I have been in flight simulation world actively since 2000. I tried many vendors various software on various difference PC setups (from intel Pentium 4’s to Core2Duo’s to i7’s etc), all had their ups and downs with special thanks to the respective software vendors proactive support all went very well down the road. A true software support goes all the way until the issues are settled down and the end user “the customer who paid for the software” is happy at the end and is able to run the product. Regardless of what industry you are in or whatever products and services you sell, your customer is the most important part of your business. In my professional life working as an executive project manager for various clients in various disciplines of engineering me and my team strive to full fill their requirements and values.
In this blog entry I would like to share my experience or rather my accident with FSDT (fsdreamteam.com) which is claimed in their website as a brand owned by Virtuali S.A.S. an Italian online retailer. I have been in touch with a gentleman named Umberto Colapicchioni trying to spot a solution for my issue. simmarket.com where we all purchase our flight simulator related items was also partly involved in the issue, but now very clear that they are just a middleman who only look after the revenue and not the clients satisfaction.
I have purchased from simmarket the FSDT Zurich Kloten airport addon for MSFS in June 2021, and installed on the MSFS computer without any issues and it indeed worked without any issues. Earlier in June 2022 I have decided to use MSFS for my home cockpit system, for that I have purchased a new PC (a high end PC) to get better frame rates and stability, all owned items were installed on this new PC (such as ORBX’s LOWI scenery etc). However when I tried to install the FSDT Zurich software I came across some installation issues, it was simply not installing correctly.
After browsing the FSDT forums , I decided to write to FSDT support via email directly to get some support. After a couple of mail traffic it was an obvious dead end. I asked simmarket for a refund, their lame answer was “contact the software vendor”, I even mentioned that the refund will be used to purchase the exact same software from the same vendor (FSDT Zurich) from the official MSFS store (which has its own installation algorithm) , so the vendor at the end will still have his valuable money. Simmarket’s statement was simple “you cannot get a refund for a product you used for over half a year”. So since there was no solution from the vendor, simmarket was suggesting to use the old computer and forget about the new computer 😊. Anyway at the end simmarket included the FSDT support in my support ticket. But now there was this yelling guy from FSDT telling me to stop opening tickets, focusing on useless facts but not to sort out a solution for my problem, he insisted that re opening this ticket would be a mistake, the first threat I ever received in simming world since the 2000’s .
A couple mail exchanges were done with Umberto from FSDT were as expected very unfruitful. He was continuously accusing my new computer setup (I have even seen the working old PC was not doing the updates as per his suggestions, I have tried FSDT on a couple of computers on the home cockpit network, all computers were wrong) , I even offered him to connect to my pc via anydesk to see what was happening but … silence … simply silence (I worry that something may have happened to him since he is not replying to email messages for the past week 😊) A very rude, un-helpful and non-proactive gentleman. Result is a non-working piece of software.
So now happily running the Microsoft’s bespoke Zurich airport, deleted fully the useless non-working FSDT files (even the working one on the old computer), I will never ever purchase any software from this vendor. The money spent in the cause goes to charity in my perspective.
Edit 22.08.2022: Looking at the so many negative comments all over about the customer support of FSDT after their release of GSX I feel that there are no issues on my system and setup but rather their coutl whatsoever sucks ! I was instructed to update to Coualt_updater2.exe (my version was 2.0.2.48) to version 2.0.0.60 which never happened of course. With an updated FSDT installer even the higher version of the same file does not do what it is supposed to do.
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