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Same Place, multiple locations: Starbucks
A location list or place verification. If I type in Starbucks, there is only one listed in my area. I get something different if I type in Starbucks Coffee. Both of those are different then Starbucks Coffee @ 91st Ave & Bell. When I checked in today @ Starbucks Coffee, it pulled the one on Agua Fria in Phoenix, and I could not see that till I finished & actually checked in.
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?I have the same problem - I check into a Chicago Starbucks and it shows up as a suburban location
I’m annoyed
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Inappropriate?Not specific to Starbucks' but generally chain locations - I checked into Popeye's last night and the automatic entry for it was at a different location. Has also happened to grocery stores, etc.
I’m frustrated
2 people say
this solves the problem
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Julie - when you put in a chain - like Popeye's in the name - put in the street name it should solve problem. -
1 person says
this solves the problem
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Inappropriate?Since there is no way to get an accurate fix with like GPS you'll have to title it a certain way - via store # or put spot location in title. Only way so far5 Comments Add a comment
This solves the problem
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Well, it's not really a GPS accuracy problem... we're talking about two Starbuck's (or whatever chain) that might be 20-30 miles apart. The problem is Foursquare appears to be using the name (if it's a name that it already has in its database) and disregarding GPS altogether and assuming you're at the one it already knows about. So, yeah, calling it something else like "Starbuck's #254" is fine but it doesn't fix the core problem. Plus, you end up with wildly inconsistent naming conventions. It seems to me this is an issue Foursquare needs to fix, not the other way around.
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true... but foursquare doesn't use GPS at all. For now just have to name them differently - hopefully it's in their roadmap to fix
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Or perhaps display the same name along w/ the address. Allow the users to select which one... OR FOR THE LOVE OF GOD add a new one if the ones in the list don't apply!!!!
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I don't understand how Gowalla can get my GPS coordinates almost exactly and Brightikite can add Google search results for businesses nearby when you search for a location and foursquare can't seem to fix this issue
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For those on this thread please check out iPhone version 1.4.3 which should fix a lot of these issues. Thanks!
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Inappropriate?When I check into my local Starbucks in Chicago - I type in Starbucks Broadway as the main street. Then Starbucks asks me is that a new venue. I agree it is (knowing it isn't). When I go to add as a new venue - I take the name Broadway out of the first line - so it is Starbucks only and move Broadway to the second line. I then get checked into the correct Starbucks and it does NOT get added as a new venue. It works for me.
I’m confident
1 person says
this solves the problem
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Inappropriate?Same problem, where it automatically checks in to another location without even letting me ok the location of the place (e.g. Panera or Starbucks...)
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?With chains, you have to search for Starbuc or Paner (leave the rest alone) and it will pull up all the Starbucks or whatever in your area. I think they are fixing chains though soon so it won't be an issue.
I’m amused
2 people say
this solves the problem
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And yet it shouldn't be necessary. Hopefully they fix this so you don't have to "mess up" (and type extra words) just to do something correct.
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Inappropriate?you know, another thing you could do is make a unique TAG for the starbucks you want with a small identifier that you can search for when you're there. Goto the venue page online and bottom right you can add a tag or a few whatever
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Inappropriate?I just wish "my" Starbucks showed up when I check in @foursquare - its a block from my house - I am a chai tea addict!
I’m amused
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Inappropriate?When I add a venue that has different locations, I add it with a "- city" at the end. So, for example, "Buffalo Wild Wings - Mt Clemens"1 Comment Add a comment
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That might work for Buffalo Wild Wings, but not a large chain like Starbucks, McDonald's, etc where they have 10's-100's in a single major city.
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Inappropriate?I find that if I put in: Starbuck - Broadway (street its on) - foursquare says "add new venue" and I do. It then shows up as Starbucks - Broadway. Then I edit it - to be Starbucks and then the next line location: Broadway and it recognized my Starbucks and it adds me to the right location - and it does not add it as a new location. But its a hassle! And I think my local Starbucks that I check in to every day should just come up.
I’m not being taken care of
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Sounds like you're doing something wrong. I found the Starbucks you added (http://foursquare.com/venue/100645) and the location data doesn't make any sense. There are also at least 5 Starbucks on Broadway, so I would suggest updating the address information for the Starbucks you frequent.
For others who are seeing similar issues, I would recommend titling the venue with something that makes sense like "Starbucks at Broadway and Elmdale" or "Starbucks at Bryn Mawr and Winthrop". Yourself and others can then easily distinguish between venues later based on the venue name. -
Inappropriate?Well, does your local starbucks have the correct and complete address in it? If it just has a street name then I'm not surprised it doesn't pop up automatically. If you're the mayor of it or added it originally, you can go edit the address.
Hopefully now that there are more superusers this kind of thing will be tidied up eventually. Basically though, ALL chain locations should have some indicator of the location in their title. If you type in just "Starbucks" and someone created one that has only that in the title, then the system sees it's an exact match and goes with that one. If you edit the title of your location to be "Starbucks - Broadway" then you'll be able to skip all that fake-adding rigmarole you've been doing.
I’m waiting for the promised improvements around chains
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Inappropriate?Pelly - I agree with you. I am waiting for the promised improvements around chains. But, my local Starbucks, and my local gym should come up immediately - *maybe a most frequented places.
I’m waiting, too
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Inappropriate?Pelly: This may work for a lot of areas, but take the Phoenix metro for example. There are currently 369 Starbucks Coffee shops. Of those, 13 are on Bell Rd. 11 on Camelback, etc. Now, That would mean identifying both streets (if you even know them), like Starbucks Coffee - 16th St & Camelback Rd, or Starbucks Coffee - Grand Ave & Reems Rd.
There has got to be a better way.1 Comment Add a comment
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I don't see that as a problem, at least with naming or searching. When I want the McDonald's at Keele and Finch, I type in McDonald's Keele and up pops "McDonald's - Keele and Finch" (which I added).
However, I agree with earlier posts that a search for "McDonald's" should turn up more than one result. OR provide the option to narrow your search. AND when I'm in the vicinity of said McDonald's, I see it on my iPhone automatically. (Just hit Refresh in Places to reload the list of nearby places. This works best outdoors with a good GPS signal.) -
Inappropriate?We pushing some code this week that will fix this problem for mobile_web and for SMS users. And soon after, we'll push these changes to iPhone users.
You'll see already that most of the "duplicate key" errors we used to see all over the place are now gone. That's because you can now add places to the database that have the same name.
There's no longer a need to do things like "Starbucks - East" and "Starbucks - West" - you can add as many "Starbucks" as you want and we'll figure it out w/ the geocodes.
Small steps, but a lot of the code we've been writing this whole time gets pushed starting this week (thru Thanksgiving). We expecting almost 100% of these issues to be solved by Turkey Day.
Thanks again for your patience!
-d8 Comments Add a comment
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That is awesome to hear. Now, with this be true of the non-GPS (1st Gen) iPhone?
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That is awesome to hear. Now, with this be true of the non-GPS (1st Gen) iPhone?
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So, you are going to be able to use some type of positioning to make sure texts are coming from the actual venue? I am new to FourSquare. I am actually writing my grad school paper about cell phone technology and I joined the site for research and for my presentation. It's fun, but it seems REALLY easy to cheat. Like you can check in by text from a place you aren't at. Is that a fix that is coming by Turkey Day? Just wondering :o)
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So, you are going to be able to use some type of positioning to make sure texts are coming from the actual venue? I am new to FourSquare. I am actually writing my grad school paper about cell phone technology and I joined the site for research and for my presentation. It's fun, but it seems REALLY easy to cheat. Like you can check in by text from a place you aren't at. Is that a fix that is coming by Turkey Day? Just wondering :o)
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Actually, we are tracking that now (distance from your actual location to the location you're checking into). Right now we don't call out the cheaters (we're still tweaking the rules to prevent false positives) but I'm hoping this is fixed by ThanksG
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Thank you so much! I think your site is perfect for my paper and I really like how you are making a game out of going out on the town. Great work and thanks again!
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I know you guys have been working on the geolocation stuff and have had it running the backend... Unless you JUST added that like a couple days ago I still had an issue of searching for a place and I checked in to a place way north in Phoenix as they hadn't titled it "place - location"... I did'nt know there was another one but my checkin was far from my geo-coords.
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So now that you have the style guide, someone has gone and removed all the location appellations from Starbucks in Seattle. But texting @ Starbucks to Foursquare doesn't check you in to the correct venue. So how's about explaining exactly how we're supposed to check in to a venue via SMS now? Are we supposed to tack on the address with a * character or something? Help. This rolling out of new features without directions on how to actually use them is pretty effed up.
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Inappropriate?I have been having this issue on the iPhone. I was at Target yesterday and I when I added it it put me at a Target 40 miles away. -
Inappropriate?Yeah it's still not working because I did that with a Chilli's in Chandler and it checked me in at the one on Mill Ave... Fail... hopefully soon it'll work... until then created "Chilli's @ Chandler Mall" :)
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Inappropriate?I found a "temp" solution.
When I check into a chain, like Starbucks, I don't click the "Not in list" at the bottom. Instead I click the search icon in the upper left. When I type in "Starbucks", it lists all of them in the region, starting with, assumed, the closest one. I then just search the list for the correct one, or add it from there.
I still hope Four Square fixes this.
1 person says
this solves the problem
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Inappropriate?I love that BrightKite shows the Google local entries that match your search, elegant solution. -
Inappropriate?This problem is now SOLVED, folks! Hooray! *dance of joy*
Check out the new foursquare style guide -- no need for suffixes anymore, just name your place "Starbucks" instead of "Starbucks - Milton & Ste-Catherine", for example. Same for Apple Stores, etc.
I’m happy foursquare came up with a solution!
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This solves the problem
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Not really. THere's still no way to check in via SMS when multiple venues have the same name.
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Yeah, this isn't resolved at all. It makes checking in via mobile web unnecessarily more difficult, and checking in via SMS impossible to do consistently. Since I don't have an iPhone or Android phone and need to use one of the alternatives, I find myself unable to check in somewhat often...
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Inappropriate?It's not solved in the m.foursquare.com interface, yet.
But I think there is a pretty simple way to make it work. All foursquare needs to do is just always list the address at check-in, just like when there are multiple locations to pick from. And have an option to add a new location for that chain below it.
The first part should be pretty simple to program, because it looks like they are actively suppressing it when there is just one entry - just display it, and you know you're in the right place.
Currently many people probably don't even realize they are checking in at the wrong location.
I’m surprised, because it seems so simple.
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RobK, you're correct & I agree with your suggested solution as well (for m.foursquare.com).
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Inappropriate?I have been complaining about this forever. I just wish my local Starbucks would come up in the immediate directory - as it's a block from where I live. I find it really annoying and not user friendly.
I’m annoyed
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Inappropriate?This isn't solved. I just went to a Tom & Tom's here in Seoul, and what a nightmare. There were two Tom & Toms near where I was. So when I typed it in, it said "Do you mean 1 of these 2?" and gave me a pop up. I said no, add venue. So I went through all the work of adding the venue and hit add, and it just kicked me back to the same pop up. I Did that 5 times nada. I finally checked into one to check the address (as it was close) but it wasn't right. So I tried again and I had to add something to the name in order to get it to save. A very frustrating experience.
I’m sad
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Inappropriate?I'd like to be able to go back into my history and link the check-in to the CORRECT location (when it checks me in to the wrong one) -- is there a way to do this?
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Inappropriate?Oh sorry for the early joy folks. Didn't think of SMS (I live in Canada so I don't have access to this service yet of foursquare).
I’m a douche sometiems
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Inappropriate?This is really frustrating.
It apparently defaults to what, the first instance of a location?
This has happened to me a number of times now.
You'd think there would be some way to at least correct it after the fact in the main website.
I’m frustrated
1 person says
this solves the problem
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I think it's worse than that. When I tried to check in via SMS to an ambiguously named venue (because there was a duplicate with the same name), foursquare didn't check me into EITHER one, and there was no way to fix that.
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Inappropriate?There's discussion about this going on in another thread: http://www.getsatisfaction.com/foursq...
One of the reasons this happens when checking in using SMS is generic venue names for chains (like 5 Starbucks locations in one city all named "Starbucks.") The foursquare staff tweeted today that they would like folks to stop adding location information to venue names and stick with just the generic ones.
If you're checking in with SMS and all the Starbucks in your area are named "Starbucks" you're going to be stuck with the problem. Speak up and let the foursquare team know you disagree!
1 person says
this solves the problem
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Inappropriate?For those on this thread please check out iPhone version 1.4.3 which should fix a lot of these issues. Thanks!
(would love to hear your feedback too!)2 Comments Add a comment
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Dennis, it's awesome that you're working hard on solving this very common complaint of ours, but I don't think GPS is the primary problem. Some sort of additional location-naming convention is incredibly useful as an at-a-glance visual (e.g., seeing "Starbucks - Sausalito" or "Starbucks - Marina" vs. a generic "Starbucks" will put users at ease with their check-in immediately). And even GPS isn't going to solve the situation where there's a Starbucks across the street from a Starbucks (I've seen this phenomenon).
Not to mention that you're making the mayorship lists for individuals terribly vague. At foursquare.com, I like to look at what people around town are mayor of, especially my friends. Seeing that someone is mayor of "Starbucks - Brooklyn Park" and "Starbucks - Maple Grove" tells me something about those people vs. being mayor of "Starbucks" and "Starbucks." Without location-specific venue naming, you're cannibalizing the rich potential for immediate list details on your own website. I'm always skeptical when I see someone is mayor of a generically named place (Oh, really? You're the mayor of Burger King, are you? Don't they already have a King? Duh. But for some reason I accept a mayor of "Burger King - Roseville.")
I'm being silly, but I hope you catch my drift. love your positive attitude in the face of our complaints. I think you understand that we complain because we care. Foursquare scratches an itch and you do so much right. Keep at it, my man. (But change your style guide immediately *wink*). -
The other problem right now is the search engine on the web site. With location-specific identifiers, it used to be very simple to search for something like "Starbucks - Yonge & Wanless" to find that specific Starbucks. Now, there's no way to perform a search for a specific location within a city that may have hundreds of them.
In either case, the problem could be solved simply by improving the web interface to show and allow searching on address information. It shouldn't be too difficult, IMHO, to change the mayoral listings (and personal feeds) to simply show the street adress (ie, "Starbucks - 3143 Yonge St"). Although this might not be as pretty as showing a localized location identifier, at least it provides some distinction between the locations.
Further, improving the search to provide the ability to search by address should be something that's in the web interface *anyway*, IMHO, regardless of whether we're using location identifiers or not. -
Inappropriate?Dennis, my feedback is that I can't load iPhone version 1.4.3 on my non-iPhone hardware. If I would like to have an iPhone, I probably would have Gowalla. The proposed fix to the website interface (don't suppress details if there's only one location) appears to be pretty simple and straight forward.
I’m not an iPhone user
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