How to report data accuracy errors in Microsoft Streets & Trips?

When plotting out some lines in one area, I noticed some odd inconsistencies in one area - see the attachment (screen grab made of a blank map so it is repeatable; note the numbering scheme - it should be 50th to 56th St. from bottom to top and 58th Ave. to 69th Ave. from left to right. I know "correction lines" can play havoc with street numbering and that street numberings can vary across county lines, but except for two counties, all of North Dakota is on an uniform grid numbering system).

How do I go about reporting glitches like this?

Attached Thumbnails

 

Hi LineChaser,

Here's the link for Navteq's Map Reporter page.

Navteq is the supplier for the data in Microsoft Streets&Trips so you might as well report the problem directly.

Would you mind telling us what city/town in North Dakota you displayed in the screen shot? I would like to check in Garmin's City Navigator North America to see if the problem is also there. Garmin also uses Navteq's map data and usually you will see the same problem in Garmin and Microsoft maps. But sometimes you don't, in which case the problem might not be in the map data but somewhere in the way the nav program is displaying it.

...ken...

LineChaser, also let us know which version of Microsoft Streets and Trips you are using. Judging by the screen shot, it may be an older version, in which case the map data for the area might have been corrected since.

Marvin - I am surprised that you don't know the previous version UIs well enough to know which version Linechaser is using.
The selection of toolbar buttons should provide some clues.

2008 Connected Services edition?

... but on the second thought, it might have been just the regular 2008 version. The "Connected Services" button was present in the regular version, too, I believe. (I had the Connected Services version, so I'm not 100% sure.)

But the reason why I wanted LineChaser to tell us his version number himself was that some users like to keep an older program, but they use map data from a newer version.

I'm using the regular version of MSTS 2008.
the city shown in the map thumbnail is Brinsmade, ND.

I checked Garmin's City Navigator North America 2009, which is also Navteq data. It has the same problems. The street numbering is .. pardon the pun .. all over the map.

I also checked it in Mappoint NA 2009 and it's just as wacked.

...ken...

Any NavTeq folks on this forum? We could learn from them and they could hear feedback from all of us "in the field" using their map data.

Hi Larry,

With all the products that use their data and all the customers of all those products it would be impossible for Navteq to cover all the forums. And that would be a waste of time anyway because they would rarely get the data they need in a useful form.

If you look at the link I posted in my previous message, you'll see that they have gone to a great deal of trouble to make sure they have an easy-to-use online form for people to provide exactly the information they need to check out problems with their data. And they have a super system behind that online form so nothing falls through the cracks.

I always encourage people to use that online form to submit problems directly to Navteq. That's the very best way to handle the problem to be certain the information gets to the right place to get fixed.

...ken...

A product manager at Navteq read this thread yesterday, but there is no much to add, since the very first reply already indicates that Map Reporter is the correct way to get feedback to NAVTEQ.

We would all love to have Navteq participation here at Laptop GPS World, but he hesitates to join any conversations on this type of form representing NAVTEQ as it is not their policy. Sometimes they entertain webinars to discus products and they take direct questions in that forum.

One thing they could add, if they wanted, would be how long the corrections take on their end. Then add on 18 months, and you know when it'll show up in software.

If you've submitted to Navteq MapReporter before, then you will have your own guesses. However, the priority seems to differ greatly depending on what type of correction it is. For example, they seem to take address and road corrections very seriously (as they should!), but I have some POI corrections in their database that seem to be going nowhere.

Some companies have a policy of openness and encourage employee participation in the user community. Other companies will reveal information only in a few forms that they control.

I've tried to understand how to report errors on S&T map but after reading this thread I realized that I've entered on this thread "horse" and I'm getting out "donkie".
Now letting the jokes out, how and where should I report errors ?

Thanks

As Ken in Regina mentioned above, Navteq is the main supplier of the map data for the product, so probably the most effective (quickest) way to get the corrections to a future version of Streets and Trips is by submitting map errors directly to Navteq (link above).

More on the topic in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/281826