BIG Apology re CoPilot

[sallylillian]

I have had CoPilot for years and have not looked at some of my basic settings for at least 2 maybe 3. After much tweaking I arrived at a road and speed profile which gave me accurate ETAs and avoided lanes etc when their use only made a difference of a mile or so or minutes. So all good.

I have been following several threads on here about CoPilot and people squealing about the loss of the profiling element I have described. I sat smugly thinking it was cheapskates wanting the lowest price or free app but with the high ticket price features that I had PAID for.

Today I thought I would do a screen shot of said feature and post it on here in one of the threads. I could not find it! I only did the upgrade last week! I now read in the FAQs that they have indeed removed this valuable feature. I am totally flabbergasted. It is a key element that keeps me using CoPilot, that and the POI management that is crap in Sygic. So I have written to them too.

I am sorry for those I have misled.

 

[Driventemple]

I have been looking at CoPilot RV because our built in TomTom does not allow vehicle sizes to be adjusted. Are you now saying that it is not possible to create a profile to cover this in CoPilot?

 

[sallylillian]

Their response and my follow up after that in bold.


Hi Michael,


Thank you for navigating with CoPilot and for contacting our Technical Support.


Following some substantial enhancements in the route calculation algorithm in CoPilot, this is now more heavily weighted to using live traffic conditions and historical speed data when calculating the best route.


This change does mean that former configurable options such as average road speed and type of favoured roads have a very small impact on the final calculated route and so have been removed.


That said CoPilot will always calculate the shortest and/or the quickest route to your destination, regardless of any driving habits or traffic condition. The recent change is aimed at improving the route proposals that CoPilot offers you.


For further clarification or to receive more assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us again.


Best Regards,


Michel, CoPilot Consumer Support


Hi Michel,




But we are talking about the TRUCK version. I can assure you that in my early experience it would take me down narrow lanes, yes they were drivable and maybe were 100 metres shorter or whatever, but there were often more suitable routes with larger roads, yes longer maybe but less stressful when driving a 12 ton truck sized motor home. Lorry drivers do not worry about scraping their trucks on bushes and trees but motor home owners do! Traffic conditions and historical speed data has no impact on this choice in routing. I will happily do 5 miles more or 15 minutes longer for what is an easier route on the driver, I am not in a Formula 1 race nor an economy drive. Have your geeks gone totally bonkers!




By making secondary, and lower status roads completely avoided meant they were only used as a last resort and this reduced the chance of a poor decision by CoPilot.




How can I revert to a version which has this feature which I have enjoyed for 6 years!




Kind regards




Michael Slater



F

 

[sallylillian]

I have been looking at CoPilot RV because our built in TomTom does not allow vehicle sizes to be adjusted. Are you now saying that it is not possible to create a profile to cover this in CoPilot?

No I am not, size and weights remain configurable, but before this update you could set speeds for each road type and make them by 5 different levels "always use" down to "always avoid". It is these last 2 elements that have been surgically removed!!!

 

[funflair]

Correct Michael I thought mine was still there as my profile Flair8000 transferred when I updated but you are right all the road and preferences have gone.

Watching in anticipation.

Martin

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[Stroppy Bird]

@sallylillian I was going to ask you on the other thread if you were using their latest version or not.

As you've found out the routing profile for whether you want to use a particular sort of road or not has gone on the latest version.

With regard to ETAs I did find in the blurb that the Truck version does let you put in 'governor' speed limits so that you get a more accurate one. I didn't have the truck version before so can't confirm whether or not this can be changed for different types of road or whether it is just the single overall governor speed for the truck. And I suspect that I now wouldn't be able to find out unless I took out a monthly or yearly subscription. Either way, the fact that you can't set different types of road to avoid or neutral etc is disappointing.

I'm now trying to decided whether to persevere with it (I don't find it's current format as user friendly either) or just go back to my old original garmin (not a camper version) and combine it with ye olde fashioned way of using a paper road map too, or invest in a different model.

I'm not aware of any others though that let you set whether you want to use or avoid a particular type of road if possible.

 

[sallylillian]

The governor appears to be a one speed limit but to be honest I was so focused on finding my stolen feature that I just skimmed over it. I will see how it works out. The problem is that I would not know what to switch to. I have also got 2 Sygic truck licences, and I do feel comfortable with it however you need to import POI's as RUPI and also country by country which for some bulk groups is difficult and with the profiling in CoPilot I have not used it for a while. But I shall have to start looking for work arounds.

 

[DDJC]

Oh what a surprise. Cut and paste response for me too:
>>

Hi Dave,

Thank you for navigating with CoPilot and for contacting our Technical Support.

Following some substantial enhancements in the route calculation algorithm in CoPilot, this is now more heavily weighted to using live traffic conditions and historical speed data when calculating the best route.

This change does mean that former configurable options such as average road speed and type of favoured roads have a very small impact on the final calculated route and so have been removed.

That said CoPilot will always calculate the shortest and/or the quickest route to your destination, regardless of any driving habits or traffic condition. The recent change is aimed at improving the route proposals that CoPilot offers you.

For further clarification or to receive more assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us again.

Regards,
Amit
CoPilot Consumer Support

____

And my response to Amit...

>>
Thanks for replying.

However, take a minute to read your comment: “This change does mean that former configurable options such as average road speed and type of favoured roads have a very small impact on the final calculated route and so have been removed.”

Complete nonsense.
Invented by some marketing whizzkid who knows nothing about your product,

Think about it.

If planning a route from the Channel Tunnel to Disneyland Paris, CoPilot says that it is 186 miles and will take 2 hours and 51 minutes. Yes, I agree with that. In a car, able to take advantage of the French autoroute speed limits of 80mph, and to use some of the narrow back roads.

If planning the same route in our motorhome, towing a small car, CoPilot says that it is 186 miles and will take 2 hours and 51 minutes.

Nonsense. Firstly, I am restricted to 50mph. This journey would take me 3 hours and 46 minutes. Secondly, I could not get our motorhome+trailer down some of the narrow roads because I can’t tell CoPilot to stick to motorways, and dual carriageways anymore.

Also, if your live traffic tells me that I should leave the original route to get around a traffic jam, it WILL take me down country lanes. How do I know this? Because I have got the live traffic subscription and CoPilot did that to me just before Christmas in Belgium. And, before I had realised that you had removed the routing preferences.

No amount of assurances that live traffic conditions are more relevant can change these completely simple facts.

This is really simple. It is so obvious what you are doing. Under the pretext of trying to sell more live traffic subscriptions and to sell more of your caravan Co-Pilot variant, you have made CoPilot unusable for many customers who trusted your company and your product; a product which apart from this latest change has been excellent. I don’t know who does your marketing, but they have made a foolish decision.

I have CoPilot on my phone as does my wife have it on hers. So here is the thing. If we bought the caravan version, what guarantee does anyone get that you won’t suddenly change the functionality to ‘encourage‘ people to pay for ‘CoPilot Caravan Premium’*, or ‘CoPilot Caravan Ultimate’*, or ‘CoPilot Caravan Gold’* or ‘CoPilot Caravan Professional’* ?

I can’t risk it as you have shown yourselves to be customer-unfriendly. Rather than pay you AGAIN for the caravan version, I am going to look into other routing apps.

I urge to you to think about reinstating road preferences and road speed. If you can’t, I can't use CoPilot and will cancel my live traffic direct debits. Shame because you used to be the best.

Dave

* These are now copyright to me and will cost you two CoPilot caravan apps and the ability to transfer our live traffic onto both.

>>

No reply as yet, but I am unsure whether this is because: a) I am right and they have no answers, or b) I am an obstreperous, serial complainer.

Jury's out.

 

[sallylillian]

Can I ask that all users of CoPilot on here make strong representations to the support team so they have a Tsunami of emails hitting their inbox, all chanting the same mantra??

 

[funflair]

Feedback went to their web site last night

Martin

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[DDJC]

I have been sending a reminder that my 'ticket' is still pending, every so week or so. I think ALK hate me!

I have also rated it down to 1 star on Google play reviews. Many folk there as annoyed about this as I am. What hurts is that IMO, it was the best and now it is useless for motorhomers and caravanners.

Just got this response on Google play:

>>
Hello Dave, sorry to hear your feedback. We'd like to address your concern personally if you can please copy and paste your Review in a Support ticket: support.copilotgps.com/en/support/tickets/new. Thank you.
>>

Not hopeful !!

 

[Two on Tour]

Could I please ask that you indicate which versions of CoPilot each of you posters are referring to are you in your own posts or are you all using the truck version as indicated by @sallylillian , just interested if these changes are across the board of apply to specific versions.

 

[sallylillian]

A war of atricia

Could I please ask that you indicate which versions of CoPilot each of you posters are referring to are you in your own posts or are you all using the truck version as indicated by @sallylillian , just interested if these changes are across the board of apply to specific versions.

I think that it is the versions with the feature, which was only the Caravan and Truck versions.

 

[Two on Tour]

A war of atricia

I think that it is the versions with the feature, which was only the Caravan and Truck versions.

Is this on Apple or Android ?

 

[Richard n Ann]

Google maps usually sticks to the main roads, used it on Tuesday on the way to Derby. I got speed camera notifications too I wouldn't pay for anything nowadays. Just costs a bit of data, which otherwise goes unused.

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[tonyl]

I think that it is the versions with the feature, which was only the Caravan and Truck versions.

The ordinary version also has the feature (or lack of it) as well. Previously, there was a 'Road Preferences' option under the vehicle profile, but it's gone now. I have both versions on my iPad so can still use it while the maps are reasonably up to date, perhaps for another year.

On that old version, you could also choose to customise a 'caravan' option (which comes with a motorhome symbol), even though it was made clear that dimensions and weights weren't then taken into account in planning. Now you can only choose a car. That's not a loss really, as you could customise and suitably name a car with your speeds and preferences if they hadn't removed the feature.

What they don't seem to grasp is that the speeds and preferences are used in route planning, upon which 'live' traffic may or may not subsequently impact.

They've also lost me as a future customer as all the iOS options are now subscription based, as far as I can see, so I wouldn't 'upgrade' to the caravan version even if they bring back the preferences stuff.

 

[ctc]

You will spend pots of money on expensive and unsatisfactory sat navs, if you buy cheap (and use free software) you will have plenty left over for a decent map. Write the route and road numbers and stick it on the screen then you will know where you are going and the sat nav will have been of some use.

 

[sallylillian]

You will spend pots of money on expensive and unsatisfactory sat navs, if you buy cheap (and use free software) you will have plenty left over for a decent map. Write the route and road numbers and stick it on the screen then you will know where you are going and the sat nav will have been of some use.

So instead of spending pots of money on a motorhome, you should get a bike and a tent and .......

 

[DDJC]

Could I please ask that you indicate which versions of CoPilot each of you posters are referring to are you in your own posts or are you all using the truck version as indicated by @sallylillian , just interested if these changes are across the board of apply to specific versions.

I use the professional version on Android. My wife has her own copy on Android as well. I have had it since long before the Truck and Caravan apps came out. It used to be genuinely brilliant for route planning because you could get an accurate ETA. Add in traffic and what more did anyone need? We have two disabled children and need the security of a reservation on a campsite.

From talking to ALK and reading some of the American forums, there are no versions of CoPilot that will provide the two essential features of putting in road preferences and the ability to assign preferred speeds to each different type of road. Sure you can put your vehicle dimensions in, but that isn't enough.

Anyway, I have a new ticket with ALK so we shall see where that goes.

 

[tonyidle]

Am I missing something? By planning a route to avoid anything other than 'main' roads all the picturesque routes, small villages, and old coast roads, are unseen. I like to tour, travelling slowly, and seeing stuff. To reach a particular county or area I do use motorways and A roads (for which a satnav is superfluous anyway) but once in an area I'll use the relatively traffic-free back roads just to make the journey interesting. My satnav is purposely left in car mode so it doesn't avoid the roads I like. (if I enter vehicle size it never lets me leave the boring stuff). I haven't ended up in difficulties anywhere despite having an 8+ metre motorhome towing a car trailer.

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[DDJC]

Am I missing something? By planning a route to avoid anything other than 'main' roads all the picturesque routes, small villages, and old coast roads, are unseen. I like to tour, travelling slowly, and seeing stuff. To reach a particular county or area I do use motorways and A roads (for which a satnav is superfluous anyway) but once in an area I'll use the relatively traffic-free back roads just to make the journey interesting. My satnav is purposely left in car mode so it doesn't avoid the roads I like. (if I enter vehicle size it never lets me leave the boring stuff). I haven't ended up in difficulties anywhere despite having an 8+ metre motorhome towing a car trailer.

I suppose every motorhomer wants a different thing. We like to get somewhere efficiently and then spend a few days exploring it. The destination is for us, less important than the journey.

 

[funflair]

Am I missing something? By planning a route to avoid anything other than 'main' roads all the picturesque routes, small villages, and old coast roads, are unseen. I like to tour, travelling slowly, and seeing stuff. To reach a particular county or area I do use motorways and A roads (for which a satnav is superfluous anyway) but once in an area I'll use the relatively traffic-free back roads just to make the journey interesting. My satnav is purposely left in car mode so it doesn't avoid the roads I like. (if I enter vehicle size it never lets me leave the boring stuff). I haven't ended up in difficulties anywhere despite having an 8+ metre motorhome towing a car trailer.

we all need a bit of excitement in our lives.

Martin

 

[DDJC]

Sorry, I know I am hogging this thread, but I have had a response to my latest ALK ticket. It gives a glint of hope, then spectacularly misses the target!

--
On 08 February 2019 at 11:05 CoPilot App Stores <techsupport@alk.com> wrote:

Hi Dave,

Thank you for contacting CoPilot Consumer Support.

I understand your frustration and we have been informed by the Product Management team that the option to "Avoid Motorways" is being considered to be added back into a software update build release, however at this time we do not have any further news to share with you unfortunately.

I cannot have a precise date or time frame when a solution would be found, unfortunately, since as you probably understand, the Product Management and Developers own this activity.

No further information is needed which could help further the developers at this stage - on our end or by the users. In cases like this, our internal procedure is to wait for when the build is released to see whether this accomodates the fix, but please note, as for now, your issue has been raised to address with a high priority with the relevant teams, especially many users who have been reporting the same complaint.

We apologise for the inconvenience and hope a solution will be found soon with regards to re-implementation of the relevant option.

Thank you

If you have further questions, please do not hesitate to let us know.

Regards,
Amit, CoPilot Consumer Support
Visit https://support.copilotgps.com for FAQs and solutions from fellow CoPilot users!

--

My response:


Hi Amit,

Thanks for replying.

BUT, I don't want to avoid motorways! I want to be able to specify that sometimes, I PREFER to use motorways and bigger roads and that I don't want to use back streets or residential roads! I have a 25' RV towing an 11' trailer.

Then I want to be able to tell CoPilot that I am limited by law to driving at 50mph and so I need the ability to change the road speeds so that CoPilot can accurately predict an arrival time.

This subject is gaining massive traction amongst the caravan and RV communities. For the life of me, i can't imagine why these two essential features were taken out.

Please tell the developers to put this back in. CoPilot is useless to me as it says I will arrive somewhere two hours earlier than I do, and takes me down single track roads.

 

[hilldweller]

Google maps usually sticks to the main roads,

My first choice for planning. I don't think I've ever seen a duff route from Google. That and being able to familiarise yourself with the destination with street view ( well most countries ).

 

[hilldweller]

Am I missing something? but once in an area I'll use the relatively traffic-free back roads.

My thought once near Venice. How the MH survived I do not know, we nearly needed a tow to get out of some pot holes. Even the Moroccans would have been ashamed of the road. This was about 5 years ago, a sign of the terrible financial state of Italy back then.

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[tonyidle]

The destination is for us, less important than the journey.

That was my point .

 

[tonyidle]

we all need a bit of excitement in our lives.

Very true .

 

[tonyidle]

we nearly needed a tow to get out of some pot holes

It's when you need a crane you start worrying .

 

[Pausim]

Some like back roads some don’t. The unique selling point of the Caravan version of CoPilot was that you could adjust the road profiles to suit your preferences, whatever they were. For me losing that facility means the app is just another mediocre and overpriced app.

I have posted my views publicly on the Apple App Store. Hopefully the developers might think again about the adviseability of removing their usp from the app.

 

[sallylillian]

So back to the game in hand, as Dave has kindly brought to our attention the support guys are taking some punishment, probably more than we realise. That said I dusted off one of my copies of Sygic Truck. Some interesting features now. For example if you have both Camper Contact and Sygic Truck on the same device, you search a contact in CC go to the contact proper and down the list of options is route. Click that and you can either select Google maps or Sygic if its on the device. Click sygic, it launches Sygic if it is not already and makes the contact the destination and draws a route! So I dont need CC POIs on Sygic. Same with Archies. There is also a send route to Sygic truck extension for Chrome. So go to maps in Chrome pick a destination and send to Sygic, and it does not have to even be on the same device! So all my google map POI list can be fired to Sygic at will. Gets better all the time. So I shall test both live in April when we start our journey back to Germany.

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