I've been waiting patiently for the 930 (maybe T) to arrive in Canada. I haven't seen much in the way of retailers (brick or web) announcing it yet, and spoke to one web retailer who said the 930 won't be available until September.
Can anyone confirm/deny the September comment, and hopefully link me up with someone who is selling them now??
I don't know about the September statement.... seems unlikely to me. Even in the USA only one retailer appears to have it now, and only one model (930, no 930T, 730, nor 730T).
Joined: 08 Feb 2008 Posts: 48 Location: Calgary, Canada
Thu May 01, 2008 6:47 pm
GPS Central in Calgary has them on order and is showing them on their web site
www.gpscentral.ca
I talked to someone there yesterday and she said they expect to receive them next week (930 only. No word on 930T). They are usually pretty good with their estimates. List price for the 930 is $474.95
Now that I have time to kill waiting on the 930 - I've been looking at the differences between the 920 - which is available, and the 930. It seems to me that the only difference is the IQ Routes & Advanced Lane Guidance. The hardware is identical in specification (other than the 930 is black) & all the other features are available on the 920.
Hunting around in Canada I can get a 920 for $399 - although I don't think I saved the link & would have to go on the hunt again. The only site with the 930 that Continental Drifter mentioned is $475. Am I missing something?
One other oddity - why are there no 930T's available? Maybe the retailer I mentioned was talking about the 930T.
Isn't that just the addition of the antenna for traffic? They could just tape the antenna package onto the 930 box, for goodness sake.
Now that I understand the differences a bit better, it sounds like the antenna is a preferable option to the IQRoutes (no time of day), or ALG (doesn't show for a lot of NA intersections). So a 920T might be what I'm looking for.
I live outside of Toronto & knowing which of the main arteries are clogged more than others as I'm driving into the city is more useful than IQRouting - 8am and 1pm are completely different traffic patterns around here.
I'm the Toronto area and have a 920T. One thing I find slightly annoying is that either the 920 or the data it receives does not show delay information and when I click on minimize delay it comes back with no route found. However, you can manually show traffic on route and choose to avoid each incident. I have noticed that it has automatically updated my route but does not change it (probably because no delay information).
On the good side, comparing the data from the following web page for 401/QEW traffic to what the TomTom has they are very close.
I found a Canadian web store that actually had the 930 in stock. I'm not getting the 930T after all, this will be my first car GPS (I have a couple of older Magellan handhelds that I used for geocaching & the eXplorist XL did double duty for street routing) so I'm sure I'll be swimming in new features for a while as it is.
The place is in Montreal - sohodiffusion.com - and part of the reason they still have some, I think, is that they don't accept online payments. They use Canada Post COD. Their price was pretty good, too. Unit price was $440, and it came to $486 including shipping, insurance, and taxes.
I hope to have it this week & will update with my delivery experience once it happens.
930 shipments cancelled!? Fri May 09, 2008 3:52 am
Hmmm, I just went onto the sohodiffusion website & the 930 page now says "special order" - I haven't gotten mine yet, so I'll be calling in the morning to see where it is.
I also saw on gpscentral.ca that their 930 page says that TomTom has the following message:
"MAY 8, 2008. TOMTOM HAS CANCELLED? SUSPENDED? THIS PRODUCT. WE'RE ARE NOT SURE OF THE REASONS YET. Customers who have preorders will be contacted and all pre-payed orders will be credited."
Anyone know what gives here? Now I'm nervous that I'll be purchasing a defective or bug filled product!
Tim, I just received an email from sohodiffusion stating that the 930 has been pulled by TomTom and "will not be available for months" so my order is cancelled. They are removing the product from their website.
Looks like my original vendor's comments were pretty accurate.
I asked them about it earlier today, and showed them the page. I basically said "is this true?", showed them the link, and they basically said "no, not true".
Possibly that vendor just isn't getting their shipment as fast as they had hoped--
Tim, here's the message verbatim from sohodiffusion:
sohodiffusion wrote:
Dear sir,
Tomtom just informed us that it won’t be able to supply us with this models before months. This item is not on our website anymore.
You order is cancelled without any cancellation fees.
Cordialement,
Le service vente.
Best regards,
Sales Dept.
Nous vous remercions de votre confiance
Your business is appreciated!
www.sohodiffusion.com
The original webstore that sent me a message about the September timeframe was www.vibecomputing.com. That and the message on www.gpscentral.ca all point to TomTom pulling the 930 back or at least significantly postponing the distribution in Canada. If it was only one of these saying it's delayed, I could believe your contact, but 3 with pretty much the same story AND no sign of them in Cdn retail stores, including BestBuy who has them in the US already, and I'm not so inclined to believe TomTom's side right now.
I've landed on the 930 as the one I want & this is both annoying & causing me to think it's a bit of a lemon, so maybe I should go with the Garmin 760 (my original first choice).
But if it were true that there were technical issues/bugs/problems with the 930, then why would it also not be pulled in the USA?
We saw the same thing when the 720 and 920 were announced, for whatever reason it took a couple of months from when it was available in the USA before it reached Canada. I don't know why.
But I don't see any indications that there are any device problems, rather just supply problems.
Out of curiousity, I just checked with another online store in the GTA (gloria.ca) and was told by the Sales department that their supplier has no eta for the device in Canada.
Tim, while I see your argument, maybe the reason is that they jumped the gun on US distribution & held Canada's up after the problem(s) were discovered. From your historical perspective, this seems to be more of a pattern than a last minute pull back, so I'm arguing against myself.
Part of my frustration is that I've seen it as available in Canada on a couple of these sites - haven't checked to see if they actually did sell some, but I've waited patiently for the 930 & now it's gone.
I've got a couple of trips planned this year that I wanted to use the new GPS on - first one being end of next week. So now I have to decide to wait who knows how long on TomTom or go pick up a 920 or 760 tomorrow. I'm a gadget freak & buying "last year's model" doesn't sit well with me & I arguably put both of those in that bucket.
Can you pull any strings to get someone to sell me a 930?
From some random poking at webstores, it appears the only place advertising them as "in stock" is BestBuy (US). Everyone else says "on order" or similar wording.
As well, no mention of the T model, in fact the TomTom website doesn't show 930Ts anymore.
My guess for both the lack of 930s & absence of the T model is a pricing issue versus the 920s - particularly in Canada where they are listed considerably higher than the 930. They want the 920s moved before releasing the 930s.
N.B. I was on the phone with TomTom customer service while typing the above - according to TomTom, the issue is "the stock is backordered" and he gave me three US websites to check for availability:
Yes. I've talked to a few other people who have as well... All from Best Buy. Note that quite a few stores have the 730 in stock now. Nobody seems to have the 730T nor 930T.
Joined: 14 May 2008 Posts: 11 Location: Ontario, Canada
Buying a 730/930 from the US Wed May 14, 2008 3:12 am
Does anyone know whether Best Buy in Canada will have anything to do with a defective unit if I buy it from Best Buy in the US? It's sounding like that's what I'll need to do if I want a 730 or 930 before my road trip in a couple of weeks...
Re: Buying a 730/930 from the US Wed May 14, 2008 4:04 am
Tom McSlinkimus wrote:
Does anyone know whether Best Buy in Canada will have anything to do with a defective unit if I buy it from Best Buy in the US? It's sounding like that's what I'll need to do if I want a 730 or 930 before my road trip in a couple of weeks...
Funny you should ask. When I talked to the TomTom customer rep today I asked that same question because it looks like I will have to do the same thing if I want a 930 anytime soon. The answer is that any GPS sold in North America will be serviced by TomTom, so the warranty is good on both sides of the border.
As for BestBuy - I doubt it. They'll likely point you at the TomTom service center for a defective unit. But that's better than most other electronics vendors who won't warranty US products in Canada.
I'm a TomTom n00b so someone else should weigh in on TomTom support, but from what I read on the forums, this one included, their support is very good.
Joined: 14 May 2008 Posts: 11 Location: Ontario, Canada
Re: Buying a 730/930 from the US Wed May 14, 2008 1:17 pm
Ace McDuck wrote:
Funny you should ask. When I talked to the TomTom customer rep today I asked that same question because it looks like I will have to do the same thing if I want a 930 anytime soon. The answer is that any GPS sold in North America will be serviced by TomTom, so the warranty is good on both sides of the border.
Thanks Ace. Do you happen to know how long the TomTom warranty is? I searched their site, but couldn't find that info. Maybe I just missed it...
Joined: 14 May 2008 Posts: 11 Location: Ontario, Canada
Wed May 14, 2008 1:47 pm
Thanks Tim. That page doesn't list the 730 or 930, so I wanted to make sure it's the same as the 720/920 (1 year P&L).
On an interesting note, even though the original press release said that the 730 and 930 would be released in Canada at the end of April, the 730/930 appear on the US TomTom support site, but not the Canadian one. See here:
Joined: 14 May 2008 Posts: 11 Location: Ontario, Canada
Wed May 14, 2008 4:55 pm
Thanks dhn. Anyone have experiences with that place? The only thing I could find was a site bashing their customer service, but that's (hopefully) not representative.
My theory is that TomTom is holding back the 930s due to the huge price discrepancy with the 920s in Canada. Reality is a bit different in the stores, but hard to argue that last year's model is $649 versus this year's $499.
Once stock drops in the retailers, the 930s will be let loose. I checked a bunch of sites that have 920s in stock & they range from 5-45 units available where they report the numbers. 720s on the other hand were a lot lower in stock, generally in the single digits, and thus we are seeing 730s in stock on a few sites now.
Thanks dhn. Anyone have experiences with that place? The only thing I could find was a site bashing their customer service, but that's (hopefully) not representative.
Don't know about radioworld, but here's a link to a bunch of vendors of TomTom's. Some have 730s in stock.
Joined: 14 May 2008 Posts: 11 Location: Ontario, Canada
They're here! Fri May 16, 2008 8:13 pm
Ace McDuck wrote:
Don't know about radioworld, but here's a link to a bunch of vendors of TomTom's. Some have 730s in stock.
http://www.shopbot.ca/c-118-0-695-1.html
Thanks for that link Ace. Best Buy has them in stock now (although their web site doesn't shop inventory for the 730s properly. That link above saved me $84 with the BB price match!
Glad I could help. I was hoping to do the same when the 930 comes out in case I don't like it - did you just walk in with the website price and they gave you that plus an extra 10% off?
Joined: 14 May 2008 Posts: 11 Location: Ontario, Canada
Re: They're here! Tue May 20, 2008 1:03 am
Ace McDuck wrote:
I was hoping to do the same when the 930 comes out in case I don't like it - did you just walk in with the website price and they gave you that plus an extra 10% off?
Yeppers. For places without an explicit storefront, though, they add overnight shipping to the other place's cost. Then they give you that price minus 10% *of the difference between BB's price and the other place's price with shipping* (not 10% off the top). But it's still a good deal, given BB's 30-day no-hassle return policy.
I'm very happy with the 730. There are some quibbles I have, but overall, this is a decent product.
Out of curiosity, what are the quibbles? I'm getting impatient with TomTom's lack of 930s anywhere & may go back to my original pick - Garmin 760. Particularly since places like GPScity have it for $389 & I can get BestBuy to drop their ridiculous price to that amount.
Joined: 14 May 2008 Posts: 11 Location: Ontario, Canada
Tue May 20, 2008 2:29 am
Ace McDuck wrote:
Out of curiosity, what are the quibbles? I'm getting impatient with TomTom's lack of 930s anywhere & may go back to my original pick - Garmin 760. Particularly since places like GPScity have it for $389 & I can get BestBuy to drop their ridiculous price to that amount.
Mainly stuff like:
* the single(!) synthesized voice (the others can't read the street names) mangles names (in particular, it irks me that "London" and "Toronto" are not pronounced correctly)... suggestion to TomTom: put in pronounciation hints for the TTS algorithm for, say, the top 100 cities in North America. It would take someone less than a week to write this code, and it would make your product seem SO much more professional. Come on... "Lun-DOO-wun" for "London"?!?
* it shows POIs on the screen, but there's no easy way to quickly add a detour to them without navigating through menu upon menu, and (STUPIDLY) having to search for local POIs even when they're right on the screen! Hello, McFly! You found the POI, and I'm about to drive past the right exit! Just take me there, and then on to the destination! This would be really useful for, say, "Hey, let's pick up some Starbucks".
Those are the two big ones. Like I say, they're quibbles, not deal-breakers for me.
* it shows POIs on the screen, but there's no easy way to quickly add a detour to them without navigating through menu upon menu, and (STUPIDLY) having to search for local POIs even when they're right on the screen! Hello, McFly! You found the POI, and I'm about to drive past the right exit! Just take me there, and then on to the destination! This would be really useful for, say, "Hey, let's pick up some Starbucks".
Tom
Yeah, you can. Navigate to-->Point on Map-->When the map appears with all the poi's shown, simply tap the poi you want to go to. That's it. TT asks what kind of route you want ('Fastest', etc.) and you are good to go.
Out of curiosity, what are the quibbles? I'm getting impatient with TomTom's lack of 930s anywhere & may go back to my original pick - Garmin 760. Particularly since places like GPScity have it for $389 & I can get BestBuy to drop their ridiculous price to that amount.
Mainly stuff like:
* the single(!) synthesized voice (the others can't read the street names) mangles names (in particular, it irks me that "London" and "Toronto" are not pronounced correctly)... suggestion to TomTom: put in pronounciation hints for the TTS algorithm for, say, the top 100 cities in North America. It would take someone less than a week to write this code, and it would make your product seem SO much more professional. Come on... "Lun-DOO-wun" for "London"?!?
".
Those are the two big ones. Like I say, they're quibbles, not deal-breakers for me.
Tom
Huh?
I have a 920 and TT Home allows me to DL 4 English TTs voices....Susan, Dave, Kate and Simon...the last 2 are UK voices. I just did so 2 days ago. I use Kate... I am sure she pronounces London and Toronto correctly (actually, ToRONto and not Trannah, LoL)
Does this not apply to the 730 as well?
Also, dhn has explained the POI navigating. You have to play around with the unit or as a last resort RTFM (just kidding). LoL
I have a 920 and TT Home allows me to DL 4 English TTs voices....Susan, Dave, Kate and Simon...the last 2 are UK voices. I just did so 2 days ago. I use Kate... I am sure she pronounces London and Toronto correctly (actually, ToRONto and not Trannah, LoL)
Does this not apply to the 730 as well?
I use 'Susie'
I visualize her being a southern California blonde so I don't expect the proper pronunciation of 'Trawnah'
Joined: 14 May 2008 Posts: 11 Location: Ontario, Canada
Tue May 20, 2008 3:29 pm
Thanks guys! I guess I don't really have quibbles with the 730, then!
Actually: I have yet to see the Active Lane Guidance come on (and yes, it's turned on in the preferences). We drove from Waterloo, ON to Rochester, NY, and I didn't see it come up once. Is there something I need to do to get it to activate?
Thanks guys! I guess I don't really have quibbles with the 730, then!
Actually: I have yet to see the Active Lane Guidance come on (and yes, it's turned on in the preferences). We drove from Waterloo, ON to Rochester, NY, and I didn't see it come up once. Is there something I need to do to get it to activate?
Are you meaning the arrows on the left side of the status bar? That's 'Active Lane Guidance'. Or, are you meaning 'Reality View' which refers to the static pictures which sometimes appear showing which lanes to take?
Well, BestBuy.ca now has the 930 listed & apparently in stock at a number of stores.
Funny thing, though... the price is $40 over retail list price on the TomTom Canada site ($539 versus $499 on the TomTom site). I wonder if the price match works for that. Not bloody likely since TT doesn't actually sell it for that amount from their site.
Looks like a bit of a deal was struck between BB & TT - sole provider with some good markup. With the BB price match limit at 30 days, maybe we'll see other stores getting stock in 2-3 months once BB has milked the margin for a while.
I've been hunting around & can't find any other site in Canada - anyone else see it yet (in stock)?
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