"...if it dies after a while you got it cheap anyway."That may be your personal opinion, but it reflects in no way the legal situation in Europe, for example. If it dies within two years from the purchase because of a defect that was present from the start on, it has to be replaced, repaired or refunded. You surely know that. If Walmart sold an article from a manufacturer who

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>The one thing about this industry unlike general retail sales>is that you WILL get what you give...lol. We will teach>manners around here. Some call that mentoring :-)Oh for... sake.Read the friggen correspondence again. It was very polite. It became frustrated when no response was given. Everybody here is going to react negatively to service that is not forthcoming and were left wondering. Everybody.Now get real. If you take my money... I'm coming after you. I dont give a crap if you're the middle man. Why? Because you are that products representative and you are bennifiting from doing so (Tom I just don't buy this "from the good of our hearts" crap). You don't take your busted DVD player to Chang Lee in China, you take it back to Wal-mart. So what makes you think online retail absolves you of the same responsibilty? You can't take my money and expect to walk away. Sorry there is no free lunch today. The hippocricy of this place is staggering.Now the reality of this entire argument is not about customer service, though this has all been a wonderful deflection from the truth. The truth was the only thing Tom took exception to was the fact that many of us did not want to be charged a "download tax" for the privilage of having access to the product we paid for. Especially when that tax is 25% to 50% the avarage product cost for a one year service that costs nowhere near that to maintain.The problem is its a huge cash cow, pure profit. We all know that and I get the feeling Tom is really more upset because we know and don't want to pay that much for purely profit making reasons.Sour grapes.

Ok that's fine for a toaster, but if you go to Walmart and by a copy of Battlefield Vietnam, they will not support you because you can't get good frame rates.Only if the product itself is defective or broken will they provide support. In most cases electrnoic stores that sell software offer no refunds at all unless it's a defective product and then you're still subject to a restocking fee.The same would apply to Avsim. If you downloaded the product and it would not install or the CD they shipped you was cracked then they may ship you a new one.Do you see the difference here folks??????Is it really that hard to understand?????? User your heads!

You need to read my above reply to you.There is a difference between a defective product and supporting someone who can't get good frame rates.C'mon man, user your noodle.You really have a warped sense of what is right and wrong.

Do you understand the difference between sales support and product support?I don't think you do.Read my above postings and you might understand.

>The one thing about this industry unlike general retail sales>is that you WILL get what you give...lol. We will teach>manners around here. Some call that mentoring :-)Sure 'you WILL get what you give' but it works both ways.Based on the view I get from your comments over time on this forum (not only the comments from the last few weeks). I have decided never to buy at OSS.Just like in real life. If I ever enter a store where I don't feel welcome or don't get some basic service I will leave that store and take my buissines elsewhere.

If that's the way you feel, that's fine, but I'm not just going say with a smiling face, ok, when someone is the first to be rude.If you feel that's wrong, then so be it.We take every effort to ensure our customers are satisfied and so do our vendors, but we aren't going to put up with people being rude for no reason and making demands out of the blue that we nor our venders would have any control over.Do you see my point here??

And that's your right. I'm not one of those politically correct people. That means when people get rude I'll give it back.As far as our business, we usually answer support emails within minutes of when they arrive and we do make people feel welcome. And contrary to your belief about us we have an exemplary track record for customer support becacuse we're just simply old fashioned when it comes to taking care of the customer to make sure they have our stuff working and are enjoying it. Maybe you'd like to puruse our forums and see for yourself. And yes, you'll find some off remarks by ME about issues NOT related to support by people who haven't even bought our products. If you feel that's wrong, then that's just tough. ** Edit -- double post, didn't think the other one made it. Oh well, maybe 2 times is a charm **

"Do you understand the difference between sales support and product support?"And what might that has to do with anything?He bought a product from someone. This someone took his money. Then he asked a question regarding that product. Politeness demands that he get

And I replied to him saying that was understandable for him to do that. See above.The issue here is with Avsim's perceived policies of what they should and should not do with their plans for their store.

I believe this thread is generally a healthy debate that needs to be had. With prices going up on payware, people will generally expect more service. The biggest question is, what is the level of service they should expect. Although myself and others have made many analogies to other products, I think the FS community is pretty unique. Maybe there are other software titles that have a slew of payware add-ons but I can't think of any off the top of my head. In addition, we are a pretty tight community - info gets around fast whether it is good or bad. Of course this doesn't apply to everyone that buys FS, just to the people that visit AVSIM, FS.com and so on. I doubt the casual user of FS considers purchasing add-ons unless they see a Wilco product at Best Buy or something.I think it is a fair and healthy discussion to discuss what that accountability should be. Whether it is the developer or the store that is accountable, I really don't care but someone does have to be accountable to us because we are their primary customers - and that is where a "bill of rights" comes in.Many companies offer a personal service guarantees. In most cases, these guarantees state the obvious but they do help manage customer expectations. From what I hear, one of the biggest problems is that customer expectations are either too high or unreasonable. A guarantee would serve both the buyer and seller. Some customers are going to be easy to deal with and some will be nuts. If you have a guarantee, you can point to it when someone has unrealistic expectations.By offering a money back guarantee, Flight1 has gone a long was in that direction. If 3 online stores offer the same products for the same price, the only way that they can beat the competition is by more advertising or by guaranteeing a higher level of service. One of these options is cheaper.

Tom:I agree with your decision. IMHO it was a bad idea from the start. A competitive commercial venture is not in keeping with AVSIM's position in this community. AVSIM has been the home for flight simmers for some time. I see no way that you could add a commercial branch as you have described and expect to satisfy flight simmers. The current AVSIM site has set the bar too high as an independent source of unbiased information. A strong, competitve commercial venture would put a completely different spin on AVSIM's image.Also, it takes a unique corporate personality to provide the level of service that simmers demand. Absolutely no offense intended, but I have notice that even _you_ have a short fuse concerning perfectly legitimate posts responding to your request for input. Somehow, I don't see you in the roll of "the customer is always right." And that is exactly what your customers will be expecting, whether they are, in fact, right or not.Some premium retailers have very thick skin and roll with the consumer punches, smiling and providing customer service that even Nordstrom's would envy. Some choose to bully their customers. Both types have managed to survive. But, I believe that flight simmers would expect (rightly) for AVSIM to provide the best level of service and highest quality in the industry. Unfortunately, AVISM would be a vendor of software developers and would never have control over the quality nor the level of service expected. AVSIM could, in the end, become a victim of unscrupulous vendors. That would, of course, roll downhill to the purchasers.Sorry to be so negative, but I see no reason to screw up a good thing. We are talking about starting a business, not providing a community service.Regards,Wilson

<Of course it would. Happens all the time. It's called "Close Out" or "All Sales Final."Regards,Jim

A serious misconception appears to have devloped in this thread.In many jurisdictions (including the UK) the responsibility for provoding a product of acceptable quality lies firmly with the ultimate seller. (By acceptable I mean acceptable judged by the general standards of the industry, not those of a particular purchaser.) After all, the ultimate seller is the one who took the customer's money and delivered the product. If he could shift his responsiblity to the original manufacturer/developer the consumer would be in a hopeless situation. The question of products made in, say, China is very relevant. How could the typical consumer enforce his rights against such an overseas manufacturer?Some. less scrupulous, sellers will try and avoid their responsibility by trying to shift it to the manufacturer/developer but they won't succeed with a knowlegable purchaser. All manufacturers' guarantees in the UK include words similar to "this guarantee is offered as an additional benefit to the consumer's statutory rights (i.e against the ultimate seller - my comment) and does not affect these rights in any way."If AVSIM chose to sell products it could not avoid these statutory rights, which seems to me a good reason for not doing so.