May I humbly request that both of you take this pointless p*****g contest somewhere else?Preferably somewhere that I don't even suspect exists. Thanks.

Oh I don't know, it's been a jolly good read. C'mon Paul, git back in there! :(

I am sorry, I didn't know our pointless p*****g contest spilled out into the public view. I thought you had to voluntarily come in here to see it.

May I humbly request that both of you take this pointless p*****g contest somewhere else?Preferably somewhere that I don't even suspect exists. Thanks.

Nah, no need...I rest my case LOL :( P.S.: How long did it take you to fully read our posts?

>I am sorry, I didn't know our pointless p*****g contest spilled out into the public view. I thought you had to voluntarily come in here to see it. I voluntarily came in to see something about Carenado Support, not an endless debate about how many marketers could dance on the head of a pin.>P.S.: How long did it take you to fully read our posts? Too long, but I am retired so I have time to waste. :)

UHHH what does this all have to do with carenado leaving problems unfixed lol

UHHH what does this all have to do with carenado leaving problems unfixed lol

Nothing. And the Grand Caravan release continued the trend of releasing products that the community had to fix...Carenado, all you have to do is make some of us beta testers! You don't even have to pay us. Everyone wins.

I got really annoyed when I saw terms like 'loyalty', 'pride', 'reputation' and 'commitment' being bandied about along with the attitude that having paid for a product somehow entitled the customer to everlasting care and devotion while also giving them the right to be rude and abusive. We even had one hypocrite saying Carenado should get their act together or get out of the FSX add on business. I call that person a hypocrite deliberately since their signature still gives Carenado a Gold Star for the very product they were slagging!I do not know if it is a change in the schooling system, but increasingly often, I encounter people who do not appear to understand the basics of capitalism. Not from the perspective of a political or economic system, but from the simple, practical, what do I get for my money, point of view. Overshoe came here to find out something about Carenado support but was not interested in how that support is dictated completely by capitalism. Even itzJustMe, who displays the benefits of a decent education, and jokingly offered a tutorial on business, thinks market share and viability are somehow important to a company, and that there is some 'moral duty' towards customers after the transaction is complete. It isn't and there isn't. Lets get rid of viability first. Any company whose assets exceed its valuation is not viable and is a target for stripping. The only reason to not strip it is if the valuation can be increased to significantly above the asset value for an affordable (and available) investment. Market share? A statistic made up by executives to impress or embarrass other executives. Carenado has 100% market share in the FSX payware add-on Bonanza market. So what? Potential vs. actual? Short-term vs. long term? New customers vs. returning customers? Quick buck vs. steady income? Market domination vs. market niche? Monopoly vs. cartel? Ethics vs. greed? Quality vs. quantity? All variables for the same question; "What will give the best overall return on investment?". Who decides exactly what that means? The person making the decision does. One man and his dog or global corporation makes no difference, any expenditure of resources must be justified by an honest expectation of a positive return. I googled a few definitions for 'transaction' and the results were not good, "the act of transacting, the fact of being transacted", "exchanging assets for payment", "buyer and seller" etc, are all incomplete to the point of misleading. A trade is defined as an exchange of property where each party believes the property they are getting will be more valuable to them then the property they are giving. Without that belief on both sides, there is no reason to trade. Note that belief is an expectation, not a certainty. Lets start with the simple stuff. How much is $30 worth? There is no absolute answer. It might be your weeks pocket money, the tip you leave after a nice dinner, a couple of pints with the lads, food for your family for a week, a ticket to a movie, or a few hours entertainment on your PC. Only you can say. You traded $30 for a Carenado product because you believed the entertainment value it would bring was worth more to you then the $30 in your pocket. Carenado traded the right to use a copy of their product for $30 because they believed that gave a positive return on the investment they made to produce the product. That was the transaction and now it is over and both sides won. If you are interested, there was a EULA which you probably didn't read that describes in detail what you were getting for your money. It did not include lifetime maintenance or the right to be rude.The product, by virtue of being software, can not be perfect and this will cause it to loose different amounts of value for different people. Somebody who wants to count rivets will be more upset by a visual error then someone who wants to practice short field landing techniques. Maintenance can restore some of that value for some people, but increases the total investment in the product and so impacts the return. So the Company must do a cost/benefit analysis. If the cost of the maintenance is below the benefit, the company will consider it. That is why some errors are fixed, and some are left.

I got really annoyed when I saw terms like 'loyalty', 'pride', 'reputation' and 'commitment' being bandied about along with the attitude that having paid for a product somehow entitled the customer to everlasting care and devotion while also giving them the right to be rude and abusive. ...If the cost of the maintenance is below the benefit, the company will consider it. That is why some errors are fixed, and some are left.

Since I started this thread, let me respond. If you re-read my initial message, you will notice that I did not claim a right to maintenance, but rather expressed my frustration that acknowledged bugs which were quote "on a to-do list" were never addressed.I simply asked for suggestions as to how we might get Carenado's attention, given that this forum is billed as the "Carenado Support Forum".While you are no doubt correct in your economic analysis, the FS add-on marketplace has several well established vendors who pride themselves on delivering as accurate a simulation as they can. They may not include various features of the real aircraft, for cost reasons no doubt, but the features they do include either work or are made to work via a service release.They would not accept a Bonanza model with malfunctioning gear lights, as an example. I am convinced that this oversight could be fixed quickly and easily by the author, since other models work correctly, but Carenado has decided that they are not going to bother, it would appear.Carenado has a choice, either ignore the customers who are raising these issues, or address them. It would be interesting to hear Carenado respond to this request directly, given that their name is on the forum and their reputation is being challenged. :(

The product, by virtue of being software, can not be perfect and this will cause it to loose different amounts of value for different people. Somebody who wants to count rivets will be more upset by a visual error then someone who wants to practice short field landing techniques. Maintenance can restore some of that value for some people, but increases the total investment in the product and so impacts the return. So the Company must do a cost/benefit analysis. If the cost of the maintenance is below the benefit, the company will consider it. That is why some errors are fixed, and some are left.

Sorry, I do not buy this as being a reason Carenado hasn't cleaned up their act. You do not release flight models that are blatantly wrong to the public. Any other company that does so has a fix within hours or a couple days at most. Though I still buy most of their releases, I've got friends who have stopped purchasing their products because they are always the same old same old. They are losing some customers from this.Beta testers are essentially free minus a few free products. That cost is arbitrary compared to the cost of creating an addon. It wouldn't drive Carenado out of business to pick up a few more dedicated testers. They don't even have to go looking! We've volunteered many times!

There certainly are some things to consider. Let's just assume that there are 1000 customers of the Caravan. Okay, so after weeks with no reaction whatsoever from Carenado to customer feedback on their support forums a patch was released out of the blue. Now this patch was only downloaded by a 100 people so far. We could assume, of course, that there are only that few downloaders, because the rest of the users were happy with the aircraft. Much more likely is, though, that many customers left the support forums in frustration about the silence of the developer (in their own support forum, I remind you!) and never checked back. Since there was no email informing customers about the patch they might not even know yet that the patch exists. I certainly didn't get any email about it and only learned about the patch because a friend told me. Plus, that argument is missing the point that there could be 1200 or 1500 customers instead of a 1000, if the customer support had been a little more responsive on previous occasions, without the necessity of customers having to come up with proper flight dynamics for the products.