I love the guys or gals that simply do not read the post. As I was stating and I think I will get my point across here but who knows. The point is whether it is stated or not , they being PMDG offer you to purchase via download or CD. ALot of campanies offer this. AT NO POINT WAS I TOLD LATER ON I MAY NEED TO PAY FOR A DOWNLOAD LINK REGARDLESS OF THE CONDITIONS OF ME LOSING MY ORIGINAL DOWNLOAD. Plus if the original installer worked via a reverification why did mine never do the same? If I lost it I lost it no biggie I will download a new. Nope can't do that without forking out about 20 bucks for my bought products because I had a computer meltdown. For all of you who are taking the companies side with well they never stated or they don't have to I know. In todays world companies seem to do whatever they want. Thats why in Michigan they are taking 1000s of Union worker jobs that have 25+ years of work in and just disolving their pentions. The fact is ,is 1. This problem results from the company not realizing the time and bandwidth involved if there product became popular and now they are compensation themselves for it or 2. They are just simply exploiting a loop hole in their own system. I'm almost sure its #1. but hey all I know is that I bought a product expecting that my original purchase would be the last money I would pay that would go to that product. No more money for updates and liveries or whatever. And I was not told in wrighting anywhere else to expect otherwise. And not only do I have to pay the amount for 1 of their products which I own, they are asking the 3.95 price for every single product I bought if which otherwise we would probably not be arguing here.

Oh and as stated earlier, you want to impement this crap go ahead, but as one poster said atleast grandfather the people that already bought under a no notice agreement and charge from this date on out on purchases

> It'an easy matter really, if you do not agree with the terms>of purchase simply do not buy. Are you incapable of reading? How many times on this thread has Jason stated that at the time of him purchasing the product he did not see anything regarding being charged for reinstalls on the website.>is impossible for you to make a simple BACKUP file of your EXE>file and then to cry fowl to any developer who has to>spend their TIME to help you re download a product over and>over again because of some inability to make a BACKUP file>then perhaps you should not BUY in the first place. Make>sense? Oh and this advice is FREE.Again Jason states that he is trying to reactivate an installation online. What difference would it make having the install file on a cd? If the online activation doesnt work then he can have 10 cds and 3 dvds with the file on, even span it across a few 1.44mb floppys, it really wont help the situation.Sorry to jump on here like this but I read the whole of this thread from start to finish and I am annoyed. There are several people who have replied who I do not think have even bothered to read the posts.Graham

Then perhaps this would have been better served if posted in the PMDG support forum where they can respond to it instead of the general forum where people will make generalized comments.I'm assuming he's also tried to get a hold of then via email? To many posts now to read them again. It does look like he got caught in the change over. Maybe they'd help him out, who knows, can't speak for them, but I've delt with them before and they're pretty nice people for the most part.

I just want to clarify a couple things here so that this doesn't end up as one-sided as it's been thus-far:1. You do NOT need to redownload the installer in order to re-validate the 747 if your validations run out. (The threshold for doing this is EXTREMELY high by the way, which makes me wonder exactly what you were doing to cause it in the first place...) Backing up the installer on CD is more than sufficient - you will ALWAYS be able to reinstall from that file.2. The download service was initiated to cover our increasing costs both in bandwidth and in the fact that someone in support has to process all of the re-download requests. It was getting to be a very large number of these requests per week. You can choose to believe whatever you want, but this is the truth.Jason,Perhaps if you had kindly emailed us privately asking for a redownload due to the fact that you purchased before it was initiated, you might have gotten the response you were looking for. Instead, you chose to go straight to flaming us in a public forum for something that hasn't even happened to you. I think that speaks for itself - customer service is a two way street.

Simmarket states clearly in their terms of service that you get X downloads (or a certain period) and that after that you have to pay a (small) fee.Most or all download stores I visit have a similar provision.If you choose not to read the fine print on a contract before signing that's your problem, not that of the other party.

Sure stop reactivations and make installing to C: mandatory. But don't look supprised if your product with these new 'features' sells less than the old products.Personaly they can scan my PC to the n-th degree and bind the product to lets say 2 different MAC adresses or Processor ID's but when you take my reinstalls then I take my buisness elswhere. If you take the flexebility and performance gains provided by dedicate FS drives away I'm also gone.Maybe I just don't get your 'joke' but then again its not funny.The other problem I have is this. Just looking at the price of the PMDG products their online 747 costs about 55 Euro (including conversion rate / taxes) the Aerosoft CD version costs 60 Euro (+ it comes with 2 printed manuals and probabely doesn't need internet activation). To me the CD release is superior in its features and extra's and I know for a fact that PMDG pockets a lot more money for the online sale than it does for the Aerosoft distributed release.Simply said the online release generates more profit then any distributor deal (as long as both have the same asking price of course) but it appears to be hard for them to invest this profit in making their customer a happy (hopefully return?) customer.If the online distributed add-on buisiness goes down the road of paid reactivations/downloads and excessive protection scheme's that hinder legal custommers they will take away the basis that made the online distribution popular. That way they are working on their own downfall.Just my pessimistic view/mood (not in a sarcastic mood right now)

ok just want to chip in, not so much about the whole paying issue, but more about the possible consequences (in case they arise afterwards) Because if you ask me, look around and everybody can see clear as day that the PIRACY issue within the flightsim sector is really getting out of hand. Now with the installment of having to pay for the extra downloads (understanding though why thats not the issue), but isnt this asking for problems? (hope not for PMDG sake) Because i think that many "thiefs" so to speak, might revert to pirate the software instead of paying for an extra download, because all they want is the installer right??.. Though honest people would just pay the extra 3 bucks or so. UNFORTUNATLY HOWEVER in these days we all live in a MONEY IS EVERYTHING WORLD.. and many probally would say, PAY??,WHY?? AGAIN?? why i can go to some website and get it for FREE (since they think, "Hey i allready paid for my copy once").. just my thoughts.. Personally: give PMDG a break, their a good company, who brings out quality products, think about it, HOW MUCH really is 3 bucks.. compared to how many time one downloads.. BACK UP YOUR STUFF!! Everybody knows that us flightsimmers are "THE" backup freaks on the internet :(.

We won't have to scan your PC if you leave your directories alone. If you need a sperate hard drive for FS then you probably need a seperate dedicated computer to really see a true performance gain. Let's get real here.Re-activations do not have anything to do with piracy either, they simply make sure that you are in fact the customer. Well, maybe that purpose serves a dual purpose by default, but it's no big deal if you're using the same email address. You wouldn't get a refund or service for a TV without a receipt would you?? People go to jail for that in department stores all the time.In any case, none of this applies to us, we use the F1 wrapper, but I do understand all the requests because MOST so called computer tuners think they have to reformat everytime they delete something or make a change.I haven't reformatted my PC since I got it 2 or 3 years ago and it runs FS just fine. Everything runs just fine for that matter.Don't get me wrong, we understand that people's equipment will get fried, or whatever, but those people do not have problems re-activating their software (usually). We can still make custom keys if all else fails.Maybe we should just go back to CD sales and make you guys go to Best Buy to get your product. Just like the old days. I'm not defending them, but I can understand some of the issues, because we run accross them also.My comments are broad scoped here because this issue was posted IN THE GENERAL FORUM, and the poster DID NOT contact the vendor. So now it's open season and everyone gets a chance to respond.There's always 2 sides to the story, sometimes more. Next time maybe the issue should try first to get resolved with between the customer and the vendor. Then go to the public forums if a satisfactory response is not received.

I think PMDG's particular reasons are relating to their bandwidth issues and costs as well as personnel costs and not piracy issues.Personaly I would have "tried" to just include those costs in the actual price of the product, but it can sometimes be hard to gauge when you're going to need to bring up a new server or increase the capacity of an old one or both.Some might say it then is just a business risk and to some extent that is probably true especailly in the internet world becaue of the perceived "now" factor.Now the flip side is they are a business and certainly deserve to make a profit although the overal price question of any product can be then open for debate and discussion. I don't think though these are their resons as 'Tabs' posted.

Yea i know, i didnt mean that the possible reason might be because of piracy, all im thinking about is, as to what effects this policy change is going to have in the long run "considering" piracy.

Nice one Ryan, well said.As Ryan could no doubt testify, i'm one of those who cause the problem in the first place. Not because I loose or fail to backup files, but because I reinstall EVERYTHING with monotonous regularity, including my all my PMDG addons.When presented with this problem, all I did, was exactly as Ryan just suggested

personally I'd rather have a paid support option for rarely needed but expensive operations like this than raising the price of the product itself.The latter hurts your market position.

Ryan 1st off I did send you and email and as usual do to your high demands with your state of the art support system I have to wait probably about 4 days to get a response. 2nd You just verified my point. It was PMDGs own negligence in not realizing the bad side of using the system you currently are. I don't care what you say you are doing the reverification for security reasons because you thought you had the hackers for sure this time and that there was no way your aircraft was gonna end up on emule or torrents. I bought my plane so don't even come at me with that. The point is very very simple. You show me anywhere and I mean anywhere that for whatever reasons and under any circumstances in any documentation from my original purchase date about a month after it came out, where it says I will have to repay for a download. I mean look at it this way. I'm gonna assume that you sold about 30000 of the 747 at 4 dollars a pop for extended download thats $120000 that you weren't planning on. Nice way to bend your customer over.

And another thing ryan if you would have read my posts you would have seen that I was not the one to bring PMDGs name up I kept it at a 3rd party accustation. And honestly pmdg does make great products thats why I bought them, but this one is just plain fishy. I'm sure you can explain the costs all day long but do me a favor and we can put this to rest. Just go ahead and tell all your customers that PMDG dropped the ball and you guys made a mistake. Cause thats all you did honestly.Ohh...... And now as usual the customer is gonna pay for it... literally.