Replacement hardware

So I have a friend that had the tail servo port of his neo stop responding. He sent it in for repair and he is being told that you would offer a discount on a new Neo.

My question is, if he already owns the license for a Pro Rescue Neo, why does he have to buy a Neo basic to have his license transferred to it? The vbasic is identical hardware to the Neo basic with only software differences. A vbasic can be paid to be upgraded to a Neo basic. So why not allow folks with faulty hardware to purchase a vbasic and have their Neo licenses transferred to it? This way Mikado is still able to make some money on the hardware without requiring someone to pay twice for the Neo basic license??

Hello,

if a device has a non-warranty issue we offer the customer a hughe discount on the same device as it was initially. Also the licenses were transferred. By the law - there is no need for doing this at all. Anyway - we do - on good will - but under the same conditions as it was bought initially. This is our service decision for all such cases.

It would be nice to know the service case number - and it would even be better if your friend posts personally here. It is imho not a good idea to speak through 3rd persons ;-(

regards (EN) / Gruss (DE)

Rainer Vetter

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I'll ask him to chime in, but I wasn't speaking of him directly, more so the policy.

The discount is not huge, in fact the discount in right around the same price as buying a new Neo in the states on sale when you factor in the $25 service charge.

My point was simply that A vbasic is around 125, the Neo basic is around 250. They are the exact same hardware so one could presume that the 125 difference goes towards the "Neo basic" license. When the hardware is damaged, why must the license be thrown out as well? If Mikado were to allow an individual to purchase a vbasic and transfer their neo licensing of whatever level they own to the vbasic that seems a lot more fair.

I love Mikado products and support the company as a consumer in whatever way I can. If this is what it takes for Mikado to stay in business and continue developing then I support that 100%. However, I will say, that these units are very expensive and if Mikado is financially secure I would think that the right thing to do would be to provide a reasonable price on replacement hardware when the license is already owned.

I also didn't say anything about any legalities, nor did I wish to imply any. I just wanted to shine a little light on an issue I've personally seen mentioned by a few other people.

Okay - thanks for your point of view to discuss it.

I am sure that my colleque from service will answer here next week as soon as he is in the office again.

regards (EN) / Gruss (DE)

Rainer Vetter

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Posting and answering - please use a PC and a standard keyboard. Answer all questions fully, take the needed time, don't forget probably requested attachments.

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Hi,

first, we are only talking about catalog prices, not discount/sale prices. If a dealer offers a sale price, the better for you.
Please always consider that he's giving away something he's supposed to make a living from ... I find that many consumers take sale and discount prices for granted, and tend to think that there's always more headroom in it ... my personal opinion. I'm a customer and consumer, too, and I try and respect the manufacturer or dealer anyway, although I also try and get the most product for the money I earn. Nothing wrong about that

Also, we live in a world with different taxation, import fees, exchange rates and of course shipping costs to different countries and especially overseas, which add up differently for bulk orders (to distributors, and then locally to dealers) or for single shipments.
So you can only to a certain degree compare prices here and there.

Then, yes, we have the same hardware for VBasic as for VBar NEO Express, and the price difference are the options and the software on the unit as well as to set it up, from 'simple receiver with macrocells' to 'gyros enabled, heli flybarless system, setup wizards etc.'.
Consumer benefit: you can not buy wrong, in the end the price for a fully updated VBasic is virtually the same as for an Express fully updated, and even switchers from non VLink to VLink do not have to sell or ditch the original hardware and buy new, since the V2 generation hardware, since approx. Q3 2016.

So if we offer a considerable discount on hardware, based on goodwill, as a manufacturer, and only in exchange for a damaged unit where the damage is not covered by warranty, means where there is no manufacturing or parts fault involved, it's usually and logically for a unit equal or better, compared to the one returned.
And if a customer decides to go with a replacement, we do not charge the service fee, never did , although we did work on the returned unit to inspect it.

In any case, warranty or goodwill, we offer a voucher code so you can continue using the license you purchased for using your original unit. Exception: a Pro license from a legacy unit can not be transferred into a 6.x Pro license, computation of time has reset with the major software change. Understandable, I think.
Exception of the exception: if you purchased a legacy unit used, purchased the update to 5.3 Pro yourself, found it to be faulty (used, worn, you didn't know), we can transfer a quite recently purchased 5.3 Pro into a 6.x Pro, also as a gesture of goodwill and fairness.
And you can even turn in that unit and benefit from our goodwill policy on hardware, which can help easing the pain.

But imo it makes no sense to expect that you will get a discount plus the more valuable upgrade say from VBasic to Pro/Rescue, or to expect that you can buy a VBasic and get it enhanced even more by transferring a license from a unit which originally was a VBar NEO Express and had the update from there on.

With the discount we offer for an exchange, based on goodwill, the price difference from a VBasic (list price) to a VBar NEO Express VLink (discount policy) is considerably little anyway, if you take dealer's discounts/sale prices and shipping costs out of the equation.

So I think what we offer is quite unique in the industry. And I think it's fair enough, although you could always expect more, which is understandable.
On the other hand, if you crash or fry a VBar, same as if you total your car (no insurance involved), without said offered goodwill policy, you would always have to buy new and with a little luck benefit from a sale price/dealer discount. Makes our policy even more fair, in my opinion.

And also, please understand that only we as the manufacturer can offer this quite exclusively, a distributor or dealer of course has a margin, but obviously he does not have the leeway we have with all the costs factored in to get the hardware there in the first place. And shipping costs to the far ends of the world unfortunately may or will eat up quite a bit off the discount.
Nonetheless, in general you still gain something compared to purchasing a new unit at the local retail price, but you can always decide what's the better deal for you.

Kind regards

Eddi

Born to fly ...
forced to work.

Eddi,

Thank you for the detailed response, I understand and respect that.

I do have one more question though. You mention that you do offer a discount on the original purchased item (A neo basic) and give a coupon for the software upgrade.

Would it be frowned upon to purchase all my flight controllers as Vbasics, and then pay separately for the Neo upgrades? Based on your policy you would discount the original purchased item and provide coupon for software licenses purchased as additions.

I'm asking because I have a fairly significant investment in Vcontrol/Neo and currently have an immediate need for 3 additional flight controllers. Although really an apples to oranges comparison, with the price difference between this platform and your closest competitor it would be nice to have a little peace of mind. Forgive my persistence as a person with a long professional history with IT and software development it's difficult for me to imagine a software investment that is bound to hardware. The life cycle / usefulness of software generally far exceeds that of the hardware it is run upon.

Hi again,

well, basically it's a thing of supply and demand. We do it our way, our competitors do it differently, and although there are many different controllers on the market, I believe there are also significant differences in performance, be it hard- or software, and to what extent support is offered.

Now, if you compare purchase prices, you end up at approx. the same sum no matter if you come from VBasic to Pro+Rescue or any version in between, and no matter if you start with a non VLink and convert.

If you go the VBasic way, you make the most use of our policy in case you need to have a unit replaced, true, because the voucher code for a free license transfer is free. As long as you do not overstrain our goodwill policy, all is well.

But please understand that, although we sell 'toys', we are a commercial enterprise after all.

Regarding the life cycle, I believe the VBar has one of the longest, I mean you can still use 2008 hardware with the latest software and radio.
And even units stuck with 4.0, the units are still useful, if they are still in good working order.
So the software lifecycle is in fact shorter than the hardware lifecycle, _if_ the respective units have not been insulted somehow in the meantime.

It's really oranges and apples, you can hardly compare it to other software platforms like computers, even smart phones or tablets.
And if you damage or lose your mobile device, and have no insurance, bad for you. Try and get insurance for r/c stuff ;-)
But you have all the software in the cloud, same as you have here (by means of registration and voucher codes).

Kind regards

Eddi

Born to fly ...
forced to work.

Eddi,

That is absolutely fantastic!! Knowing I have that kind of protection really means a lot, and I really appreciate it!

Mikado FTW!

P.S. You guys need to step up production on those NEO's you got people acting like crack addicts over them haha. I need 3 myself.