Aloft Taranis Support is Awful!

[ftherrmann]

Tried several ways to contact Aloft Hobbies for technical support. Simple question which would have been will the LCD $17 replacement fix the "Factory Defect" on my Taranis screen or would I need to order the main board + LCD screen ($70).

Email, phone, Aloft contact form and nothing. No response, No screw you. ZIP, NADA, Went ahead and ordered the $17 LCD screen to fix my Taranis V1 and luckily the replacement worked.

Thanks for NOTHING Aloft. I'll remember this before I buy Taranis again and will also share this experience. Simply moving the boxes and pocketing the money isn't a way to run a business. Good luck.



Here's the response and my reply I got from Aloft on their FB page:

Aloft Hobbies Now Fred, I'm sorry we did not answer your email right away, but I don't think this is fair. Your email was of a technical matter, and it is hard to find qualified people to answer technical questions. We simply do not have enough staff to answer all of our tech emails as quick as we would like.
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• Reply • 1 hr

Aloft Hobbies We do an awful lot to bring improvements to the hobby and the FrSky ecosystem. I think our overall track record shows this very well. We do work very hard to take good care of our customers.
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• Reply • 1 hr

Fred Herrmann Aloft Hobbies I dare to disagree. FrSky along with its OpenTx is built largely on the unpaid work of developers who YOU make your money off of, unlike Spectrum, Futaba and others.

Which leads me to the outright theft of the intellectual property shown in the V1 Taranis which is obviously a physical copy of a Spectrum radio.
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Fred Herrmann "Fred, I'm sorry we did not answer your email right away..."

Oh baloney! I made my first attempt to contact you on Monday, before I ordered the LCD screen.

You had enough time to run the charge for the LCD screen.

You had enough time to ship the LCD screen.

But you didn't have enough time to provide a simple one line, or maybe even one word answer to my question by Friday!

Word is getting around. Here's a response from a person in another RC group that I got a few minutes after I posted my Aloft experience... "Yep, same problem here. I contacted Aloft about an issue with a receiver several days ago......no response." - MD

I've actually received better product support from Hobby King!

Like I told you on the phone: If you're really that "sorry" refund the $20 I spent repairing the Taranis factory defect.

PS: Other, respected manufacturer's have treated LCD trace de-lamination as a factory defect and in my own experience have actually replaced the LCD along with the entire microprocessor that was attached to it.

[jhsa]

Aloft has been known for their extremely good costumer support.
I am not questioning your experience, but I find hard to believe according to all I have read about them all these years.
Maybe they are really short in personnel, and can't deal with so many questions and orders..
Frsky has grown in the last couple years and aloft seems to be their most important agent..
João


Sent from my thor using Tapatalk

[rotozuk]

This guy is a real treat.

His main complaint is that the display on his older Taranis radio (not a plus) had some lines in the screen. Keep in mind we offer a 1 year warranty on everything we sell. Heck, I have not even looked to see if he bought the radio from us or not. We failed to answer his email in a timely fashion. (I was on vacation, and we got behind on our technical emails.) He ordered up the part he wanted, we shipped it ASAP, and he installed it and fixed the issue. Great. Then he starts beating us up on emails and Facebook. It comes to my attention. I answer him and even refund him the cost of his entire order and here he is beating us up here.

No wonder we don't have time to answer people's tech emails when I have to run around the internet putting out fires from guys like this. Sorry, to bitch, but what do we have to do? Look at his claims in the message above, he is spreading false rumors and does not know his facts.

I hate to say it, but yesh, we have a hard time answering all of the emails we get. Forget the phones, we may never be able to answer enough phone calls. We get calls and emails from people that have not even bought their gear from us? Why, because we try to help people out. It gets old real fast.

I'm sorry if this feels mean, but I am just a little too tired at this point to put on my charm. We have been working our butts off to make this hobby a little better and help push some cool new products along. We work closely with our manufacturers, the Open Team and many others to do some really cool stuff in the hobby, but sometimes all of that is lost and the only thing people can see if the last few hours.

OK - I have more work to do.. I have done what I can for this customer, I hope he can see that now.

-Wayne

[jhsa]

Oh Wayne, you refunded the money??

ftherrmann, I think you owe Wayne an apology.. Let's be fair, you have fixed your out of warranty radio for free. No need to bash aloft further..

João

[rotozuk]

Fred, did you even buy the Taranis from Aloft? I don't see an invoice for you buying one from us. Please keep in mind that we are not the manufacturer of FrSky radios.

[Kilrah]

There are dorks everywhere...

[andrewju]

Some months (probably about a year) ago I had an issue with an FrSky XJT bought at Aloft. I sent an e-mail with a question, and got no response for a day or two. So I resent my question again and got a real fast reply from David Chernus. The response contained a good suggestion to troubleshoot the issue, as well as an offer to exchange the XJT in question with another one. Oh, and it started with an apology for not answering my first e-mail in a timely manner! Back then, I fixed the issue myself, which I reported back to David and got his 'Thanks for following up' back, as well as some technical comments. It surely wasn't an automated response like "Your call is very important to us. Please hold while we transfer you to another answering machine..."

Maybe it's just me, but I'm absolutely happy with the service I got from Aloft. I can imagine the amount of orders, questions and just friendly (or even not-so-friendly) requests Aloft team has to face each and every day. So missing an e-mail is not a big deal, really. I felt they care about me and are willing to help me to solve my issue, and that is important!

[bob195558]

Aloft Hobbies is the BEST ! VERY
Thank you Wayne for all your help and support over the years.
I just received from you, two new M9 Gimbals for my Taranis-x9d and look
forward to installing them and checking out how they perform.
Good price, Good shipping cost and very fast delivery time !

I pray ftherrmann will have peace and understanding with the difficulties of this fallen world.
Seeking the heart of Jesus Christ can lead to what God's original plan will be.
If there may be health concerns, see this info: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbglsrqwHVQ) it will be a Blessing.

Bob B.

[mrunx]

When I first read the subject, I though you mistyped awesome as awful.

I can only say I wish more businesses cared about their customers as much as Wayne and the aloft team do!

I don't live in the US, and still I try to buy my FrSky gear from them (except when transatlantic shipping charges become prohibitively expensive, but there's nothing aloft can do about USPS charges).

So you say that a "pre-sales technical question" wasn't timely replied?
Probably because they prioritize taking care of support issues for actual customers (unlike other businesses that will forget about you once they get your hard earned dollars).

Fred Herrmann, I'd say a public apology would be the right thing to do, after your harsh shaming... But it's just me.

Pablo

[OctavioS]

I had a problem with a 6 position switch that i purchased from them. They promptly sent me another upon contact. Absolutely nothing to complain.

[offers]

+1
For aloft

[Rob Thomson]

Oh I love this comment.

-

Which leads me to the outright theft of the intellectual property shown in the V1 Taranis which is obviously a physical copy of a Spectrum radio.

-

Maybe the user should stop making unfounded comments. Pretty sure that back in here day the molds where purchased from Jr who originally used them!

Rob

Sent from my Z Pro using Tapatalk

[RichardPepin]

I can attest that that Aloft are overloaded, but it's not a reason to bash them like that.
My Vantac90 stop working and I contacted them by email. OK, it took a week and a half to answer but they did and apologized for the delay.
After a few emails with David, he asked me to ship it back to him.
Exacly one week after I mailed it, it was fixed and back in my hands. I can't see how I could complain about that.
It turned out the problem was simply my inexperience with quads and they kindly explained to me how to fix it myself if it ever happens again, and at no charge.

With service like that I can wait a week or two.

Envoyé de mon SM-G920W8 en utilisant Tapatalk

[Daedalus66]

Oh I love this comment.
Which leads me to the outright theft of the intellectual property shown in the V1 Taranis which is obviously a physical copy of a Spectrum radio.
Maybe the user should stop making unfounded comments. Pretty sure that back in here day the molds where purchased from Jr who originally used them!
Rob

Just to get things straight, what happened was that a Chinese manufacturer produced a transmitter called the KST that had case based on the design of the JR9303. There were a number of changes, the most important of which was the omission of the programming roller in favor of six buttons (sound familiar?).
The KST transmitter was then discontinued.
Soon after, FrSky came along in need of a case for the new transmitter they were developing. Molds are expensive, so they bought those for the KST. That's why the Taranis looks like a JR9303.
Here's what the KST looked like:
http://www.goodluckbuy.com/kst-t810-2-4 ... opter.html