While PMDG make a good product, unfortunately it's not backed up on support end! Everything seems in place and ordered

but in fact it is a front for shoddy back-up. Quite frankly i am prepared to pay a premium for a quality product, but would

expect the same with the after service. Firstly, after purchasing the product at a PREMIUM price i still have to pay for a re-download

because of a burglary of all my computer peripherals. Also the site does not work properly, and it is frustrating to try and add a

an item to your cart! Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't! Also it is such a complicated system. First pay! Then submit a ticket! And then

WAIT until they feel they can get back to you. Also once i had done my first order and registered the ticket i could not do another!! Why!!? It kept

registering the first order. I could not get rid of it!

 

With other sites, all i had to do was pay and the link is available immediately! What gives?

 

Mike Paterson

Mike, it is what it is. Have they gotten back to you?

Mike,

 

Sorry you had trouble getting the Extended Download Insurance order to go through initially, there have been several hundred orders submitted today without any issue so the E-commerce site should be fully operational. I did get your tickets for the redownload and replied to them with the order reset as soon as they appeared. Let us know if you need anything else

Firstly, after purchasing the product at a PREMIUM price i still have to pay for a re-download

because of a burglary of all my computer peripherals.

 

Mike, with all due respect this is the core issue that caused us to institute the re-download policy in the first place back in 2006. Bandwidth is not free and the time we spend processing re-download requests in our store backend is not free. In fact it's a sizable part of what our support team does every day because still, even after 6 years of this policy, people by and large don't do backups.

 

Why is it our fault that you didn't have backups? CD-Rs or DVD-Rs cost pennies a piece, external hard drives can be had very cheaply, you can get a cloud storage account with a service like Dropbox for *free* that gives you enough space to store every installer we've ever made on it, etc. This is irresponsibility on your part that you don't have a backup system in place. Would you expect Dell or whoever to replace your computer itself for free after it was stolen?

With all due respect Ryan, this response from PMDG is typical. Self rightious and patronizing to your customers!

 

If you read my e-mail, i said peripherals, which means items connected to computing - so YES - my back-up CD's, external back-up

drives were also stolen! Also my main complaint is not so much the payment for a re-download but the cumbersome and time-consuming

process. So stop telling us what we should be doing and rather ask for suggestions from your customers as to how the process could be

streamlined.

 

Regards

Mike Paterson

Just read this and thought I add my experience. Also took a long time to order the download service. Add to cart -> proceed to checkout -> your shopping cart is empty....

 

Does bandwidth for a re-download really cost 4 Euro something ? I got the feeling I have to pay some "education" fee regarding backup.

 

I have bought almost all PMDG products over the last years (downloads and box versions) and never had to redownload anything. Just one backup DVD was unreadable on my new laptop, for whatever reason. PMDG also is the only company charging for that.

 

Not nice :-(.

 

Mike

 

Does bandwidth for a re-download really cost 4 Euro something ? I got the feeling I have to pay some "education" fee regarding backup.

 

Mike

 

Probably not, but you have to bear in mind that PMDG would need to charge for the possible required bandwidth, so if one person requires the backup service it wouldn't justify the cost of a 100mb line say, however if they placed this on a dial up server i imagine people would complain there 4.5Kb/s download was too slow.

Obviously they are largely based online, so they will already have some bandwidth in place to run there business, the question is do they require additional bandwidth for customers to re-download there products? If yes then it is fair that customers who require this service pay for it, that way the rest of us who never need this service don't have to subsidise those who do require it.

 

Personally i keep a large external drive with everything on it offsite, (actually i have two).

 

I can only use the example of Amazon, if you download an MP3 from Amazon and lose it, tough you get to buy it again! I assume Amazon are MUCH larger than PMDG and have more bandwidth in place.

Despite the fact that when your books got stolen you also have to buy them again, there is something else you should be aware of:

It is not only the bandwith you have to pay for, you also have to pay for:

- storage (and enterprise storage is by far not as cheap as the USB drive you can buy in any store)

- servers

- and all the services around this like backup, DR and HA

 

And about backup: A good backup strategy is a must have, but it also should include an offsite strategy for the backup disks. In my case I use a safe deposit box at my bank, it got enough room for a folder and 2 HDs for the price of 45 Euro p.a.