There is a highly prolific marketplace seller of 3rd party airports whose product is junk. I know this, because I got a copy of the field I consider my permanent home base, St. Petersburg-Clearwater International, and their redo of the stock airfield didn’t even take into account that a former taxiway turned into a runway (who knows how many decades ago) was turned back into a taxiway “only” about 8 years ago due to conflicts with a scheduled Part 121 provider, something the airport had previously lacked.
I was told by someone with insider information that there were about three incidents of near misses, either on the ground or during parallel runway operations that finally got the airport to return that “runway” (that never should have been one in my opinion) back into “just” a taxiway.
It’s bad enough MS/Asobo themselves screwed this up, likely because they were using old charts or their automated software was using old pics, but the provider who I won’t name (but if you’re clever, you can figure it out) couldn’t even get that right.
All attempts to contact them for support failed because they don’t have a website or any sort of tech support available. I did manage to find an email address for them (I honestly do not remember how), but even then, they wouldn’t, or I suspect more likely couldn’t make the change.
I realize MS is making good coin even from junk, sleazy sellers of 3rd party products, but I think it reflects extremely poorly on them to have them in their store and requiring at a minimum to have a website and support contact listed at that site might just eliminate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.
Thoughts?
Kev
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I think there should be some sort of mandatory contact information for marketplace vendors on the product page. Most of the reputable developers already do.
However, that being said, it is up to the buyer to do some basic research about what you are buying. If a bing search or other popular search engines can’t locate the contact info for developers, then in my opinion , that should be considered a red flag and any purchases should be considered as a gamble.
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Given that the devs are not supposed to provide support on these forums, there has to be a way to raise issues with them. How else are you supposed to get support? For example the Marketplace item description lists a feature, you buy the item, you don’t find the feature, you’d have to be able to ask them how to find it.
Should be easy enough to make the name of the dev clickable on the Marketplace item and have a click show contact information including a link to their support. Or simply add a few fields to each Marketplace item with the relevant information.
Devs without any contact information, no homepage, no email address seem very fishy to me. A legitimate should be contactable by their customers.
Good devs, like FSReborn, provide an email address in the marketplace item description.
Edit: Looks like a support link shows up on items that I have bought via the Marketplace but not on those that I do not own / don’t have bought on the Marketplace. Regardless, in my opinion contact information should be more accessible.
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My products EFB tablets also has links about how to reach me, I prefer discord, as it is more interactive that going back and forth with emails or forums posts.
I find with discord we resolved most people doubts, questions and problems in 5 minutes average.
Best,
R.
2 Likes
Voted. I’m astonished this has to be a 'wish list" item, and is not considered a basic minimum requirement by the Microsoft team.