyed, particularly with places that have existed for years! Why is this thing so poor? (Don't get me wrong, once it has an address I love the routing capability.) But I now dread looking up things if I only have their name.
Oh, one more example, I work for NIST (part of the fed govt) so I entered National Institute of Standards ... and saw that the NAVI clearly had dozens of national institutes like NIH, etc. Very encouraging. So I went on. However for NIST, all it had was a small satellite group we have in Boulder. It didn't have our headquarters - a huge complex with dozens of building and thousands of employees. So I used the map feature to force it over there and to my surprise the map has all of our internal street names. They're not even public streets. I was quite surprised. On the other hand, it showed we had two restaurants when we don't. If you go to where the map indicates there are restaurants, the closest thing around is a pump house and a couple of acres of trees.
Do other people find the NAVI frustrating when looking things up or am I missing something?