Maybe the conversation needs to start out differently. The second sentence should come first, and perhaps the address should be left out entirely in lieu of accurate and descriptive directions, ending something like “…after 1.5 miles turn left on Mystreet. My house is the big blue one on the left, three house down with the numbers 123 on it.”
I’ve noticed that GPS’s seem to work in quadrants. Even if a route or road can be faster or shorter (more direct) if another road is within the quadrant that is in the current location then that road or route will be used. Even if the better route is with in a few feet of the “poorer” route.
Unless the destination street itself is missing from navigator databases, there’s nothing really wrong with people wanting to use GPS. Your directions may not be the best ones from their other stops that day, for example.
The problem is people not knowing how to use their devices.
No it’s not. The problem is that sometimes GPS units don’t work like their supposed to. As an example, my address isn’t found in most GPSs unless you put in the neighboring city. Regarding your statement about directions not being the best one… regardless of where you’re coming from my corrected address I give over the phone is correct as they all involve correcting a highway exit. :rolleyes:
Ah, the ways of the minds of you Comp Sci guys. 
I had that conversation once, circa 1986 (long before Internet was widely available, let alone GPS): Guy giving me driving instructions. Take a certain off-ramp, head towards downtown Sunnyvale – well, it’s actually a 270-degree loop offramp, so you turn right at the bottom of the ramp . . .
I interjected: So I just make a logical left turn off the freeway.
(For those Comp Sci types in Silicon Gulch: This was 237 westbound onto Mathilda.)
Other guy: There you go!
LOL. I do this a lot. I drive past where it tells me to turn and keep going past the turn until it no longer asks me to make a U turn just to see if it can recalculate a new route properly. I have done this a few times when I was going to be way too early for a client appointment and needed to kill some time. I no longer worry too much about getting lost because of my GPS, but I am sure it is a false sense of security 
I know before I start where I want to go. The GPS is just a handy moving map.
No voice commands, no 3D, I have them set so that routing times come out close to my driving style.
‘Left & Right’ cause more lost people that anything else. Due to cross overs, 270 degree exits, coming in from a different direction than the directions were given from, learning N,S,E, & W should be even more important than learning to swim.
Anyone who disregards my directions or blindly follows a GPS only gets one chance. After that he is not looked for nor waited on. Usually not invited back either.
I do love them for curvy neighborhoods that are new to me where I enter in the daytime and leave much later after dark when everything looks so much different. It is a handy map, but I do not allow it to direct me.
YMMV
:::: all maps lie ::::
The street we live on is interrupted a block and a half from our house by a stream. This interruption does not show up on maps and GPS devices. Most of the time people we’re giving directions to will accept this information and take the roads we suggest in order to get to the right part of it. Every once in a while a delivery person will insist on trying to follow their GPS or for some other reason ignore our directions and eventually wind up calling us complaining that our house number does not exist.
Once a few decades ago there was a brush fire in the woods next to our house. The local fire department is about 10 blocks away. We could see the fire truck on the other side of the stream. By the time they figured out where we were the local neighbors had mostly put it out themselves.
Be aware that even Google maps can give wrong directions. Earlier in the year I punched in an address in Google maps for a location in Brooklyn, and it told me the location was about 10 blocks (or a full subway stop) east of where it really was. You would think that for a place with 2.5 million people they would get their info correct.
In fact I just searched for that address again, and it still gives the incorrect location. :rolleyes:
As of the last update, Garmin is only about 2 miles off trying to get to my house, but at least it’s on the right road so people can read the numbers on the mailboxes to get the rest of the way here. Prior to that it was closer to 5 miles off and insisting that my home was in the middle of a creek.
I usually give directions to my house in Lat/Long format. I’ve also wondered if I should be concerned that my friends have no problem with this.
Yeah, there is, when you’ve told them the GPS is wrong. Why would you not trust the person who’s actually driven there? You’re taking known wrong directions over directions you know will work. Why do that?
I don’t understand people who want to find the fastest route to places they’ve never been before. You want the least complicated route. You want the one you know will work. Save getting places fast for after you know where they are.
The other day my phone GPS was trying to get me stuck in an infinite loop of making u-turns under the free way, back and forth, again and again, to get to my destination. It was quite hilarious. I just roundly ignored it of course, and got to where I needed to go without any problems because I used my BRAIN and only used the GPS as a mere “suggestion” if you will.
If someone tells me, “GPS will screw you up if you try to use it to get to my place,” I VERY carefully listen to them and write down directions and follow them.
Who are these idiots that rely entirely on GPS, even over the word of someone who has said that they are useless for finding their address? I’d say it’s wrong about 10% of the time when I use it. They are far, far from flawless.
Maps are wrong sometimes, but sometimes so are peoples’ directions that they insist are absolutely correct and the best route. I wouldn’t rely entirely on either. If they said that a particular road just didn’t exist (as the OP did), I’d take that into account and avoid that road, although that still wouldn’t make the map “useless.”
Frosty Camel, I feel your pain.
Had the same problem for the first four years in my house, due to the fact that the previous owner had apparently numbered her house on a whim and managed to register it with the town, which conveniently has a few streets/lanes/trails that have the same name as another across town. So…no GPS or Internet directions would ever get you to my house, but to Same-Name Lane across town. Couldn’t order a pizza, and yes, went through all the same aggravating bullshit with furniture deliveries, Fed Ex, repairmen etc ignoring my very clear and specific directions, even after I explained that two of their obstacles would be a railroad overpass with 12’ clearance and a single lane bridge with a weight limit. LOVED getting those calls from confused drivers. Why didn’t you listen to me, moron???
After much investigation with the Assessor and Zoning depts at the town hall, it was revealed that Same-Name Lane across town that all GPS directions would take you to is numbered with double digits, while my Same-Name Trail is numbered with triple digits. My house was #31.
Solution: add a digit to my address, register it with the town. I also had to change my address with everything, including my mortgage lender (and change the way the property is listed with them, which also took several tries).
Took about a year but I can finally order and receive a goddamn pizza now. Good luck.
Most of the 20-somethings in my family are refuse to try to read a map or follow spoken directions, they don’t know which way is N/E/W/S, and they rely 100% on their stupid GPS. Very disheartening.
Mapquest won’t either. Can I please email you a map?
Had 15 tons of gravel delivered last summer. I had sent the guy a map. The map was in his truck. Did he look at it? Um no.
Ended up wandering around in a town 15 miles away from me in a fully loaded tandem dump truck.
I’ve heard the Japan has a very strange addressing system. I work for County gov and our department assigns addresses. It can be difficult at times.
Years ago, the County made the mistake of allowing a developer to assign their own addresses. It’s totaly FUBAR.
That’s a good idea! I have some spare time today, I just might do that! It will not only help me out, but anyone in my subdivision as well. Thanks!
The boat is AWESOME! Although with great sadness I have already put it away for the winter. Thanks for asking.
This site explans how addresses work in Japan. It is quite systematic until you get down to the nana-ban (city block) level, and then you need a map to figure out the block numbers, because they are often out of sequence. (It is suggested that the block numbers usually start at the center of the village or city and increment in an outward spiral, but my experience in Naha-shi differed considerably.) House numbers appear to be assigned by random lottery, as they are rarely in any kind of rational sequence.
However, I have to admit that highway and road signage is typically excellent (and in both Japanese and English) and you can usually find the post office with little difficulty as it is usually on a main thoroughfare and always well-marked. And, at least in Okinawa, people were overwhelmingly generous with their willingness to not only cope with my rudimentary Japanese in giving directions but often jump in the car and show me how to get to my destination.
Still, the GPS with Mapcode and phone number entry was a great help in navigating around Okinawa-honto and Ishigaki-jima, especially since both Google and OpenStreet maps were notoriously unreliable.
Stranger
That is why I don’t bother with cardinal directions, but to get to my farm it would be something like [not actual directions]
Exit 84 and turn left at the end of the exit. Proceed through the intersection with the blinking red light. Proceed 3 miles and turn left on Baggins End Road. Proceed through the first stopsign, turn left at Underhill Road. Proceed to the next stop sign and turn right onto Balrog Street. Go 5 miles, and you will see a driveway with a large silver momvan, and there will be a flaming tiki torch in the yard. [we frequently will put up one or more tiki torches in the yard to mark the house. Not many random farms light the end of the driveway with a flaming torch.]
When we lived elsewhere, we would add landmarks as needed, like a llama farm, a very large barn with distinctive silos and the like.