Payware Add On Vendor Support.

[boshar 6]

My guess is that there will be less return customers after you had the reinstall experience a few times. Its frustating to be totaly dependant on a Vendor of a product for a reinstall of a product that you paid good money for.My complaint isn't that I'm not able to reinstall a product. My complaint is the ammount of time it takes and all the actions I have to take to get the add-ons installed.Do you realy think that Flight1 products are less pirated then the more open releases of MAAM and Real Air? The flight wrapper system is a single point of failure for the entire Flight1 product line. How much of a target would that be for pirates?Nowadays I steer clear of the headace inducing protected online releases. I buy flight1 when its out on CD (hey guys how about releasing the 727 and those Beechcrafts You know I'm waiting here). Otherwise its small payware releases from simmarket that aren't protected by wrappers or online activation. I hope FS-X will include a 3rd party vendor system where you can have 1 (free) account that enables you to download/use your FS-X addons. Once the entire FS-X payware add-on uses such a system we can at least get standard and hassle free installations.

[Guest IanP]

Yes, I know. I've reactivated several of mine without any problem at all. So have many other people. Replacement keys were sent to the NEW e-mail address that I had asked them to change it to and they had. The form I filled in was for a single product, so I filled it in once for each and got a response back within hours that it was "done". I asked whether it was just the one in the e-mail title that was changed, as I had submitted a fairly large number and got a response back within minutes saying that it was all of them.I wonder if the difference between our experiences was that I did it in November, not in the Customer Support silly season immediately after Christmas?I have NEVER needed an old card to reactivate, change the address on or request a new key from Flight1. I've needed to know the last four digits, but it makes no difference whatsoever how long the card has been in pieces and gone for, as long as a note is made of that last block of numbers.What is very telling in the difference between F1 wrappers and "passworded" distribution systems is the speed with which they appear on warez sites and P2P systems. For a popular "password" product, it'll be measured in a small number of hours before they are available. The last time I went looking for leaked passwords for a product I was involved in, the number of pleas for cracked versions of the DF727 and F1 C172 actually made it hard to find the product I was looking for on one particular P2P client. Admittedly that was a while ago, but the 172 had been out for a long time and the DF727 had been out for weeks.It does seem to work!Ian P.

[Guest SPOFF]

Very interesting discussion. One of the things I've noticed is how "Computer Savy" the responders to this thread are. I have been protected from myself by the fact that I have a Dial-Up connection so pretty much everything available out there is "out of bounds" for me. I had to download a Critical Windows Patch the other day at 53Mb (Three Hours, 30 minutes.) THAT was a necessity. I've downloaded a number of Freeware planes from this an other sites but never do so for more than 30Mb. I have exactly TWO Payware Addons..Both from MAAM..Both on CDs. You call them on the phone, they answer, (Live) and in two or three days you have it in the mail. Based on what I've read here,.. with my general LACK of Computer Savy, It seems I havn't missed out on much.. except the aggravation. I would love to have some FSGenesis stuff but file downloads the size of most of their stuff is absolutely out of the question. Be nice if they had CDs. I can wait.. for the mail. SPOFF

[Justin Toposim 16]

All FSG products except US Landclass (2 Mb) are available on CD, as well as downloadable. Just tick the "Download + CD" checkbox before checking out . . .-------Justinhttp://www.fsgenesis.netHigh Quality Scenery for FS200x

[Guest SoarPics]

Edited for Justin's post above.

[Guest SPOFF]

Thanks Justin: I think I remember your name. I think I diddled around with some of your Freeware Stuff a few monthes ago and corresponded with you about it via Email. I was looking for the Lighthouse at Cape Hatteras. Remember that? You explained that "Mesh"..or whatever it is, does not include Lighthouses. I DIDN"T know you had CDs. Does FSG have a Phone Number to order by phone?? I'm probably over cautious, but I don't put my credit card number on the internet. SPOFFPS: I've put your Web Address back on my favorites list. I'll go and look again.

[Justin Toposim 16]

Hi SPOFF,Well, you could call it in, but I'd still have to process it over the internet. I've processed nearly 30,000 credit card orders over the years without one security breach, so the chances are as certain as one can get that nothing bad would happen.But I do accept mail orders. And PayPal. Just choose whichever as your payment method during checkout. If sending a check just print out your confirmation page and drop it in an envelope with a check. Takes a little longer than paying with a credit card or paypal, but it should alleviate any anxiety you might have about using a credit card.-------Justinhttp://www.fsgenesis.netHigh Quality Scenery for FS200x

[boshar 6]

double post

[Steve Halpern 176]

In defense of flight1..."...went to reinstall my products and only one of them worked. The others said I had an invalid email address or something to that effect. I then had to do another trouble ticket. The next day I received a pretty canned response saying I needed to " You must be able to provide certain verifiable information about your original order for us to be able to change information associated with your order."We ended Email contact simply because email is now one of the most unreliable forms of communication, and there is no validation that anyone ever sees your response. That is why we have a ticket system now, with exactly the option to change order information...

Below is a picture from our ticket system

http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/138785.jpg[p class=dcmessage]In terms of reinstalling, if you did not save a backup of your key files to a backup disk, then you do need to get them. Unfortunately, they are tied to your email address, and we simply can't change the email address on an order (for obvious reasons) unless we get some information that can verify the order... Order numbers, last 4 digits of the card number, phone number, or something.Execept for the most old products (sold in maybe 2002), the entire reinstall system is free and automated. If you need to change your order email address, submit the ticket with the appropriate category (Order Information Change), and we will fix it. We have been doing email changes for 5 years now, and it is rarely a problem.Thanks,[/p]

[Guest Camsdad]

Steve and Jeff at Flight1,I received a response to my last trouble ticket and it appears all is fixed. Thank you. I have no doubt you guys have every intention to provide the best service possible and do provide it. I had felt previous to this that Flight 1 was excellent since I had kept the same email for such a long time and you had offerd the email change option on your site when I had to. The hardware failure I had compounded by the credit card changes (the last four of the credit card number used for the particular order is your password) and the ISP switch that led to the email change was frustrating to begin with. I anticipated this to be a problem but when I was able to get everything fixed with other payware vendors quickly I became frustrated with Flight 1. I want you to know I'm in no way blaming you or taking out my hardware failures on you. I just have a dislike for the ticket system and the wrapper is a great idea but needs changes. Jeff was great with issues but I became frustrated when I had one program reactivated but all the others were not. The ticket is automaticly closed after your responses. While you state it can take up to 48 hours for a response to a ticket, I will say you guys are great and responded in less time than that. The problem was I had multiple products I had to reactivate. While other vendors took minutes to take care of this. Flight 1 took over a week. The first ticket was generated before new years. I hope you can see the frustration. The wrapper is good but I feel you should have accounts instead of everything being order specific. If I use a credit card ending in xxxx for Ultimate traffic and use a credit card for Greatest Airliners 727 ending in OOOO. It is difficult to know which one I used for which product. With Flight 1 we have to keep track of credit card numbers, order numbers, license keys, emails. I know you are trying to protect you revenue stream by cutting down piracy. But in this age with credit card companies and ISP's cutting eachothers throats, people switch on a more regular basis. Same thing for hardware. How many people got new systems over christmas. Quite a few had to reinstall your products which involved reactivating a key. What would happen if they installed the product a year ago and switched credit cards and emails? They would probably be frustrated as I was. Couldn't you guys have a username and password that would log us into our accounts with Flight1. I had something like 7 products I had bought from Flight 1 under 4 different emails accounts and who knows how many credit cards. It would save you time with less trouble tickets and save us time with them as well. Regarding the picture of your ticket system this is what I encountered when I clicked on the customer service link at Flight one http://www.flight1.com/view.asp?page=service I click on the links under the "Downloaded products using the Flight1.com Software Wrapper" The link I used since this is what I was trying to do is http://www.flight1.com/view.asp?page=wrapperservice Everything I did required the email adress that I did not have enymore. So then I go to this link you still have posted https://www.flight1.com/view.asp?page=changeinfo and my frustration increases when I see this "This page is no longer in service. Please use the Flight1.com Ticket Messaging System to service this request" So then I do that I'm not seeing the same screen you are posting. I had the link up but it showed the links to my trouble tickets that had my information in them.Thanks for listening and sorry to be so harsh.

[MD83 1]

Abacus are very good. I'm very impressed with them, and they deserve their success :)

[Guest WindBeneathMyWings]

Yikes, I just ran into this and I had screwed myself royally just the other day by trying to do a system restore and It jacked up one of my Win32sys files or something like that and when I put the Win CD in to try and repair the file it wouldn't do anything at all... As I am speaking I just re-installed FS9 and put the latest FSUPIC in... I saved every single one of my e-mail receipts though from my purchases with order numbers etc... I really hope that was enough I am about to find out sweating avgas over here...P.S. If you have 2 drives Keep your operating system on a seperate drive from your FS9... Take Care, Josh

[alastairmonk 0]

>1. My E-Mail address has changed four times over the past>seven years and> my internet service provider has changed three times>during this period..>2. Credit cards that were used to purchase add-ons have long>since been paid off and closed.>3. Hardware has also been upgraded. >For (1) all you need to do is to contact Flight1 to notify them of your new email address. Then, if or when they need to send you replacement files, such as Keys, or information about your Passwords, they can do so. Your ISP plays no part in the installation / reinstallation process, other than usually being associated with your email address.For (2) your cards don't need to be in date, you just need a record of the last 4 numbers, and this information can be sent to you if neccessary.For (3) hardware updates / changes may well require the software to be reinstalled, and if you happen to use up the limit of reinstalls with a particular Key you can request a new one.None of this is difficult and most of it can be done automatically at the Flight1 site. The only delays occur when a matter needs to be dealt with by an actual staff member and family and/or timezone considerations come into play.Alastair(Flight1 Certified Professional)

[aerdt 0]

Very simple solution is to BACK UP. I have a dedicated external drive just for downloads and add-ons, which in return gets backed up onto DVD as well. No hassle here at all.Pat

[1mikel151 71]

>Abacus are very good. I'm very impressed with them, and they>deserve their success :)LOL!! Glad you like them, but overall, most of their models are lower in detail than a lot of freeware offerings and with them installing a module on my system for one of their "try it before you buy it" aircraft, I'll pass. Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/mcdcvabanner.jpgCalVirAir International