10 ways Satnavs can cost you a small fortune

We’ve all seen one or used one however these little black boxes can cost you a small fortune if you’re not careful

Never set your ‘home’ location on your Satnav as your actual house

Set ‘home’ as the road around the corner, a road in a nearby estate or better still the local Police station 😉

• Someone steals your car keys
• They find car
• They turn your sat nav on and press ‘navigate to home’
• Boom they know your exact home location and have your house keys

Setting your ‘home’ location as the nearest Police station is a fun way to catch a criminal if your keys get stolen, just remember to tell the person on 999 that you’ve done that so they can inform your local station.

Using your phone’s data allowance to update maps on the go

Use an app that you can download maps on to over Wifi. Google Maps does offer this along with many other apps
Alternatively grab a sim only deal with unlimited data allowance

Setting your ‘home’ location as the nearest Police station is a fun way to catch a criminal if your keys get stolen

List of the top Sat Nav Apps:

• CoPilot Premium Europe HD £26.99 (iOS | Android | Windows)
• Waze Free (iOS | Android | Windows)
• TomTom Go (iOS | Android | Windows)
• Google Maps (all devices)
• Navmii (iOS | Android | Windows | Blackberry)

Safety Camera Alerts are great however…

…remember they won’t pick up all of them and often that data will be incorrect. Another reason to use crowd sourcing apps like Waze (especially for temporary cameras) as these apps use real people reporting real cameras for the good of the community.

People typing in the destination without first checking…

…if there are multiple locations with the same name you could find yourself completely in a different part of the country. We had a friend that drove 2 hours North towards a small village because they hadn’t checked that there were two Villages with the same name.

However not as bad as the story of the Syrian truck driver that drove a 32 ton truck 1600 miles the wrong way.

The guy that drove his van into a lake because “the satnav said to”

No other words needed, however I’m sure we’ve all heard a story or two about someone following their Satnav and ending up somewhere stuck.

Don’t rely on older technology. Newer & better software only versions are available

Waze & Google Maps kick arse compared with most Satnavs from the past few years. Mainly because they see traffic before you do and as we often say, time = money.

Use Coordinates instead of postcodes for tricky to find locations

If you need an exact location forget about postcodes, use Google Maps to pin point the exact coordinates. Ideal for Wedding venues etc when people just put a postcode that is actually an area the size of a small town.

An example

Leaving your Satnav/phone or the mount on the window

It’s pretty obvious what it is and informs anyone looking in that your car has a device to steal, always keep it locked away in the glovebox when not in use.

Using a crap quality phone cradle/mount = dropped phone

Something like the TaoTronics Cradle, Magnetic Automobio or the top of the range Montar Car Mount will save your phone from falling off the window

Blocking your cigarette lighter

Most satnavs have those annoying plugs that take up the whole cigarette lighter, this can cause you issues when you need to charge up your phone etc.

Solution: Buy an Anker dual port USB plug, then use a micro USB cable from this to your satnav and then you have another port free for phone charging etc.
Alternatively they do a four port option as well

Other articles you will find interesting

• 10 ways to save money with a dash camera
• How to break into an empty house + more importantly how to avoid someone doing it to you!

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