Terrible customer service from X-Aviation

[Scramjet333 39]

Hello everyone,

 

I believe everyone has experienced their fair share of good (and equally bad) examples of customer service. 

 

Earlier today, the IXEG 737 was updated to v1.0.6, and I scanned through the list of fixes, noticing that the VNAV behaviour was altered, so that it could be used even without a T/D. I excitedly downloaded, installed and applied the update, only to be shown this window, which cannot be closed or moved around otherwise:

 

 

I returned to the changelog for v1.0.6, and then noticed this under the list of 'fixes':

Added warning window if the aircraft is not installed into correct X-Plane folder/path.

 

I then proceeded to the X-Pilot forums, and enquired about this even asking for the technical justification for this hard-coded nature, and while I attempted to maintain my cool, Cameron appeared to become increasingly hostile, eventually ending with:

Just stop. I gave you an answer. It's not changing. I'm absolutely disinterested in getting into a debate with a man who has a problem moving his mouse to a sub folder to select an aircraft. There ARE reasons for this. They ARE very valid. You are NOT the one providing support, and you do NOT have a clue as to why this is necessary. That is OKAY.

​

I'm disappointed, to say the least. It might be the last transaction I ever do with X-Aviation.

 

EDIT: I understand that some of you might say: 'but Scramjet333, why do you waste your breath? Why not just put the aircraft where they want it to be and be done with it?' But then that just sounds like the customer bending over to the huge multi-national corporation. I very strongly believe in customer rights, and X-Aviation, as has (unfortunately) been demostrated several times, have displayed this 'you're the puny customer' behaviour over and over again. Take that particular line one step further, and imagine if the 737 Classic required to be installed in C:\Program Files\ or worse, C:\Windows\, or for the Mac equivalents - the /Applications or /System folders. Would you accept it?

 

X-Plane's strength is in its directory agnosticism, and X-Aviation's practices are undermining it.

[WR269 367]

Hmmm so the whole issue started because you didn't install the aircraft into the required folder?

 

I do recall this question being asked before, and I believe PMDG may be the same, it has to be installed in a certain file path, possibly to do with functionality or maybe other features.

 

Why couldn't the aircraft be installed in he required folder in your setup?

[Poppet 709]

You quoted a piece from Cameron, If your going to do that you should Quote the entire mail,  you as well  

 

 

customer rights

 

To a point............

[Guest JustanotherPilot]

Scramjet333,

 

Whilst I understand your view on mult-national companies, in this instance, and for the sake of getting the product to work, would it not be wise to install to the default folder used in the setup program. I would think that other programs and runtime files need to access the 737 to make it work, they would be looking in the default installation folder to do this, particularly the 1.06 update

 

I have installed this update and it works fine with many improvement's.

 

steve s

[martinlest2 58]

For me, whatever the technical issues, the point is the tone of the reply quoted. As someone who has worked, one way or another, in customer-service related jobs all his life, I am always amazed at companies' apparent lack of awareness of how such things, at the end of the day, antagonise the very people who are putting money into their pockets and making their own jobs possible. It simply affects their profitability. You just DON'T talk to customers that way - and face to face it's unlikely that it would happen. Another example of how the relative anonymity of the internet encourages people to believe they can 'behave badly'. It's very sad really...

 

I have, similarly, had it with Aerosoft, at least with AES. I have spent some €200 on AES packs, but any time I post in their forum (rarely, and always politely) about problems, I am generally ignored. I once complained about this on the forum (politely!) and now have two minus points on my Avatar as a result (how childish can you get?!). Still, the issues I have have not been addressed, (in other words, no one at Aerosoft even replies) several weeks on. So I opened a ticket to say I shall never spend another penny on Aerosoft products - AES anyway.

 

What a difference with, say, OnCourse software (I have FDC and PF3), where replies are almost instant, sometimes (in more complex issues) personal to your own email address and where you can see that customer satisfaction is at the bottom of everything they do.

 

After a reply like the one above, I totally understand why this post was created!

[pryoski 84]

EDIT: I understand that some of you might say: 'but Scramjet333, why do you waste your breath? Why not just put the aircraft where they want it to be and be done with it?' But then that just sounds like the customer bending over to the huge multi-national corporation. I very strongly believe in customer rights, and X-Aviation, as has (unfortunately) been demostrated several times, have displayed this 'you're the puny customer' behaviour over and over again. Take that particular line one step further, and imagine if the 737 Classic required to be installed in C:\Program Files\ or worse, C:\Windows\, or for the Mac equivalents - the /Applications or /System folders. Would you accept it?

 

X-Plane's strength is in its directory agnosticism, and X-Aviation's practices are undermining it.

 

Cor mate, they're flight sim retailers and coders ... not the Evil Empire. 

It's probably a technical requirement or sumpfink and not an attempt to control and challenge your file structure agnosticism.

I'll be the first to jump the barricades to fight the good fight for the proletariat but even I think you're being a bit of a muppet. 

 

Thanks for the entertainment though, because it IS a wee bit funny and all  .

 

The EDIT .. Please note that X-Plane recommends you install on to your desktop. If you have issues with something X-Plane related and you're running Windows, and you ask for help on the Org, the  first thing the old timers will likely ask is .. where have you installed X-Plane, So there goes your XP agnosticism straight out the window (no pun intended). So no one is undermining anything really.

[Scramjet333 39]

It's probably a technical requirement or sumpfink and not an attempt to control and challenge your file structure agnosticism.

Certainly, if there's a technical requirement, then that's fine. If you head over to that thread, you and everyone else can see the entire conversation (on page 1 - I'm 'SRSR33' on that forum. I asked for a technical explanation, and Cameron dismissed my request equally rudely. I'm really really disappointed.

[60North 120]

Certainly, if there's a technical requirement, then that's fine. If you head over to that thread, you and everyone else can see the entire conversation (on page 1 - I'm 'SRSR33' on that forum. I asked for a technical explanation, and Cameron dismissed my request equally rudely. I'm really really disappointed.

 

Cameron said in his very first response to you;

 

 

 

by moving it around you 100% guarantee yourself a miserable upgrade experience

 

There is your technical explenation, you will have problems when upgrading-> which again might cause the aircraft not working properly -> which will annoy you -> which will make you file bugreports -> which will have us chasing bugs that do not exists -> which again will delay further progress of the aircraft -> which affects everyone.

 

M

[tonywob 4,769]

This thread isn't going to end well (Posts like these generally don't), so please try and keep the conversation civil  :wink:

 

I had a look through the thread and I don't honestly think it was rude, he simply stated there isn't going to be a debate on it and to leave it at that, of which you didn't and proceeded to tell them how every other product works and what they should do to their code which seemed like you were looking for a fight. The developers have their reasons for doing things and whilst we might not like their choices, it is as it is. As long as the product works as advertised then I personally don't see the issue and it has been like that since the day of release.

[pryoski 84]

I read the thread ... and thought Cameron gave you a reasonable and polite response to your first query.

 

Then what followed was despite the fact that he said that he didn't want to debate about it you went ahead and did that anyway. 

 

They make the IXEG product .. it's their product, their rules and you're licensed to USE it the way they designed it.

They are not obligated to X-Plane nor are they obligated to explain why it's designed to work the way it does.

If you don't like the explanation don't use the product.

[JimmiG 244]

There might very well be technical reasons why it needs to be in that particular folder, such hard-coded paths etc. Or he might just want to standardize the installation paths in order to make troubleshooting easier.

 

I don't know how many times you pushed him for an answer, but it obviously became too much. They are under no obligation to disclose the technical coding details behind their products (EDIT: Looks like he gave you the answer in the first post - the product won't update properly if the files aren't where the update installer expects them to be.). They are not open-source. Also, no flight simulator developer or publisher is a "big multi national corporation". It's a niche market, and most barely make a profit.. especially if they have to customize their add-ons for every possible and impossible folder structure...

 

As for agnosticism, X-Plane only allows you to install Scenery under Custom Scenery, plug-ins must go under specific folders etc. On Windows, even the X-Plane folder itself can't be placed anywhere because the sim doesn't adhere the Windows development guidelines, and needs write-access to its own program folder.

[martinlest2 58]

Well, I would never talk to a paying customer in that tone; there are plenty of other ways to get exactly the same message across.

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

Personally, I rate X-Aviation at the top of the list, with Orbx for customer service.  You buy a product from Cameron, and under his umbrella, you get timely updates to their products, sent to your email...all questions are answered, etc.  My 8 cents...a total thumb's up!

 

MPO.

 

Ses

[MarioDonick 752]

As for agnosticism

This is the most interesting part of this discussion here.

 

I think in the future users will need to adjust to or to accept changes to a more "rigid" way of how custom addons are installed (although this "rigid" is still very flexible in contrast to FSX/P3D). In the last few years, we already got:

 

• introduction of scenery_packs.ini, which is now the preferred way of controlling how scenery is prioritized and (de)activated, in contrast to the earlier way where it was controlled only by the alphanumerical sorting of folder names. The latter still works, as scenery_packs.ini is built based on that, but I would not be surprised if one day X-Plane itself has a user interface like FSX/P3D for sorting scenery, making the alphanumerical sorting on the file level obsolete.
• installers for scenery have become very common -- esp. for developers who come from the FSX/P3D world like Aerosoft, Drzewiecki or TropicalSim. Although the installed folders can be handled as any other scenery by the users, the installers (and uninstallers) still leave their traces in the X-Plane folders.
• installers for aircraft so far were only used by X-Aviation, and their products ALL go into their own aircraft folder, whereas their Gizmo plugin is installed globally. The PMDG DC-6 is also confined to its own path. From a developer's point of view, this is much easier to maintain.

I think this trend will continue.

 

Although I personally also prefer manual installs and patches from .zip files (because I like the "old" X-Plane way of being portable), for many users this is not as easy. Many people do not understand how a file system works and do not want to waste time to learn such things. It should "simply work" for them. So I understand why developers provide installers to make everything more simple. As always, simplicity (in terms of "you don't need to think"-usability) comes in exchange for less flexibility, and you have to find a balance. For example, X-Aviation's hotfix system (which got a lot of praise since it is active) would not work so reliable if it had to deal with custom aircraft paths and multiple Gizmo installs.

[GoranM 3,764]

Scramjet, what do you hope to accomplish by bashing a developer and the publisher in a separate forum, for something that cannot be changed.  

The 737 is, by far, the most detailed add on for X Plane.  For this, developers need to work with what they have as far as the sim platform is concerned.  And taking that into consideration, IXEG have done a hell of a job!  

Installing a custom add on, that is this code heavy, into a separate folder, will cause problems for the customer. Cameron told you that.  And when problems arise, Cameron gets support tickets from people reporting things like "My 737 doesn't work properly.  Help!".  Cameron doesn't normally suspect the customer installs the add on in a different folder than is required, so he starts troubleshooting.  What a waste of time, when all that needed to be done was install it in the correct location.  So in effect, the customer has taken time away from other, more legitimate customer support issues, simply because he/she didn't follow simple instructions.

Something to think about.

And yes, installing to a specified folder has a lot to do with code.

Also, to address this section in your OP...

and imagine if the 737 Classic required to be installed in C:\Program Files\ or worse, C:\Windows\, or for the Mac equivalents - the /Applications or /System folders. Would you accept it?

No, I wouldn't expect anyone to accept it, unless they installed X Plane in their Program Files folder.  In any case, it's a moot point.  The installer does NOT ask you to install into those directories.  It installs into the X Plane Aircraft folder.