Avidyne tech support hung up on me...cancel purchase?

SloRoam

SloRoam

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SloRoam
Just bought 12k worth of avidyne: a ifd440 plus axp322 transponder. Goods were ordered yesterday so still en route.

Called avidyne tech support just now with a detailed question per my a&p to clarify pros and cons of efis/airdata protocol vs gad42 suggested in their manual. Needed this to know what encoder to order.

The rep spoke over me, ignored what I said and repeatedly reiterated useless information I had told them moments ago, then when asked about whether adsb could come in on serial vs 429, told me they were going to hang up on me and did so.

Bottom line: spent $12,000 last night: first tech support call the rep purposefully hung up on me.

Should I cancel the order is this an isolated thing?

What have been your support experiences with avidyne?
 
I would call that an isolated thing. I have had nothing but good experiences with Avidyne tech support. Do you remember who you talked to?
ADS-B weather and traffic goes in via RS232, if you have the right kind of receiver. I think you may be able to get traffic in via ARINC429, but not weather.
You need to use an altitude encoder with RS232, as the AXP322 doesn't have a Gray code input, if you want to connect directly to the AXP322. However, you can hook a Gray code encoder to the IFD and it will send the altitude information via the RS232 handshake connection between the IFD and the AXP322.
 
Jesse Saint said:
. Do you remember who you talked to?
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I wouldn't want to say: what if this one call was 1/1000 calls for this person... We have all had bad days and bad calls.. More concerned if they are not open to providing info and general attitude toward customers.
 
I've had nothing but top-notch responsiveness from Avidyne; IFD440 and AXP340.
 
call back and talk to someone else. may be that dude you spoke to is a pilot and is pizzed off because he is being tracked by someone sitting in his mothers basement after he spent a good chink of money of ADSB
 
Rude...but at least he didn't say "hold please" and then take lunch. I've seen that first hand while talking to Best Buy employees at the store. They giggled all the way out of sight.
 
SloRoam said:
Called avidyne tech support ..

The rep spoke over me, ignored what I said and repeatedly reiterated useless information I had told them moments ago, then when asked about whether adsb could come in on serial vs 429, told me they were going to hang up on me and did so.
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At Sun N Fun I had a not hard technical question. The Avidyne booth staff was completely clueless. They said come back in a few minutes and talk to our technical guy. I did and this guy just babbled around repeating what I said and slinked away.

Probably the same useless guy. :7)

-David
 
Fella comes into the drugstore all pi$$ed off that the pharmacist/owner spoke rudely to his wife.

Owner says, please sir, listen to me. I was late getting up this morning and the car wouldn't start so I hoofed it a mile and a half with an umbrella that leaked. I got here and found I had forgotten the key at home, so I went back home (in the rain), got the key and opened up with a half dozen angry customers wanting their prescriptions filled. I went to make change for one of the customers, found I was out of quarters, went two blocks down the street (in the rain) to the bank and got a roll of quarters, went to break it open and spilled a full roll of quarters on the floor. Started to pick them up when your wife peeked over the counter and asked me how to use a rectal thermometer. I went to get up to answer her, hit my head on the open cash register drawer, and forgive me sir, I told her.

Sometimes stuff happens.

JIm
 
I've found that it's difficult to get tech support for panel mount units to speak to end users about much more than really surface level stuff. Garmin tech support really doesn't like speaking with non-dealers, and while some of their folks can be pretty willing and helpful, others will basically stonewall you and insist you call a dealer.
 
Someone who doesn’t realize how important their customers are needs to be in a position that doesn’t require customer contact. Maybe he had a bad day, but the company needs to know that this happened.

In the late eighties I ended up in a small, fast growing software company when there were only thirteen of us. As we grew, one of my responsibilities was technical support, and as the company grew it became a pretty good size group and hard to keep staffed adequately. I had a guy that was acceptable technically, but not very endearing. I had been working with him about his manner with customers. One day he told one of our best customers engineers; “sorry lady, I can’t help you, you need a psychologist or a priest.” After calling and getting his last pay check, I showed him the door. IMHO customers are too hard to get to risk losing them over lack of courtesy.

We too tried to deal with application developers rather than end users, but if an end user got us on the phone, they deserved every bit as much courtesy as the technical users.
 
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MBDiagMan said:
Someone who doesn’t realize how important their customers are needs to be in a position that doesn’t require customer contact. Maybe he had a bad day, but the company needs to know that this happened.

In the late nineties I ended up in a small, fast growing software company when there were only thirteen of us. As we grew, one of my responsibilities was technical support, and as the company grew it became a pretty good size group and hard to keep staffed adequately. I had a guy that was acceptable technically, but not very endearing. I had been working with him about his manner with customers. One day he told one of our best customers engineers; “sorry lady, I can’t help you, you need a psychologist or a priest.” After calling and getting his last pay check, I showed him the door. IMHO customers are too hard to get to risk losing them over lack of courtesy.

We too tried to deal with application developers rather than end users, but if an end user got us on the phone, they deserved every bit as much courtesy as the technical users.
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This. Unfortunately, sometimes technical or specialized expertise and interpersonal skills don’t go together.
 
I found it's best to try to keep the engineers from talking to the customers. It eventually goes bad unless the customer is also an engineering type.
 
Update: called back, was assured this wasn't how they wanted to treat customers, they were contrite, gut says to trust them.

Appreciate the replies.
 
nauga said:
"Never trust an engineer. Under pressure they tend to blurt out the truth."

Nauga,
and Smiley
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I’m an engineer and I always tell the truth. It has served me well for almost 70 years. How is it that you can’t trust someone who always tells the truth? If you can’t trust someone who always tells the truth, who in the world CAN you trust?

In the case of the OP’s situation, telling the truth had nothing to do with it. The guy was rude, not necessarily untruthful.
 
But basically, to answer your question, go with a solid state encoder like the Trans-Cal. Rs232 output, no warm up time, bulletproof, and cheap.
 
asicer said:
I thought @EdFred was making a veiled reference to:
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While a funny movie and yes that video did cross my mind when posting I actually have to deal with customers and technical guys at our suppliers and I generally don't want the technical guys to talk directly to the customers unless the customers are engineers because it's not what they say it's how they say it.
 
EdFred said:
While a funny movie and yes that video did cross my mind when posting I actually have to deal with customers and technical guys at our suppliers and I generally don't want the technical guys to talk directly to the customers unless the customers are engineers because it's not what they say it's how they say it.
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Yep. And I am (or was) an engineer. And I supervise engineers. Engineers with people skills are few and far between. Engineers (good ones) live and die by small details and anticipating every exception. And they can't turn it off to answer a simple question...
Screen Shot 2019-05-10 at 8.36.13 AM.png Yes, it's a joke but one with truth in it. The "Abandon all hope of a useful answer" is the relevant frame...
 
I would try again on the theory it is an isolated incident. But I also have a rule which has served me well:

The best customer service you will ever receive is when the vendor is trying to sell you something.

(I've gone to Avidyne support with questions and received clear and good answers, and I'm not a customer.)
 
SloRoam said:
Just bought 12k worth of avidyne: a ifd440 plus axp322 transponder. Goods were ordered yesterday so still en route.

Called avidyne tech support...
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Well, there's your first mistake. Whatever possessed you to call Avidyne tech support instead of posting a thread and getting superb, expert, utterly unbiased and completely cost free advice from PoA? What on earth were you thinking?
Okay, we'll let it go this time. But...
 
I am with Spike and Jesse on this. I've had nothing but good experiences with Avidyne customer service.
 
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