Finally heard back, they supposedly had an issue with their shipping company and it should be fixed on Monday. Also got a FB Messenger response from their supposed support manager that they know they need to do better and are working on it as far as their horrible response times.
I dont know where you are. But if you are in the UK then it doesnt matter what Honeycomb says, you are protected by the Trade Description act and Sale of Goods act that gives you at least one year protection and the manufacturer is obliged to keep to those terms. Their product must be of ‘merchandable quality’ beyond that period. The consumer must give the manufacturer the option to repair. If this isnt possible then a full refund or replacement is required.
For something to be of ‘merchandable quality’ can actually extend quite a long way here in Europe. for example a wasahing machine may have a two year guarantee from the manufacturer but if it breaks down after three, and is used properly then it is a simple matter of going to a County court costing a few pounds and saying that it should work longer than just three years. Almost always the manufacturer wont let it come to that.
Seems to me, as has been said here already, that customer rights in the US are ‘pants’.
Yep in the US unfortunately and it’s definitely been a nightmare getting support from Honeycomb.
Well, they’ve sort of but not really fixed it. Finally got a Fedex shipping number Tuesday morning with estimated delivery of today. Guess what? Yep, Fedex is still waiting for the package. We’re now 6 weeks into what should have been really quick since all the “repair” process ended up being was “ship us your entire unit including accessories and we’ll ship you a retail unit back”. Shouldn’t take 6+ weeks for that much less 2 full weeks to get the initial response to the problem.
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After some brief user error (windows game controller display can’t show all of the buttons on the axis) I verified in sim all switches and levers on the axis etc. on the RMA replacement I just received from them are working and all handles from Honeycomb are working as well in the new unit along with my addon Airbus handles I bought from them a while back.
So looks like i"m good for now, but unless I hear of serious and lasting changes to their tech support/customer server in the future, I’m still done buying their products. I’ll use what I have until they fail and look for other better brands I’ve heard of that actually have customer service. It’ll cost more, but it’ll be worth it.
Everyone always gets so up-in-arms about Honeycomb and their customer service. Usually, I’d speak up in defense of the company and in opposition to the witch hunt, as people tend to pile on and it can’t be fun from a PR perspective, especially in this day and age. Also I really love their products. But in the case of Honeycomb, unfortunately they do kind of deserve a lot of this bad reputation and I hope they’re able to turn it around, because I want them to succeed. It’s better for everyone.
And really, all it would take is some transparency. Tell people what’s going on with their support ticket. Tell people why launch dates/release dates/preorder dates are missed (sometimes by a year or more). Give us more than an oddly tersely-worded copy-paste post on your Facebook, devoid of any personality. The morale there must not be very good, to see how they handle these things, and when I see everyone piling on them I can see why. It must not be very fun to be a small company who’s in a niche market and trying to flex the same supply chain muscles as the big Turtle Beaches and Thrustmasters.
tl;dr well-made, innovative products that have enhanced my love of the sim immensely; just talk to us every now and again and let us know what’s going on 
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Absolutely!! If they had just communicated things would have been a lot better. I know they are a small company and are using a third party for their logistics for shipping etc, but at least respond to people when they try to contact you and let them know their support ticket didn’t go into a black hole. In 6 weeks they never once answered their phone as listed on the website nor returned any voicemails and it literally took 2 full weeks before I got any response from anyone other than the initial automated email about receiving my ticket.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t honestly imagine they have so many people with active support issues that it took them two weeks to get to mine with no time to communicate in between that they would get to it or were slammed with tickets or something. If that’s the case then maybe they have a serious product longetivity issue i.e. poor design somewhere causing mass amounts of failures.
I don’t think Honeycomb are reading this.
I got good support from their agent Aerosoft here in Europe, but I must admit that the responses to my initial support requests direct to Honeycomb were very slow and not particularly helpful. When they eventually directed me to Aerosoft for support things went smoothly.
I only have the Alpha yoke. I like it a lot, but there is a design weakness in the choice of connectors for the cable between the yoke handle and the base assembly which were never designed for the repeated straining movement of the cable, and that is what caused the failure of my original unit. I hope the replacement lasts longer than the first one. The cable supplied with the replacement does seem to be made of slightly less rigid material and can be stretched a bit to provide more flexibility, so here’s hoping.
Yeah unfortunately being in the US we don’t get to use Aerosoft for support. I actually contacted them early on before I heard from honeycomb originally to see if they could ping them or knew if something was going on with the US crew and got a response from them quickly. They weren’t able to help other than to let me know that the US crew was still around, but at least it was a response.
100% agree about the communication. No one likes bad news about an RMA or the launch of a new product but you have to be honest. I judge all companies on not how they do when things work as expected but how they deal with problems. The best ones keep the customer in the loop at all times and are the instigators of communication rather than letting the customers do the chasing.
I don’t agree that the HC stuff is well made. I think this is partly the reason why the RMA’s are so bad. They have some bad design decisions to live with now in supporting their products. The yoke cable has been an issue for many users and the Bravo internal wiring is also an issue. Hopefully they have realised this and design those issues out in future production. They have helped get many a user into Flight sim gear at a moderate price point so deserve credit for that and I agree it’s better for everyone if they do well which helps maintain choice in the market.
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Fair points and well said!
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