No one is talking about a computer, car, or phone. What I’d like to know is why everyone is blaming the OP? The blame lies with the plane maker or with Microsoft/Asobo for allowing such trash in the marketplace.
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Fixed that for you 
Definitely wise advice to not buy day zero stuff in general, although there are a few developers I personally wouldn’t worry about buying day zero products from.
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I like buying from the marketplace because I don’t have to have multiple logins to different vendors, don’t have to worry about potential number of activations on a product, etc. And it’s just easier to have everything that can be updated from 1 location vs having to manually manage add-ons.
The flip side is that we wait a ridiculous amount of time for new add-ons to appear in the marketplace, and bug fixes / patches take much longer to get than buying direct from other vendors. Hopefully Microsobo get that last part sorted out and can expedite products showing up in the marketplace as new products or update.
But for Steam users such as myself, there’s still the lack of being able to get any kind of refund for a dud product. Hence why I don’t buy zero day stuff.
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I hope with enough complaining that they might change it so that steam users could at least get the credits refunded to their MSFS account if not the actual money back.
Perhaps there is something I’m missing, but to me it doesn’t seem overly complicated for them to allow refunds on steam that way.
I think in the long run it would be beneficial to them to have a better refund policy. People would be more inclined to spend money on the marketplace, and any systematic abusers are easy to spot from excessive refunds.
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Agreed. It shouldn’t be hard, but they’ve put in place a system that’s quite difficult.
Personally, I would love it if we could buy virtual currency from Steam or MS Store and have that stored VISIBLY in our MSFS account. Then that would be where our “money” comes from when we buy stuff in the sim. Much like many MMOs do. Buy X credits from the store with real money, have said credits in your bank, and spend in the game directly.
I fulheartly disagree. There exist a lot of trash products in the world which get bought willingly.
Who are MS/Asobo to see if some product is ‘worthy’ of their marketplace? That is purely subjective. When is it good enough? That is different for everybody.
Maybe some people just want to see the A10 body model to slew somewhere and make pretty screenshots. It’s not your, nor MS/Asobo’s job to say what is/isn’t suitable for the marketplace.
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Xbox players will really feel let down and get extremely frustrated by this policy. I mean, in Forza Horizon you can buy car packs from the look of it - does it sound like cool cars then you buy them and drive them. Here you have to make your own research to find out if the plane can actually fly and the instruments work. I mean, really? It’s not some shady mod download or workshop file - it’s in the official Microsoft in-game store. You are charged what equals an expansion or major content pack in other games for an oem 3d model that doesn’t fly? How do they think this will affect the sentiment towards MSFS, Xbox and Microsoft? Obviously scammers are gonna scam, but how can Microsoft let this happen? How are new players supposed to know that half the planes in the in game store are complete garbage and you have to find this forum to go through threads several hundred posts long to assess if the plane you want really works? What kind of welcome is that to new players? When a new player has wasted 15$ like that, he will think he is in over his head and go back to Forza Horizon.
I understand if MS are reluctant to check the quality of every expansion airport across the world, but at least check the planes.
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I think it may depend. Most Xbox ‘gamers’ are very well acquainted with microtransactions and that they are ‘buyer beware’.
But MSFS carries add-ons that are a good deal more expensive than most packs/skins offered by ‘other games’, so yes you are right. Something sub-optimal may be less likely to be shrugged away because the cost outweighs the reality. On Xbox people can buy entire games for that money.
The best solution is that add-ons are honestly sold. If it’s cosmetic without some functional instrumentation, then say so.
In this case a product should come with a disclaimer that it’s for enjoyment of a visual model only and the instruments are not operational, which is the case with MScenery’s aircraft. AT NO POINT does the product page inform potential buyers that the altimeter and airspeed indicator (of all things!!! on a Flight Simulator!!!) are NOT functional. This is a case of woeful misleading of consumers. Misleading by omission.
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@BostonJeremy77
I hope this is not a trend because I can’t help noticing you are saying that twice in a month, the products which are promoted first at the top of the new Market Place releases, are deceiving in what they are supposed to be basically doing: flying.
NB: I’ve read all your other detailed posts about this one too.
similar comments:
I am not sure if you are implying I am doing something wrong or you are implying that it’s disturbing that we have had two aircraft in a month that doesn’t do BASIC things. 
I am just pointing out that it’s a thing. The KingAir was shipped broken as it conflicts with the very piece of software it was based on (still not patched - well… the patch is supposedly submitted but the Marketplace doesn’t have it yet), and MScenery stuff is known for basic things not working in the cockpit. I don’t have this A-10, but I spoke to someone who does and altimeter apparently doesn’t work at all and airspeed indicator is broken and doesn’t show anything useful. Most other instruments don’t work either in this.
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I wouldn’t even dare implying the first, I’m liking your feedback and input, and your contribution to the simmers community a lot. I’m expressing how I’m finding this disturbing especially in the context which I’m directly concerned with.
PS: I was citing you because I value your reviews are simmer focused and you usually don’t just awe for good looking graphics only. In other words if you’re saying a product is not even fulfilling the basic promise of what it is supposed to be representing, it must be true without a shadow of a doubt.
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Add Virtualcol, Captain Scam, Bred0k3d to that list as well
Just found a way via XBox to request a refund, link is below. Go to the link below, login, Click ‘Contact Us’, Select Subscriptions and Billing, then select ‘I want a refund’, select the item and fill out the information. I submitted the request and it was approved! If Microsoft/Asobo put cr*p on the Market Place, then they need to offer refunds if it doesn’t work. The price was only $14.99 which is nothing but, it’s something when a lot of folks get in the same boat.
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Now that’s not entirely true.
You know they checked to make sure that Avenger canon wasn’t mounted on the nose. Who cares if the plane flies or works? Priorities people! 
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Well. That’s a lesson of life. No one is going to watch for your money better than you. Some will learn for the next time. Others will keep buying low quality products.
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Maybe its a good idea to built a class system for marketplace add-ons? Marking which of the below are true to prevent disappointment to potential buyers, for example:
- Custom flight model Y/N
- Avionics accurately simulated Y/N
- Aircraft systems accurately simulated Y/N
- Standalone or Frankensteined together.
If something is then not doing what it is supposed to do we can hold the producer accountable. If some product hits all the marks its a class 10 (= study-level), class 0 is garbage. Guess given time we can come up with something more refined, this is just me thinking out loud for 30 seconds 
.
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Another costly mistake: Just bought the A-10. It looked really great. It has a checklist but no indicators showing where everything is. Found the battery but it don’t work. Hardly anything has click spots. My bad once again for falling for another piece of junk in the Marketplace. If MS insists on featuring this excrement to the sim public, maybe they should put warning labels in the descriptions like they do on cigarettes: “Warning! Purchase of this product may result in high blood pressure and swearing as well as loss of valuable financial assets.”
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OMG… if there is the wish to fly military airplanes better try DCS and thats in special for a A10A ( or also A10C ).
Similar as @Crunchmeister71 mentioned, in meanwhile I’am very careful to buy somewhat within these Marketplace. The airplanes I see in marketplace as new in last weeks, nope…
I know, it is the old topic about what suggest these seemingly “Microsoft Marketplace” ( which it isnt ) and the resulting expectation about the quality / safity / etc… But the true is, there is zero qualitiy controll.
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Surely it shouldn’t be down to the consumer to find forums, or other internet spaces dedicated to flight simulation to find out the aircraft they have purchased through the official in game store, is only good for taking screenshots? I’d agree with you if this was stated somewhere on the product page, even if that was as little as “some functionality will be missing on this model”. Of course there will be different quality levels of aircraft on the in-game store and I agree it’s not down to Microsoft to test or rate them but a basic bar level of functionality is acceptable to demand on an in game Marketplace. People will assume functionality based on the fact this is the official way of purchasing add on content for the game. Without a more detailed user based reviewing system, or any mention that the product you’re buying may lack pretty basic functionality, it’s not difficult to see how this is going to create problems.
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