I’m sure you’ll all be thrilled to know that my new GPS is working perfectly. It found me a shortcut yesterday. Shorter AND better. Well, I’m thrilled at least.

But Tomtom’s strategy of selling map update services borders on the indecent. The first thing I did when I bought the thing was to update the maps. There’s a “latest map” guarantee, see, meaning that within 30 days of purchase, I’m entitled to map updates. So today I logged on to Tomtom and it hinted that my map was old (God forbid) and that for only €XX, I could have the latest.

If I hadn’t read the manual I would have thought that there was actually an update available, and that it would cost me money. As things stand, I do have the latest map and this was simply a sales pitch, appearing to be a map update. It looked like the update thing I’d seen earlier, so I thought I would have to pay for this one. Made me angry and disappointed, and very weary of anything they say.

I very much dislike software with built-in sales pitches. I don’t mind buying services when I need them, but I do think that I shouldn’t be fooled into buying them.