After the release of the Caravan, I sent Carenado an email with suggestions, which -- after reading other posts in the internet -- made observations that reflected my ignorance, rather than any real problem with the plane. They promptly responded and thanked me for my suggestions, even though some were wrong. It seems to me that all the condemnations I have read about Carenado and its customer service have been unfair. Based on some of the open hostility I have read on these boards, it is no wonder that they sought refuge from the "mob." Mike Gutierrez. North Hollywood, California.

I had recently asked Carenado for my Bonanza download link. To my surprise they responded in mere minutes via email. Perhaps their support is improving.Good support still doesn't make up for releases that are way off. I don't plan on buying the Caravan until there's a cargo version available, so I don't know how accurate it is. The Bonanza, however, was plagued with issues. Months later we have a service pack that fixes most of them. Whether a few months is too long or not- I'll leave up to you. You can probably guess my answer. It shouldn't have been released with all those issues in the first place.I hope the Caravan release was/is cleaner. I look forward to buying it once the Cargomaster version is available.Thanks for the quick support, Carenado. I hope other weak areas have improved just as much.

My experience has been if you contact Carenado via email they respond pretty quickly. But most people do not do this. Standard operating proceedure for the more successful addon developers is to be very active on the forums. I think much the negativity stems from the fact that Carendo, for whatever reason so far, has chosen not to respond as actively to the community this way. I would characterize much of the negativity around Carendo simply due to this. If they would just engage on the forums a little more, respond to comments posted here and let people know they are listening I think a lot of it would go away.

My experience has been if you contact Carenado via email they respond pretty quickly. But most people do not do this. Standard operating proceedure for the more successful addon developers is to be very active on the forums. I think much the negativity stems from the fact that Carendo, for whatever reason so far, has chosen not to respond as actively to the community this way. I would characterize much of the negativity around Carendo simply due to this. If they would just engage on the forums a little more, respond to comments posted here and let people know they are listening I think a lot of it would go away.

This is so very true. I've been around the add-on business long enough to see a lot of developers come and go. Invariably, the ones with the most fanatical and loyal following are the devs that keep a high profile on their forums and are actively engaged. In fact, it almost doesn't matter whether the products are top of the line or not - if people feel a personal connection to a developer, they tend to stand by them. I have no major gripes with how Carenado create and market their products, but I sincerely wish they'd come on the forums more often and just chat with us about things. It'd really cool some of the tempers that rage around here at times.