Very dissatisfied with Aerosoft customer support

[shanwick 3]

I shall be very grateful if someone in authority at Aerosoft will reply to this post.

Firstly, please read my posts under "Cannot update from cycle 1402" below this one.

I purchased NavDataPro cycle 1402 on 2 March and cycle 1403 was released on 6 March. I therefore had only 4 days - that's ONLY FOUR DAYS - in which to access the product before further access was denied to me.

No mention was made on Aerosoft's purchase page or at the point of purchase that access to the product would be granted only until the release date of the next cycle. If I had known this then I would have waited until the release of cycle 1403 before buying.

Also, I requested a further reply from Otto which I have never received. Assuming that this forum is read I can only assume that my posts have either been considered irrelevant or you do not care very much about your customers.

I will now have to buy another cycle in order to complete my updates. However, I will not buy this from Aerosoft but will do so from Navigraph. In fact, I have little desire to buy anything further from you.

David

[mopperle 4162]

David, sorry I missed your last answer. If you need further clarification, please contact Aerosoft directly at support@aerosoft.com or open a ticket here: https://aerosoft.zendesk.com

[KyleD 1027]

David,

Just so you are aware, nav data cycles come out on a rounding basis, every 28 days. You can very easily search for when the next cycle comes out. If you would have bought a cycle from Navigraph, it'd be the same exact deal. Nav data is nav data, it all comes out at the same time. Just saying.

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

I shall be very grateful if someone in authority at Aerosoft will reply to this post.

Firstly, please read my posts under "Cannot update from cycle 1402" below this one.

I purchased NavDataPro cycle 1402 on 2 March and cycle 1403 was released on 6 March. I therefore had only 4 days - that's ONLY FOUR DAYS - in which to access the product before further access was denied to me.

No mention was made on Aerosoft's purchase page or at the point of purchase that access to the product would be granted only until the release date of the next cycle. If I had known this then I would have waited until the release of cycle 1403 before buying.

Also, I requested a further reply from Otto which I have never received. Assuming that this forum is read I can only assume that my posts have either been considered irrelevant or you do not care very much about your customers.

I will now have to buy another cycle in order to complete my updates. However, I will not buy this from Aerosoft but will do so from Navigraph. In fact, I have little desire to buy anything further from you.

David

As Kyle explained cycles are send out monthly and when we receive a new set it only takes us a day to get it online.

If you would have contacted us on support@aerosoft.com we would have checked out if you downloaded the set and when not we would have made the next one available to you without any problems. Why would we make problems about that? I do agree we might have reacted to the forum post. Otto is a friend who assists as moderator but he is not part of our support staff.

In your previous post it is also not clear that you only had four days, that news you added while complaining about our support, even though you have not even mentioned that to support! You just mentioned you wanted to update even though you only bought a single cycle.

[Emi 5161]

Besides this, with Navigraph you have exactly the same "issue". Once the next cycle is released you can not access the old one anylonger.

It's the same for any other navigation database that I know from the real world. If I buy a 2013 chart for my GNS430 I can only access that until the 2014 chart becomes available. Then I can no longer access it.

[shanwick 3]

Mathijs

"If you would have contacted us on support@aerosoft.com we would have checked out if you downloaded the set and when not we would have made the next one available to you without any problems. Why would we make problems about that? I do agree we might have reacted to the forum post. Otto is a friend who assists as moderator but he is not part of our support staff."

If I understand you correctly you are saying that if I had contacted support I would have had free access to cycle 1403 because of the very short time I had access to cycle 1402. If so then Otto could have suggested that, couldn't he? It would have been a very friendly and appreciated gesture if he had done so. I posted in the forum as I was looking for help. If you would like to discuss the differences between the English words "help" and "support" then I will be only too delighted to do so.

"In your previous post it is also not clear that you had only four days, that news you added while complaining about our support, even though you have not even mentioned that to support! You just mentioned you wanted to update even though you only bought a single cycle."

That is not correct. If you go back and re-read that post you will see that I said that I had had only one week's access to cycle 1402. I was working from memory then and should have said only four days. So this is not something I have just introduced in my post today. The point which I was making, and which should have been picked up, was that I had had access to cycle 1402 for a very short time. Maybe there is a big technical difference between 7 days and 4 days?

I notice that you have not said anything about my comment that your shop makes no reference to the limited amount of time that a cycle is available for downloads. Navigraph do on their website. I genuinely was not aware of this restriction.

I had rather hoped that you might have made a goodwill gesture by making cycle 1403 available to me. As it is, I have lost the (financially crippling!!) amount of about EUR8 as I will have to buy another cycle and you will lose much more than this as you will not retain me as a customer in the future. We both lose and that does not make any sense at all, whichever way you look at it. A pity really, as I remember you from the days of Lago and the great customer support you gave in (the then) increasingly more difficult times.

David

[Badfinger 62]

David, with no dis respect, I think you have stopped listening now because you are angry. I am a customer too, just like you, and the answers given are honest, and supportive.

You may have jumped in and you should take some responsibility. You sound like you have been a flight simmer for a long time, so a question on the forum before purchase would have answered any queries you had.

I myself have been a long time customer, (lago as well ) and I think the support is top shelf. but you need to give AS the chance to help, and you are not doing that.

[shanwick 3]

Yes, I have been a flight simmer for something like 35 years - that dates me !!

But, I'm puzzled. How could I have asked a question (about time availability of downloads) when it never occurred to me that there were, or would have been, any?

However, and no disrespect to you, Badfinger, or anyone else here, but this thread is going to go nowhere and so I am going to shut up at this point and get on with life as they say.

David

[KyleD 1027]

If I understand you correctly you are saying that if I had contacted support I would have had free access to cycle 1403 because of the very short time I had access to cycle 1402. If so then Otto could have suggested that, couldn't he? It would have been a very friendly and appreciated gesture if he had done so.

Hi David,

Just wanted to comment on this part: myself, Otto included, and other asst. mods around here unfortunately don't have the power to offer you that. What we can offer you is general product and forum support.

Mathijs or Emi, or internal support does have that power to do what you were seeking though, but you need to contact them directly and they can get you sorted. Just keep that in mind for the future, and maybe bury the hatchet and fire off a support e-mail so they can help you out.

My two p and hope it works out.

[Cheyenne Chief Pilot 829]

(...)

I purchased a single cycle end of last year to 'test the waters' so to speak. Wishing to reinstall now, I find that the cycle I purchased is not available. Like Shanwick, I found no reference to the fact that your cycle is only available for as long as it's valid... Not in the shop, not in the manual.

I also find it quite annoying to throw away money on something that I can only use once. It should be clearly stated on the shop page. Especially since there is no way for the user to back-up his purchased cycle, since all he/she gets access to is a piece of software which manages the download and installation of the cycle. With Navigraph you can at least opt for a manual install with which you can backup the individual cycles for your addons.

(...)

This is quoted from the manual:

"Updating Datasets from local files

NavDataPro automatically stores the downlaoded files on your PC into the folder ...\NavDataPro\downloads\. You don’t need to download the navdata from our Aerosoft server again if you want to update the data for a specific addon again (e.g. you have to reinstall the addon). You can update the navdata from the local dataset file.

The update process from local files works in the same way as the update from the Aerosoft server. first select the addons you want to update from the product list. Click the "Update" button in the button bar.

The "Update datasets" dialogue box appears. Click on the arrow next to the cycle and select the local cycle from the drop down list."

[Cheyenne Chief Pilot 829]

That's nice in hindsight, but not really useful if it isn't made clear from the start that the cycle you purchased is only available as long as the cycle is valid... I believe most people will act under the assumption that they can select their purchased cycle from the dropdown menu in the software you provide, and therefore won't go digging through the folders to backup the files that the software downloads.

I know I didn't, and I've got every piece of software I ever purchased still backed up on a disk, usually with multiple versions of the setup.

This is quoted from the manual:

"Updating Datasets from local files

NavDataPro automatically stores the downlaoded files on your PC into the folder ...\NavDataPro\downloads\. You don’t need to download the navdata from our Aerosoft server again if you want to update the data for a specific addon again (e.g. you have to reinstall the addon). You can update the navdata from the local dataset file.

The update process from local files works in the same way as the update from the Aerosoft server. first select the addons you want to update from the product list. Click the "Update" button in the button bar.

The "Update datasets" dialogue box appears. Click on the arrow next to the cycle and select the local cycle from the drop down list."

[KyleD 1027]

Your point being? If my Windows installation gets corrupted, those stored files in a location I can't access instead of my own backup location aren't much use to me. Just one example. Let alone that I will go and look for those files if I'm not made aware that I can't download the data when I need to reinstall.

The point still stands, that it's not made clear that you can't redownload your purchased product at a later time. Please take an example from Navigraph and just post in on the store page. Or change the text to read:

And what tells you that you could redownload a cycle? Nothing. As shown NavData Pro makes a backup for you, and tells you it will. And if you want to take it a step further, just save that backup to whichever device or cloud storage you choose. You can use that downloaded cycle infinitely. You bought it. It's yours. But why do you expect Aerosoft to keep every cycle in existence saved and on their dime since you can't be responsible for your own downloads? Call it the same argument as PMDG in regards to download services.

[Cheyenne Chief Pilot 829]

Agreed, that the advertising statements could be more fool-proof.

But then again, it's everybody's responsibility to back up files they store in their computers (think PMDG, for example: you can't blame them for any data loss occuring in your PC and their download links are time-limited, too). The NavDataPro manual tells you local copies of your cycles are stored automatically; then it's up to you to do the backups ... like you always do with all of your downloads and other important files without even being told to do so.

EDIT: There must be some spiritual connection between Kyle and me.

[KyleD 1027]

EDIT: There must be some spiritual connection between Kyle and me.

Haha, indeed, but I'll surrender you put it more kindly than I did, need my morning

[Cheyenne Chief Pilot 829]

Haha, indeed, but I'll surrender you put it more kindly than I did, need my morning

I've proven I can be (*insert word of your choice here*) myself, occasionally; my advantage being that it's afternoon over here already; I'm completely coffee-saturated(???) by now!!!

[Emi 5161]

As you said yourself that the last words have been said I will close this topic here.