dgger wrote:P.S.: Since it came up, I would like to point out that I do not share any grudges regarding DAI customer support. Your experiences might have been different, but I personally have not ever received anything, but stellar service from anyone at Diamond in either Austria, Germany or Canada.
Interesting... So how do you rate inability to do any serious upgrade at acceptable price? Like WAAS upgrade or upgrade of G1000 software? CD-155 upgrade? G700 upgrade? Stellar service
ememic99 wrote:Interesting... So how do you rate inability to do any serious upgrade at acceptable price? Like WAAS upgrade or upgrade of G1000 software? CD-155 upgrade? G700 upgrade? Stellar service
Sure, pricing and availabilty of upgrades are both issues. The context here was safety. And for me repairs, maintenance and service are phantastic in terms of professionalism and speed.
Repairs, service and maintenance are one topic and support of your customer base is another one. You can easily make comparison with car industry or IT and find a lot of examples how proper customer support looks like.
One way to distinguish the two perspectives seen here is that Diamond does well in activities that generate direct, short-term revenue and not so well in activities that show support for their customer base in ways that do not map directly to short-term financial gains.
The former services are likely to reflect the values of the mid-level managers whose incentives are tied to service revenue and margins. The latter, lower quality services are likely to reflect the values of leadership. You have to think strategically and in the long term to ensure the timely release of software upgrades that prevent customers from having to spend needless time and money on work-arounds.
My mobile communications provider is always very helpful, friendly, and responsive whenever I want to spend more money. On the other hand, they wait for me to force the issue whenever I might be eligible for a price reduction based on new promotions offered to non-customers. The effect of this behavior is that I feel no loyalty to the company.
While comparisons are generally odious, I will say that Diamond compares well with Textron (Cessna) and many of the other manufacturers in their service. I've had many dealings with Diamond over the years and have always found them to be responsive.
I'd like to have a better software upgrade path, but the situation with Garmin owning the G1000 STC is maddening and makes it nearly impossible for Diamond to provide updates in a timely manner. On the other hand, the updates are free and other manufacturers' updates are expensive.
To this end, your examples of updates like a GFC 700, GTX 345R, and so forth all have one thing in common: Garmin. We're trapped in the classic tech "roach motel": customers go into a tech platform and can then can't get out. Our collective choice of an integrated avionics platform puts both us and Diamond at an expensive disadvantage.
pietromarx wrote:I'd like to have a better software upgrade path, but the situation with Garmin owning the G1000 STC is maddening and makes it nearly impossible for Diamond to provide updates in a timely manner.
I’m not sure but I think that G1000 STC for DA42 is not owned by Garmin, I believe others can confirm this.
I believe you're right: only the DA-40 / G1000 STC is owned by Garmin, I think mostly due to the fact that it was the very first airframe to have the avionics deck.
