Led Astray

[bjarvis]

I was going to visit an insurance broker today to see if I could get a better deal on our home insurance and car insurance.

Checking with Google Maps, the office was situated at Veirs Mill Road and Twinbrook Parkway, on the border between Rockville and Wheaton, MD.

Um, no.

Upon driving there and checking the local house addresses, then working my way south-east, I eventually found the broker's office several miles away at Veirs Mill Road and Georgia Avenue.

While MapQuest has routinely tried to send me the wrong way up one-way streets, through median strips, across non-existent bridges and more, this is the first time Google Maps misdirected me so badly. Harrumph.

And the broker's office was closed anyway. Double harrumph.

Comments

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

My experience today wasn't really a GPS issue, especially since I don't own or use a GPS. It's not that it sent me along an incorrect path or misreported my real-time location. Rather, the web app took an address and displayed it on a map in an incorrect location. This strikes me more of a database error than a GPS one.

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

Oh I know you were using google maps and was in part replying to the comments of GPS units. I used to use mapquest myself and it's wretchidly inaccurate much of the time, as you, Google maps seems much more accurate.

That said, I don't always use Google Maps for routes getting there as I can often times sense where the detination I need to get to is from looking at the map and then see that the route they chose is not what I'd chose if I know the area well enough.