496 XM weather issues

I'm not so quick to give XM a pass on this problem. I've been in touch with all three of the suspected culprits, Garmin, XM, Weather Worx and the latest information I have is that XM changed their data feed on 1/1/2009 which effects the antennas used by the 396/496 models. After multiple phone calls and speaking to dozens of people over the last few days, I have noticed a real problem with the XM technical staff and management keeping their service agents informed of the problem.

There's also a rumor going around that if you subscribe to the 200+ audio channels (in addition to your aviation package), you don't see the problem. To me, it sound more like an, "OOOps, We forgot about the aviation only people when we made that change, how do we change it back ?"
-M20J
 
Lance: Maybe I didn't see the posts to which you refer. From my perspective, I contract with XM to get this service and lost it at a challenging time. I called their support line and really got the go-around. I have no contractual relationship with Garmin or WXWORX on this. I understand internally Garmin had some software bug and I'm glad it was found. Are you saying those of us that called XM to report the problem and were unhappy it wasn't working should apologyse, or are you referring to comments directed at XM which I may not have seen? My feeling is it was an issue between my service provider and Garmin. I actually expect some credit for not getting the service for which I contracted. Am I missing something here?

Best,

Dave
 
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I checked both the Garmin and the XM Radio websites over the past six days. Neither posted any information to update owners/subscribers about the problem.
 
Yes, none of them seem responsive enough to their customers. I asked about getting status updates from them, since I couldn't seem to find it on their websites. XM said they don't do that, Garmin said they have an aviation blog, but they only posts on Wednesdays. Garmin even suggested that I monitor other 3rd party message boards for answers. And that's why I'm here.

Anyway, I just checked my 496, I'm now receiving the weather feed, so hopefully we are done with this issue.

-M20J
 
Derek at XM did work with several board folks like me, fellas on Beechlist and AvSig to isolate the issue and fix it. He posted the message asking for feedback that I posted on here.

The customer service folks seemed to be in the dark. Derek's communication was informal, but he was trying to work with many folks. 'Course he's just one guy. I really respect Derek's role in this. Seems the team wasn't coordinating it's efforts and communicating with customers through all channels, for sure.

Best,

Dave
 
MooneyMan said:
Yes, none of them seem responsive enough to their customers. I asked about getting status updates from them, since I couldn't seem to find it on their websites. XM said they don't do that, Garmin said they have an aviation blog, but they only posts on Wednesdays. Garmin even suggested that I monitor other 3rd party message boards for answers. And that's why I'm here.

Anyway, I just checked my 496, I'm now receiving the weather feed, so hopefully we are done with this issue.

-M20J
Click to expand...

...an ill wind, indeed, that blows no good.

Drop by again, it's a good place to be, here.
 
MooneyMan said:
Yes, none of them seem responsive enough to their customers. I asked about getting status updates from them, since I couldn't seem to find it on their websites. XM said they don't do that, Garmin said they have an aviation blog, but they only posts on Wednesdays. Garmin even suggested that I monitor other 3rd party message boards for answers. And that's why I'm here.
Click to expand...

Welcome aboard! :yes:

Anyway, I just checked my 496, I'm now receiving the weather feed, so hopefully we are done with this issue.
Click to expand...

Well, I hope you stick around. This is a good place. :yes:
 
Dave Siciliano said:
Lance: Maybe I didn't see the posts to which you refer. From my perspective, I contract with XM to get this service and lost it at a challenging time. I called their support line and really got the go-around. I have no contractual relationship with Garmin or WXWORX on this. I understand internally Garmin had some software bug and I'm glad it was found. Are you saying those of us that called XM to report the problem and were unhappy it wasn't working should apologyse, or are you referring to comments directed at XM which I may not have seen?
Click to expand...

The latter. I agree (and AFaIK Derek has concurred) that XM's customer service response to WX users has been less than I like. The point I was trying to make is that (as you point out) most subscribers assume that XM is responsible for problems created by the hardware suppliers like Garmin and WxWorks. Having been involved in similar business scenarios I sympathize with service providers stuck in this situation. XM supplies the data feeds, provides the decoder IC, and (hopefully) gives the equipment mfgs the information needed to make it work. When such a manufacturer screws up and their product doesn't work properly the poor customers are stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place. The data supplier has absolutely no control or oversight on the quality or design of the equipment supplied by Garmin yet many of us pilots seem to assume that any issue is XM's fault. That could have been the case here but it clearly wasn't (according to Derek who I trust completely). And even though it wasn't their fault, XM put forth a strong effort to resolve the problem as quickly as possible, even to the extent of modifying their datastream as a workaround and offering a free audio subscription once that was determined to help. IMO XM's technical (vs customer service) response was outstanding yet it appears to me that some of us still harbor some animosity towards XM for causing and/or not fixing the problem more quickly. I strongly believe that that disatisfaction should be aimed squarely at Garmin and that XM deserves a big round of applause.

My feeling is it was an issue between my service provider and Garmin. I actually expect some credit for not getting the service for which I contracted. Am I missing something here?

Best,

Dave
Click to expand...

The only thing I could say you might be missing is that you do indeed have a "contract" with Garmin albeit one that doesn't help you much. For all your (justifiable IMO) reliance on XM weather, your "contract" with Garmin (a very important portion of the weather product) is probably limited to a return/repair/refund of the GPS for the short duration of their limited warranty. But the lack of any legal committment from Garmin to insure that their product continues to provide the service you paid for doesn't place the responsibility for that on XM beyond XM's living up to them continuing to provide a datastream that meets the specifications they provided to Garmin.
 
I'm still not clear on the root cause.

In order for it to be Garmin's fault, the XM receivers they sold must have not met specifications (due to a hardware or software error) that rendered them unable to work with the data stream they received, assuming that data stream did not change.
If the data stream DID change, then Garmin is only at fault if the specifications anticipated such changes and the hardware was supposed to accomodate it, and failed to do so.

If the data stream did change, I have to wonder why the change wasn't tested better. Even if the root problem is that Garmin hardware didn't cope with the change properly, XM/WxWorx should have done sufficient testing to know of this problem in advance. A good change control process would have tested and caught this, or at the very least would have reduced the time it took to troubleshoot.

All the griping we sometimes do about the rigor and cost of certifying a product for aviation - this sort of thing is what certified stuff is supposed to (and generally does) prevent from happening.
 
TMetzinger said:
I'm still not clear on the root cause.

In order for it to be Garmin's fault, the XM receivers they sold must have not met specifications (due to a hardware or software error) that rendered them unable to work with the data stream they received, assuming that data stream did not change.
If the data stream DID change, then Garmin is only at fault if the specifications anticipated such changes and the hardware was supposed to accomodate it, and failed to do so.

If the data stream did change, I have to wonder why the change wasn't tested better. Even if the root problem is that Garmin hardware didn't cope with the change properly, XM/WxWorx should have done sufficient testing to know of this problem in advance. A good change control process would have tested and caught this, or at the very least would have reduced the time it took to troubleshoot.
Click to expand...

Derek posted elsewhere that the root cause was a bug in Garmin's software that should have (but obviously wasn't) caught in testing. I don't know if the precipitating event was a change in the datastream or a date/time issue but the latter seems more likely since the problem began on Jan 1.
 
I'm just going on hearsay, but I think I heard that this problem didn't occur on Jan 1, but that XM "changed something" on Jan 2 or 3 or so.

It's certainly possible for XM to change something in a "legal way", per their protocol, that turned out to break Garmin software, such that the technical blame lies on the Garmin code.

XM should certainly have a set of typical receivers that they use to monitor their services, and to test changes, but for something "peculiar" like "only applies to units with weather subscriptions but no music", that's very easy to slip through testing. Until you have a "weather but no music" bug, it never occurs to you that it's a possible condition for a bug, so you don't see the need to test for it, and all your test units are setup to receive both weather and music (because "still receives music" _is_ something you need to test for).

But if this was triggered by an XM change, then knowledge of the change should have been sufficiently dispersed within XM to allow for fast correlation between the change and customer service reports of an outage. It seems like this outage lasted several days before XM made some other change, or rolled back some earlier change, to get things working again.

Disclaimer: this is all very hypothetical, given very limited information on the specifics of this case.
-harry
 
Interoperability Testing (IOT) is always the hardest part of any product development where clear published standards may not exist and is still tough even when they do. Companies literally spend 100's of thousands of dollars in trying to ensure that everything interops. But there are always bug fixes and patches that need to go out and full IOT testing does nto alwasy reveal ever problem mostly due to the shear amount of options and configurations that are avialable. That we do not see more problems like this is a testament that 99 and 44/100 % of the time that companies do their best. But mistakes do happen.

I can tell you in the wireless biz there are lots of these issues. Many of which people are not even aware of. That is mostly because we have a very rigorous IOT testing and over the air software, parameter, and provisioning capabilites. So tons of times the updates to your cell phones happens and you do not even know it. Even wireless broadband access points get updated over the Internet without people always knowing it is happening.

Customer Service is the problem here. There are always broken links between CS and Engineering. Msot companies have a very bare bones CS organization with people who only know how to deal with common problems. When something like this happens getting the word out is near immposible. That this Derek person did keep people in the loop speaks well for him. Knowing how most companies work he will undoubtly get into trouble for making the CS VP look bad instead of being given a pat on the back.
 
Looks like Garmin has put up a new rev of software for the 396/496/696:
Changes made from version 4.50 to 4.60:


  • Improved XM data validation for XM subscribers with weather data only.
-harry
 
hm,
Thanks for the info on the Garmin update mine went from 3.6 to 3.7 on the 496.
Joe
 
mantakos said:
Looks like Garmin has put up a new rev of software for the 396/496/696:
Changes made from version 4.50 to 4.60:

  • Improved XM data validation for XM subscribers with weather data only.
Click to expand...
Where are you people finding v4.60?

My software update is v3.7.
 
My software update is v3.7.
Click to expand...
The version numbers for the different products aren't in sync. The latest version for the 396 is called 4.6, the latest version for the 496 is called 3.7. I wouldn't attribute any real significance to this difference in version numbers.

So if you want to run 4.6, you need to upgrade your 496 to a 396. :)
-harry
 
mantakos said:
The version numbers for the different products aren't in sync. The latest version for the 396 is called 4.6, the latest version for the 496 is called 3.7. I wouldn't attribute any real significance to this difference in version numbers.
So if you want to run 4.6, you need to upgrade your 496 to a 396. :)
-harry
Click to expand...


Thank you!
I think I will keep my 496, though.
 
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