Sat navs
There's nothing more frustrating than being stuck in a car not knowing where you're going. When your sense of direction lets you down, you often have to rely on the kindness of a stranger, or you could invest in a satellite navigation system.
As a self-employed lorry driver, Stephen Kalter makes deliveries for lots of companies so knows more than most how useful a sat nav can be. Tired of missing junctions and reading maps at the side of the road, he invested in a Garmin sat nav.
He said: "Before sat navs, you had an idea of where a place was, you'd try to bluff your way to it. More often than not you'd find your way.
"Sat nav is supposed to take away all these maps you have to buy for locations you have to drive and save a bit of money."
Stephen does put in a few more miles than the average motorist but it wasn't long before his sat nav became more of a sat naff.
He explained: "You'd put the postcode in and it would either send you to the nearest one, the nearest postcode, which wouldn't necessarily be in the same town or the same area."
Ironically, among the places the sat nav won't find is Stephen's home which has been built for three years.
Last October, Stephen was offered an upgrade of his maps to the 2009 version, and thought that would sort the problem. So he signed up, confident that this time he'd be going in the right direction.
He said: "It was £60 including the VAT and the information said 'all maps up to the date of 2009'."
When you buy a sat nav, it has maps already installed on it. So, if someone builds a new housing estate after that, it won't show up. But buying an upgrade gives you newer updated maps for the sat nav to work from.
Armed with this new intelligence, Stephen headed out from his home in Griffithstown once more, full of confidence that the new maps in the sat nav would now get him from A to B.
But the upgrade he'd paid £60 for simply drove him round the bend. He said: "The information on the sat nav was no better, exactly the same in fact as it was previous. 2006 or 7 information was still classed as 2009 information."
Among the roads still missing are the Cyfarthfa Retail Park, in Merthyr Tydfil which opened three years ago, the Morfa estate near Landore Swansea, and even well-known shopping centre Cribbs Causeway.
Stephen has already asked the company for his money back but they've refused. They blame another company, which sells them the maps they use. But they say things might improve by the next upgrade.
Stephen said: "What is the point of having a download of 2009, when something was built nearly three years ago is not on the sat nav? It doesn't make any sense."
Since we filmed with Stephen, Garmin say they have found some "anomalies" in the maps he had on his sat nav, and they've passed those on to the company which produces the maps.
They have a website where their customers can notify them of any changes to the road system - or tell them about roads that are simply missing from their maps.
And they're giving Stephen a full refund, and free upgrades from now on.
