Restaurant loses $12K after Apple maps blunder
An Apple Maps blunder that listed a restaurant as permanently closed has potentially cost owner Chris Pyatt more than $12,000 in revenue.
Pyatt only became aware of the mistake when a customer asked him why had closed the venue.
"We have no idea when this change went through," Pyatt told the ABC.
"But we have seen a sudden and drastic change in customer behaviour towards the end of November and all of December.
"We've noted a significant downturn, of around $12,000.
"This is our livelihood."
Thai restaurant Pum's Kitchen which is run by Pyatt and wife Pum has been operating for almost 10 years on on Queensland's Sunshine Coast.
"I use the Android system on the phone and I use the Microsoft system at home, which means I cannot see anything that's on the Apple system at all," Pyatt said.
Apple have been difficult to deal with, telling him that because he is not an Apple customer they can’t help him. He was advised to submit online feedback.
According to Apple, any web browser can be used to update details, but Pyatt said all attempts so far have been unsuccessful.
While Google Chrome allowed him to make changes, they had not been updated on the app after several days.
When the ABC reached out to Apple for comment, the issue was fixed within two hours.
However, the pin drop on the map was wrong.
"We lost one customer [this week] because they called us to check the location, then stated they were using Apple Maps and didn't turn up.
"I personally put the pin drop onto their map, but it hasn't been updated and is navigating people to a place where we have never had our restaurant."
According to tech expert Erica Mealy from the University of the Sunshine Coast, this is not a one-off incident.
"There's a lot of 'my hours are incorrectly reported', or 'my location is not right', 'my phone number is not right'," she said.
"The challenge is there's no information that I could find about how they build the information for Apple Maps.”
Dr Mealy said it was getting tougher for small businesses to navigate their listings on various platforms across the internet.
Pyatt believes Apple should have checked before listing his business as closed.
"It's not right to close any online presence," he said.
"If you have a particular company which is precluding you from being able to access information about yourself, or your business, that's quite a scary situation to me."
Jonathan Jackson, 25th January 2024
