Author Topic: Bought GSX Pro right before the discount  (Read 2027 times)

jeremytm

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Bought GSX Pro right before the discount
« on: July 14, 2023, 10:53:32 am »
I purchased maybe 3 or 4 days before the new discounts.

Is there any chance you'd please consider refunding me part of the price? Or am I just unlucky? :-[

I had actually contacted support for a full refund as I didn't realise the product was still so bumpy given the price. However, if I'm able to keep it with the discount price that would be a nice compromise and a kind gesture of good faith.

Captain Kevin

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Re: Bought GSX Pro right before the discount
« Reply #1 on: July 14, 2023, 11:37:32 am »
By your logic, should they refund everyone else the discount.
Captain Kevin

virtuali

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Re: Bought GSX Pro right before the discount
« Reply #2 on: July 15, 2023, 12:32:12 am »
I had actually contacted support for a full refund as I didn't realise the product was still so bumpy given the price. However, if I'm able to keep it with the discount price that would be a nice compromise and a kind gesture of good faith.

Let's set the facts straight:

- you contacted support because you thought the product was "bumpy given the price", with a bullet list of exactly 5 points you "assumed" where GSX issues.

- you have been immediately replied to (your email came about midnight of July 9th, you have been replied to at 7:12 in the next morning), with a proper answer, clearly explaining that, of your 5 bullet points, 4 or them were caused by not having read the manual, because they all asked things very well known, ALL with an answer in the manual:

1) the toolbar menu supposedly having to be clicked twice, because you didn't use the hotkey or the x icon to close it.

2) the "gate too small" message, which GSX has so many ways to deal with it.

3) you thought the GSX menu closing automatically after a making choice was a bug.

4) GSX asking to turn off the engines because you called it too late after taxiing when you are already inside the parking radius.

The 5th point in your list of "bugs", said "vehicles drivers through themselves", which sometimes can happen, and of course you have been given the suggestion that, this issue could be greatly reduced when using a GSX airport profile, pointing to a place where you could find many.

You never answered to this email, so I could only guess you accepted the explanation that, out of 5 issues, 4 of them were caused by not having read the manual, and the last one could be improved a lot by using profiles.

And, it's not even true you "contacted support for a full refund". I'm quoting your own words here about it:

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Perhaps you can help me with these issues. But if not I would like to please and kindly request a refund.…

This, to me, seems to indicate you only wanted a refund in case we failed to help you with these issues. You never replied about this to say the help you got wasn't satisfactory enough, so you wanted to go ahead with your refund request.

Instead, you took came here, knowing well it's absurd asking for a refund with the reason there's no a Sale (everybody buys a full price "before a sale", that's how sales works...), so you use the argument you already discussed a refund, without saying you wanted in case we couldn't help you ? Sorry, no.

Sales can happen at any time, if we said that a Sale discount could be applied retroactively to users that bought something, let's say, 24 hours before, we would still get complains about somebody bought it the 25 hours, asking for an exception, but would this be fair to those that bought it 26 hours before ? Clearly, there's only ONE way to deal with this, and it's very simple: respect the Sale terms precisely, no exceptions.

jeremytm

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Re: Bought GSX Pro right before the discount
« Reply #3 on: July 18, 2023, 01:02:34 am »
Sorry for the delayed response. I thought I'd get an email when people respond directly to a thread I created, just based on defaults from other forums.

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By your logic, should they refund everyone else the discount.

Oh no not at all, just people who recently purchased it. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

It's not uncommon for companies with "customer centric" approaches to allow people who recently purchased a product to receive a partial refund or store credit. Amazon does this for example. Apple customers are eligible to receive a refund for the price difference if the product they purchased drops in price within a specific period (usually 14 days) after the purchase. Target and Walmart have similar policies.

In the gaming world it's also fairly common for certain companies (like Steam and EPIC) to ensure customers feel safe when purchasing their products, making refunds easy if a user is disappointed with their purchase.

My own company operates this way too.

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you have been immediately replied to

I haven't received any emails in response, either to acknowledge receipt of my request nor any official reply. I sent direct from my email client to your support address so the gmail address you have for me must be correct. I have checked spam.

I received an email to alert me of new posts in the discounts forum though, so my ability to receive emails is ok.

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1) the toolbar menu supposedly having to be clicked twice, because you didn't use the hotkey or the x icon to close it.

This one is confusion on my end. I believe this was due to the //42 Flow menu. They recently released an update and I no longer need to click twice. I was led to believe it was the fault of GSX because all the other menu items worked fine on first click. My apologies for the mistake here.

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2) the "gate too small" message, which GSX has so many ways to deal with it.

There may be a bug here. Of the many ways to deal with it, I have tried ticking the "Ignore wingspan when parking" option. However I still get the call-out "too small for this aircraft" including when selecting a parking spot after landing, despite this option being checked. I'm expecting to be told it is just my mistake or a misunderstanding here though.

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3) you thought the GSX menu closing automatically after a making choice was a bug.

My apologies. I didn't realise it was supposed to close after an action is selected. Even after popping-out into it's own window for easy access next time, the window just goes black. If this is intentional then I understand but I'd add a feature request that if the user has opened in an independent window that it remain available, if for no other reason than to meet a basic expectation of UI experience.

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4) GSX asking to turn off the engines because you called it too late after taxiing when you are already inside the parking radius.

I was still on a taxi-way quite far away from the terminal about half-way between end of runway and the main terminal apron, and the park was far end of the terminal at a large airport. If this is a feature then I stand corrected, but I must say as far as user-experience goes, the inability to simply open the GSX Pro menu at any point can feel jarring.

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The 5th point in your list of "bugs"

I will add a new one to the list:

- The volume controls for the voice announcements don't seem to have any effect. I have set both volume sliders to the lowest (just to cover all bases) and the main voice is still loud.

While we're here just a query: Is there any way to do multiple grounds services at the same time? e.g. boarding + catering at the same time, or is it all one-at-a-time?

I get I made some mistakes and had some misunderstandings, but I stand by the opinion that the overall experience does not justify the full price. The things that are common complaints but are really "features" should be communicated to the user better in-game to help mitigate perceived problems. Just my opinion.
« Last Edit: July 18, 2023, 01:10:03 am by jeremytm »

jeremytm

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Re: Bought GSX Pro right before the discount
« Reply #4 on: July 18, 2023, 01:05:24 am »
I must say overall, the tone of response here by both the developers and your community has felt rather aggressive and almost hostile, condescending at least.

I was (and remain, with fixes) very excited to buy and use GSX Pro, and I had hoped, perhaps a little naively that 10+ months after launch a lot of the early bugs reported by others and in various YouTube videos had been fixed.

I concede I didn't read the 100 page manual, because I thought—admittedly mistakenly—that I could get a basic level of quality out of the box. I can't emphasise enough how big of a difference a few carefully placed messages, helpers and warnings in-game would make to aleviate things for both users and developers.

I gently suggest you guys check out the recent interview with the developers of BeyondATC for an excellent approach to user-experience.

I should mention I looked for a trial, and despite certain forum posts saying a trial was available if I already owned one of your other products—which by definition means it's not really a trial if I have to pay—I could not find any official confirmation of this.

I would strongly urge you to provide a genuine/free trial to users so they can get a proper understanding of what they are buying. You are very confident in your product so I would hope this would be an easy decision and could lead to more sales.

As a fellow game developer I know it's hard, and what you guys are building must be exceptionally so.

Thank you for taking on this challenge. GSX Pro is objectively a net-positive for the flight-sim community. Overall I am still excited about this product and really look forward to purchasing again if you do decide to grant a refund or the discount, or if your decision remains "sorry, no" then I accept this and look forward to continued fixes and improvements.

Based on your responses, I can only assume you must deal with a lot of people who deserve the tone of response you gave. For that I am sorry, and it was not my intention to come across that way.

I'm just a customer who recently got back into flight sim, got excited to purchase your product and give it a chance despite the warnings, and genuinely felt disheartened with the experience I received given the price I paid. If I am wrong here, I apologise.
« Last Edit: July 19, 2023, 10:28:50 am by virtuali »

virtuali

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Re: Bought GSX Pro right before the discount
« Reply #5 on: July 19, 2023, 10:58:22 am »
Written replies don't have any "tone". Well, not really, they DO have one, one that can easily mistaken for a "tone", because written statements tend to be more assertive than the spoken word, and that's because I try to be as accurate and precise as I can be.

Being as accurate as possible, might make the reply to sound more hard than it really is, but is in fact doing you a much better service, in the end, because while a more courteous and corporate "tone", that is designed to tell you exactly nothing, but makes you feel better (without telling anything), is what formally trained support people use, which is not what I am, I a developer, so you can be sure you'll always get the truth from me, the USEFUL truth, and sometimes the useful truth might sound more harsh than how it's intended.

BTW, I see you sent today another email saying you were never replied to. You HAVE been replied to, of course, so I sent you another copy of the email you should have received on the 10th.

Let's see all your 5 points, again:

1) You apologize for this, thank you.


2) The parking too small message.

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I have tried ticking the "Ignore wingspan when parking" option. However I still get the call-out "too small for this aircraft" including when selecting a parking spot after landing, despite this option being checked. I'm expecting to be told it is just my mistake or a misunderstanding here though.

Let me clarify here:

You will STILL see the parking LABELED as being too small, even if you check the "Ignore wingspan when parking" settings. This is of course intentional, because we still want you to KNOW that, according to the data GSX has, the parking IS too small for your aircraft.

However, enabling that ignore setting, will remove the audio message you normally get when the setting is disabled, and won't show the warning when you start a flight there.

3) The menu closing after choosing an option:

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Even after popping-out into it's own window for easy access next time, the window just goes black. If this is intentional then I understand but I'd add a feature request that if the user has opened in an independent window that it remain available, if for no other reason than to meet a basic expectation of UI experience.

Yes, of course it's intentional, the whole concept of a "pinned menu" simply doesn't exists in GSX, first because it's not really needed, because most of the operations are called, last for a while and during that time, you don't really need the menu to be open, that's why a pinned menu is not really useful.

But there's also a performance issue because, keeping the menu pinned, would mean it should be kept refreshed, with its entries possibly updated to reflect any changes in the operation status (changes that now are conveyed to you by using the text messages on top), and this constant refresh might affect performances for little benefit, while now the menu refreshes ONLY when you open it, so nothing is done in the background to keep up updated.

So, again, it just how the program is DESIGNED, not a bug.

4) GSX supposedly asking to stop the engines when you are still taxiing.

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I was still on a taxi-way quite far away from the terminal about half-way between end of runway and the main terminal apron, and the park was far end of the terminal at a large airport. If this is a feature then I stand corrected, but I must say as far as user-experience goes, the inability to simply open the GSX Pro menu at any point can feel jarring.

So you were outside the parking spot you selected but, maybe, you were inside ANOTHER parking, so GSX was correct expecting to turn off the engines because, from its point of view, you simply decided not to use the parking you selected, and went into another one, and when you are inside a parking spot, you must turn off the engines to call GSX.

Without knowing *exactly* your position and all the data about the scenery in use, it's not possible to say more about this. It's even possible you weren't inside another parking, but from GSX point of view, you were.

This can happen if you are using a 3rd party scenery, but you forgot to Disable GSX replacement jetways for that airport, which MUST be done, as explained in the GSX Manual at Page 7, under the "IMPORTANT" heading.

Failing to do so, as the manual says, would introduce a parking position conflict, making GSX getting data about parking spot for the wrong scenery, so it's telling you are inside a parking, one that came with the scenery you were supposed to Disable.


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- The volume controls for the voice announcements don't seem to have any effect. I have set both volume sliders to the lowest (just to cover all bases) and the main voice is still loud.

That is true, the audio alerts are made using a different method that is not controlled by the GSX normal Volume slider, because that only controls the sounds of the vehicles, not the aural alerts. That's not really a "bug", more like a missing feature due to the different class of those audio alerts, which would probably require a separate volume slider. However, you CAN disable those alerts, in the Settings.

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I get I made some mistakes and had some misunderstandings, but I stand by the opinion that the overall experience does not justify the full price.

Even after going through your list again, we can only confirm that none of the issues your reported were really "bugs", and could be dealt with a knowledge of the product, gained by reading its manual.

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The things that are common complaints but are really "features" should be communicated to the user better in-game to help mitigate perceived problems. Just my opinion.

You are free to voice your opinion, but you must be prepared to being it challenged. GSX IS a complex product, with a manual 94 pages long, and most of the things you labeled as "issues", already had an explanation in the manual and, if something is still missing, I'm not sure increasing the manual length would have helped in your case, since you clearly missed things we ARE in there.