WEST JORDAN — People who live in a West Jordan neighborhood near 7200 South and 2300 West have been missing out on packages, on food deliveries and on time with friends. Basically, they are missing out on anything that involves someone using directions from Google Maps to get to their homes.
“There’s no way you can get friends over for parties – things like that” said one of the neighborhood’s residents, Dustin Marks.
He showed me how when you typed his address into Google Maps, the navigation app routes users to somewhere else. Now, Marks has to warn visitors to not use Google Maps if they want to find his home. Sure, that’s pretty easy with a buddy but not so much when you’re talking delivery drivers.
“It seems to be just Google Maps,” said Marks. “Apple Maps works better but not everyone has an Apple device.”
He says people in the neighborhood have tried reaching out to Google to get the mapping issue fixed, but that hasn’t worked. Tired have getting nowhere with the tech giant, Marks and his neighbors decided to contact the KSL Investigators.
“It’s just annoying,” he said. “We’re in a modern-day society and nobody goes by paper anymore.”
Looking at the app, I saw inputting addresses in the 7200 block of Mark’s neighborhood returned results that are actually in the 8200 block of Salt Lake County – ten blocks difference, a little over a mile-and-a-quarter away.
I took a screenshot of my observation and sent that to Google’s communications team. All I got back was the automated response: “Thanks for reaching out! If you are a member of the press or a Google employee, we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
While I heard nothing else from Google, it seems someone there read the message because just like that – the mapping issue got resolved for Marks and his neighbors.
He doesn’t believe it should have been so hard.
“Fix your algorithm and we’d be on our way,” he said. “They need a very easy, clear way to fix address mistakes like this.”
Mapping satellites are regulated by the U.S. Space Force, but the agency insists it does not have any authority to force a private company to fix errors in their mapping programs. Your only recourse is to complain to the company and ask them to fix it.
This link from Google Maps’ help page explains fixing addresses and other Maps content. Apple has a similar page here. Here’s how to report a map error with Waze, also owned by Google.
And you can always complain to me: 385-707-6153 or matt@ksl.com