Johncardiff wrote:

Does anybody else have similar problems with their Sat Nav.

Nope; I've managed to beat some sense into mine...OK, I haven't but I've learnt to live with it

Consider the "Major Roads" selection in route preferences as meaning "Motorway". If you have this selected, it'll try and put the bulk of your journey on the motorway network. If you'd rather go point to point, then turn off all the options. If you'd rather take back roads, then select only the Minor Roads option. Minor roads + Major roads gives very odd results IMHO.

As with any intelligent system, I insist on having the last word, so I always use the three routes option with Major Roads set and vet which one I want to select. If it fails to meet my needs, I deselect Major Roads and re-calculate three routes. If that still doesn't work, I just ignore her until I've set way down the path I want. There's only so many miles she'll insist on you doing a u turn to get back on her route...

I've also noted that if you ask for quick, then it'll happily take you a hundred miles longer if it thinks it's quicker. Carlisle to Swansea avoiding the motorways comes up with an estimate in excess of 9 hours, vs 5 for the Motorway, which is almost 100 miles longer as a route.

Selecting Normal more often (for me) picks a mix of direct driving and motorway that I can live with.

I never found my TomTom accurate when estimating arrival time. I think once the maps include all speed limits and TMC includes all temporary restrictions and average traffic speed data, we're going to begin to see results. Until then we're always going to get bad estimates. After all, on the same trip on the same roads to a point in Scotland from Swindon, I've clocked up 4 1/2 hours and 9 1/2 hours, both travelling at the best possible speed that conditions would allow. No jumped up toaster is ever going to get that kind of estimate right.

Hope those random thoughts help somewhat; best thing is to sit in the car and enter mythical journeys with the various options on/off and see which options more often select the routes you'd prefer to drive.