What can we do about Flightsim vendors that give industry a bad name?

[Mike_CFII_MEL 788]

Hi,

 

We have a shame on you type page here at AVSIM for unscrupulous people at screw and cheat companies, maybe we should ask AVSIM to add a section for unscrupulous companies.

[rjmcgill 15]

This incident speak loudly for this company. We are the consumer report for Sim related products. I don't believe you can find a more Trust Worthy site and group of like minded individual than we have right here. This is a start, because after reading this, I will not spend one penny on there products. The basic message we send is that you are done, finished and you might as well take you shingle down and cry in your beer. Without a buyer, there is no business. Well done to the owner and hero of this company. Maybe we should just email some links to them for online business classes and maybe throw one in for business ethics. Thanks to the OP for reminding me of why I haven't looked at these products for sometime and will no longer think of them. Swannick I think you maybe on to something there. Might be worth a pitch to Tom.

[brubros 0]

Informative feedback from all. To those who have had a good experience I have no doubt. I don't necessarily think this is about "bad" people. The product has always been admirable though its space is becoming increasingly more competitive. For those of us who followed Justin's business and personal struggles over the years (it became almost a telethon of email as suggested elsewhere) I am pretty sure all would agree that Justin tried to be on the up and up but was just down on both his luck and, perhaps, business skills. But he had a unique, at the time, product that deserved support.

 

From other research (if repeating what Googling reports is considered research) it appears:

 

1. About 1,000 people subscribed as lifetime members over multiple years

2. Cost for lifetime membership appears to have ranged from around $90-$120 or about 10X average single product purchase

3. Lifetime was considered viable to Justin because his product was based on data that was freeware he just assembled so his costs, as he saw it, were negligible and offer sustainable

4. That changed when Justin expanded to higher quality data he licensed from Intermap

5. Justin communicates to lifetimers that terms from Intermap no longer allow him to honor the membership for Intermap-based products. His freeware-based products remained free.

6. FSGenesis.com disappears from the internet only to return some time later in a new form

7. New website says all data lost. Users must submit proof of prior purchases. Lifetime offer would no longer be honored.

8. There is one report that Justin stayed on at the company "under new management" in an exclusively technical role though not clear if that's a fact or current

9. Members report submitting proof that is either effectively ignored or outright rejected by FSGenesis

10. New members (who were not intercepted by one of the 1,000 longtime members and forewarned of FSGenesis practices) generally appear to have fs industry average experience. No better. No worst.

11. And, in the back of my head and not on Google, why, with such a toxic liability of a thousand lifetime customers looming over them did they not just go out of business and re-form under a different name to make the change clear and absolute? Why was keeping the entity intact under the circumstances so important? File that under idle speculation.

 

Open to learning of any corrections or additions.

 

What I've done and what I encourage others to do (in addition to posting your story here on avsim as suggested by others as the best Yelp there is for our community):

 

I contacted the Utah branch of the Better Business Bureau (BBB) online. Click on big "File A Complaint" button on home page. On the select company by name page FSGenesis will not be found. Just type in FSGenesis and Riverton, UT (if anyone has a more complete address please reply to this thread with it and I'll update this) and the system will accept that.

 

Complete a very basic three page online form. Who are you? Who is the business? What happened? What resolution do you seek? They promise an inquiry and a response.

 

The requested resolution I made to BBB was a refund of my membership. That would be the honorable thing for the company to have done. Problem is if the 1,000 members figure is correct then I don't think it is likely that FSGenesis is just sitting on a $100,000 pot to reimburse us all.

 

BBB, like your congress, responds to numbers so if more than just a few simple complaints are filed with them the more likely this will rise in priority and receive a critical view.

 

This next action I took is FYI only. I don't think it would be productive to flood this company with email. They are innocents with a reputation to maintain and pressure to apply.

 

I reached out this afternoon to the CEO of Intermap who licenses their technology to FSGenesis NEXTMap line (the non-freeware piece). Within the hour (on a Friday afternoon no less) I received a very earnest response from VP of Global Sales who asked for a few days to investigate.

 

No one appointed me sim activist so I'll stop there. But the next place to approach I'd think are retailers carrying FSGenesis products. Not to boycott (apparently many of us silently are already) but to apply further pressure to ask them to request FSGenesis do something about their prior sales commitments and to stop sticking their head in the sand sending out the same form letter ad nauseum.

 

In the meantime I expect that Intermap will be Googling FSGenesis (I suggested they do as much to see for themselves the chatter over the years) and so if anybody else has something to report (and I'm not abusing any rules of this forum by suggesting this) or wants to confirm filing a BBB complaint it might be helpful to do so in this or some other related thread as it is likely your posts will hit some new radar.

 

I hope this can be a do the right thing moment for FSGenesis.

 

And I hope others, who have had a good experience with FSGenesis "under new management", will understand that, like cars, mileage may vary and some of us, reportedly 1,000 of us, feel the way this came down was unnecessarily ugly and unprofessional regardless of their current practices and this must be called out.

[Mike_CFII_MEL 788]

Hi,

 

I may design my own webpage for Deadbeat Flightsim Companies...

[mganz121 159]

The question that nobody has answered yet is under what terms did the new owners acquire fsgenesis. 

 

1. Did they simply purchase the name, web presence and IP?

2. Did they acquire the full business including existing debts and client obligations? - this would of course include such things as outstanding taxation and "negative" customer obligations (i.e customers who show you an ongoing negative return). 

 

Certainly if I was to purchase an existing business, like any "savvy" businessman I would do everything I could to avoid the second option, especially if it is a hobbyist business and had not been run as professionally as it could have. Trust me, there are many like this coming up for sale on a regular basis.

 

I think it would be fairer to the new owner to try and find out what the terms of sale were. Then and only then will you know where you fit in the grand scheme of things. Your calls to name and shame without knowing the full facts I believe are a little premature and at this stage unwarranted.

[Mike_CFII_MEL 788]

Hi,

 

No matter how you look at it, Justin should of made absolutely sure his lifetime customers were taken care of...

[brubros 0]

Your calls to name and shame without knowing the full facts I believe are a little premature and at this stage unwarranted.

 

I agree with most of what you say but disagree with your conclusion.

 

FSGenesis has had ample opportunity to come clean about what has really transpired and why. They referenced that terms of their technology supplier disallowed them to continue honoring the lifetime program (not explaining why their freeware-based product was also excluded). OK. So I rang up the CEO of the technology supplier to see if FSGenesis claim was warranted and CEO put someone to find out what the story is and I expect we'll hear back by the end of the week. That's just taking the next natural fact-finding step.

 

The BBB, likewise, is a fact-finding vehicle (putting aside for the moment their business-centric biases). When communications with a business hit a dead end, like they have with FSGenesis on this topic, calling in the BBB is not premature or unwarranted and is in fact encouraged by the business community (over taking legal action).

 

But I absolutely agree with you that the questions you raise should be addressed.

[jeansy 338]

Thats the same with the old alphasim now called Virtavia

 

when they shut down their old website they deleted everyones account, and when they reopened the new Virtavia's page they no longer held or honored the accounts of the 1000s past of customers from their store

 

I got a simple message from the same owner of both names back in feb 15,  it basically said your living in the past, and Im not interested and re purchase the same product again just under a different developer name

 

 

Virtavia is also not obliged to look after AlphaSim customers from years ago, but we do what we can for tech support, even for people who bought something 5 years ago, that’s just because I want to help, not because I have to. There are not many companies who support ‘legacy’ software more than a year or two. Perhaps the time has come for you to re-purchase your favourites from Virtavia and enjoy the storage backup provided by an established vendor, as well as possible free expansions such as the one we have just put out for the B-24. That is not available to AlphaSim customers of that model and this will be true for future expansions. We think it’s time people cut loose from that era and continue as Virtavia customers, and that’s not just for greedy profit reasons (god knows there’s not much of that in FS) it’s for efficiency and brand clarity.

 

the lesson learnt from this, is never buy fron a vendors store, buy from a store like simmarket or FFS and never buy Virtavia

[mganz121 159]

Hi,

 

No matter how you look at it, Justin should of made absolutely sure his lifetime customers were taken care of...

 

He did !!! But only for the lifetime of HIS business and in a manner that HE could control. IF the new owners have a obligation then so be it - one would expect them to stand by that. But I suspect they don't because only a fool would do that. Most of us are in business to make money, pay taxes, contribute to the economy and environment while hopefully having some fun on the way. Businesses are not charities.

 

Hey look, I could be very wrong but I suspect his "lifetime clients" were not part of the deal and your issue should be with Justin, NOT the new owners of fsgenesis. As I said, wait for the full facts before assessing your risk and judgement.

 

In fact I am now editing this because I have had another thought after looking at some stuff before replying to "brubros". Having just read the faq on the fsgenesis website, I could not happen but notice words such as "we" and "us" when relating to older business decisions that were made regarding the Galaxy Membership offer. That suggests to me continuity and an involvement with past decisions. Also what struck me as very odd was the words "financial collapse of the original fsgenesis company" followed by the words "there is now a new management team". In fact nowhere can you find anything to my knowledge that indicates a new company was set up.

 

Maybe that's a starting point for you guys. Is Justin still involved. Is it all smoke and mirrors?

Edited October 5, 2014 by ANZ121

[AVSIM Admin 4]

This is an automatic message.

 

This topic has been moved from "Letters to the Editorial Staff of AVSIM" to "Hangar Chat". This move has been done for a number of possible reasons.

• The most likely reason is that the post was off topic.
• The topic could also have contained images or a video that were not appropriate to the original forum it was posted in.
• The images might not have been "illustrative" or "explanatory" in nature.
• The topic could have been moved because we deemed it to be more appropriately placed elsewhere.

Please ensure that your posts are "on topic" and contain illustrative images or videos as appropriate. Do not post videos or images just for entertainment purposes anywhere but in the screen shot or video forums. See our image posting rules here.

 

Members who continue to post off topic posts can be denied entry to specific forums in order to reduce and remove the practice. Your cooperation is appreciated.

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

 

 

Did they acquire the full business including existing debts and client obligations? - this would of course include such things as outstanding taxation and "negative" customer obligations (i.e customers who show you an ongoing negative return).

 

That is a terrific point.  Well, that and if there were any transfer of ownership or other related clauses in the company-customer agreement (contract).

 

Also, just because the company is using the name, doesn't necessarily make them responsible for honoring past agreements if the company Justin owned was shutdown and a new company was opened (there are several ways to accomplish this in a scenario such as this (though some of them might not hold up in the case of a lawsuit).

 

Anyway, it's a rare deal either way, and on the head of the new owner/guy in charge.

[brubros 0]

Some updates.

 

First, spoiler alert. FSGenesis and FSPS (FS utilities) appear to be run by the same individual(s). This was news to me but I have to believe a number of our FS community members have known this for some time since it was not hard for me to find out using readily available public information.

 

Updates:

 

1. Better Business Bureau of Utah can find no record of FSGenesis (or variations of that spelling) in Riverton, Utah using the only address provided by FSGenesis on their website. Based on new findings (see below) the complaint is being resubmitted to BBB.

 

2. The BBB's inability to locate the business prompted a record search for business registrations in Utah but no registrations were found for FSGenesis (or name variations)

 

3. Which prompted the creation of a complaint filed through Utah's Division of Consumer Protection (last verified address from 2009 invoice for FSGenesis was in Indiana, PA but no registration history exists in that state either)

 

4. The technology licensor that is the backbone of FSGenesis "NEXTMap" product line, InterMap, wrote me yesterday to say they had an update on their inquiry to FSGenesis but wished to talk to me rather than email - we are scheduled for that conversation next Thursday 10/17

 

5. Based on additional research a new/different address (a business park in West Jordan, UT) surfaced for FSGenesis which will be provided to Better Business Bureau to refile the complaint (see #1).

 

6. A new individual name (first name of Cameron) has surfaced (new to me but now that I Google it I see this is not news to everyone) as domain owner for FSGenesis.com that goes back some time. More recently the name has been removed and now has a GoDaddy proxy.

 

7. Cameron (and the previously mentioned business park address) reappears, upon some further research, and reveals that both FSGenesis and FSPS appear to operate under the same address/roof.

 

8. Business registration ownership records for FSPS indicate identical family name to owner of FSGenesis domain name.

 

No further updates expected until next Thursday.

 

Reminder on why this research is being done. FSGenesis has been unresponsive to multiple requests over multiple months from many in the FS community on how FSGenesis can justify dropping a previous significant commitment made in return for cash and then expect its same customer base watch it continue to conduct business as usual without further explanation or even token gesture of redress. It is their unwillingness to engage in an open fashion on these and other matters that dictates filing formal complaints through industry and State organizations. Filing complaints requires identifying responsible parties and addresses and that is the stage this effort currently finds itself.

 

A copy of one of FSGenesis' early promotions commitment:

 

    Link expires 11/10/14

Edited October 10, 2014 by brubros

[Mike_CFII_MEL 788]

Hi,

 

Outstanding my friend...

[loop_n_roll 7]

The company has changed hands (should have changed the name though) and the product is now based a pay-for-use database and the old product is gone. I see no obligation here to continue to provide free access to a different product when the promise was made by different owner(s).  I'll probably feel differently if and when I have to reinstall. However, it makes me wonder what the new company bought. In most small-company transfers the most valuable asset is the customer database. Even though I don't feel they're obligated, It would be wise for the new owners to take care of the old customers. The BBB complaint will prove fruitless although we may get some satisfaction from the filing.

 

Like most lifetime promises it depends on whose lifetime.

[mgh 89]

It's worth remembering that there's no such as thing as a lifetime membership - any more than there's a free lunch.