Hi, does anyone have any warnings, comments or
concerns regarding data purchased from a vendor. The last postal code point file
I purchased had numerous duplications of lat and long values and a number of
points were simply not in the right location. When I contacted the vendor to
complain, they tried to downplay the inaccuracies. HOWEVER, if someone in our
office who had local knowledge of the area had not discovered the errors our
client would have considered us at fault. Try explaining to a client "oh,
you don't understand. You see there were errors in the data we used to geocode
your customers. That's why the locations are off by 3 or 4 blocks, or that's why
a number of customers with different postal codes appear on top of each
other." AND the thing that really kills me, is that the data vendor made no
mention that there data is not 100% accurate. I do know to expect a 100%
accuracy is to expect too much, but when you achieve an error rate exceeding 10%
then some type of warning should be included with the data you
sell.
Please let me know your thoughts on my
rants,
Derek
