Filed under this is why I do not trust Google Maps, I am annoyed that I wasted a couple minutes of my life trying to make Google Maps more reliable. So incensed, I am proceeding to waste even more of my life by penning this diatribe. It is a hot day, and a bank holiday too, so I have plenty of time.
As I was walking down Long Acre in Covent Garden, central London, one warm evening, I noticed that Aspinal of London on that street had closed. Aspinal produces fine leather goods, and while many items are beyond my budget, I always like to do some window shopping. The closure of this store is perhaps not that surprising since Aspinal has a nice new shop on Regent Street, between Piccadilly Circus and Waterloo Place.
A good denizen of Google Maps that I am, I marked the store as closed, even attaching photographs. My suggestion joined the verification queue. A few days later it was not applied.
Not applied? You cannot be serious! What more does Google need or want? The two images I attached to this edit clearly show that this store is closed.
Perhaps I ought to have cropped the image as follows, and submitted that as well, so there would have been no doubt whatsoever.
I have long ceased to trust Google Maps as a reliable source of basic yet important information, such as when or even whether a place is open, never mind reviews which I completely ignore. When I consult Google Maps nowadays, I almost always check another source to corroborate that piece of information, for instance the website of the business in question.
In this instance, the store is still open according to Google Maps, but this location is nowhere to be seen on the list of its stores on Aspinal’s website.
This case yet again demonstrates why I have less and less trust and regard for Google Maps, and even less incentive for correcting wrong information on it, since it seems quite senseless. If those images are not sufficient, then I have no idea what I need to provide to convince Google that this store is now indeed closed and should be marked as such.
End of rant.