PMDG – 747-400 v2 Beta New Shots

To Robert S. Randazzo, as well as all of PMDG,

First, I want to tell you I very much respect and appreciate the work you do for the flight simulation community. The quality and attention to detail in your products is bar none the best in all of flight simulation, and this is not limited to aircraft add-ons, but scenery add-ons and texture add-ons and whatever add-ons may exist. I hope you will read this comment hearing my tone that I am not at all trying to be abusive or disrespectful, but with every ounce of kindness in me, attempting to make my voice heard.

But I do have a grievance, and I hope you will be humble enough to honestly consider what I am saying and also refrain from banning me for anything I say here. If I do get banned, however, for what I say here, then I will be satisfied having this be my final comment, but I hope you will read this all before banning me. But if you hear the amount of concern and respect in my voice, this should not be a problem. In fact, I hope you will take this as a representation of how much I do care about this company, in that I would say what I am about to say. I understand this comment might be controversial. My goal is not to start a controversy, but to make you all at PMDG, as well as everyone who reads the forums, aware about an issue that arose in the comments recently.

I am commenting to talk about the vitriolic comments made by Robert S. Randazzo on this forum a couple days ago. I was banned for a comment I made several days before, regarding the possibility about PMDG lying about moving to beta testing. Perhaps my comment was in bad taste, and for that, I do apologize. However, Rob proceeded to make a comment responding to some of the things that were said in the forum. I understand that he was likely saying much of what he said in a heat-of-the-moment annoyance or anger. However, he explicitly called some customers “ignorant” and, by quoting Abraham Lincoln regarding fools, implicitly (but not so implicitly) called these customers “fools.”

I worked in customer service for two years. There are several things I learned about the nature of customer service that I would like to apply to this situation:

1. First, it is as obvious as anything that any company deals with idiotic customers. Everyone knows this.

2. Second, despite this obvious fact, one of the most important facts about customer service is that no company should ever make such an obvious fact explicit about their customers to their customers. Even though a company may deal with many idiotic customers, it is one of the worst moves, as it relates to good customer service, to explicitly say to some of the customers that some of them are idiots, even if it is 100% true.

3. Given the first and the second points, it is never, under any circumstances, ever acceptable for an employee of a company, let alone the CEO and Founder of a company, to insult any customer(s), or make a public statement insulting the customer(s), for any reason, even if that employee is 100% correct in saying what he is saying.

4. Fourth, many customers abstain from buying products not because the quality is bad, but because the company’s customer service is poor or rude. Rob making the comments he did is an extremely good way to lose customers. There is no justification any company can give to a statement containing insults to customers that will make the statement not rude. Therefore, there is absolutely no justification Rob and any of you at PMDG will be able to give me, or any other customers, to change the fact that what Rob said was extremely rude. And it would be a very good idea to be wary of this fact, because arguably, PMDG will lose more than the customers will if the customers do not buy the product. The Boeing 747, as awesome and exciting as it is, it still just a game. Therefore, if a customer does not buy it, for them, it is not a big deal; they will survive. However, if a customer does not buy it, for PMDG, it can be a bigger deal; PMDG will lose part of its income, and money is far more necessary for survival than a game.

5. This point might get me banned, if I have not already for the comments I have made. Rob quoted Abraham Lincoln about how opening one’s mouth proves a fool to be a fool. However, that quote implies that certain customers are “fools,” when such a quotation would be a foolish quote on the part of PMDG because of the lack of consideration of its implications. Indeed, it is even hypocritical. It is extremely foolish for a company to call customers “foolish” to their faces. Indeed, Lincoln’s quote applies online, but so do good customer service rules.

6. One of the hardest things for a company to do is to adhere to the statement, “The customer is always right.” One of the most difficult things to do in customer service is to do what the customer asks or to be kind to a customer, even when you know the customer is 100% wrong. With that, let me walk you through the conclusion I made about tech testing. In the test testing post, there was a statement that what determines when the product moves “from tech testing to beta testing, and from beta testing to release” is the product itself. From this statement alone, it can be inferred that the progression of testing goes from the tech testing stage to the beta testing stage to release, and that when one stage ends, it moves on to the next. Indeed, this is how many things are tested. In addition, a beta tester said that they do not have the product, and that it was “still in tech testing.” From this, one would also logically reach the conclusion that in order for the product to enter beta testing, tech testing must finish. Some customers have not been following PMDG since the NGX, and most people do not have time to scroll through hundreds of pages worth of threads and tens of thousands of threads to learn about how you test your products. As a result, it is a completely unfair expectation that you expect customers to know that tech testing is two and a half years long, since many people have not been following you until recently, and given the two quotes that I have stated, it would be a perfectly logical conclusion to assume that tech testing must finish before beta testing can start as it seemed that they were two consecutive stages in one testing cycle. As the CEO and face of a company, you are to politely educate your customers, without calling them fools and idiots.

7. Given all I have said, perhaps the most important point of good customer service is this: Customer service is not about being right; it is about being kind to your customers, even when they are 100% wrong. Obviously you strive for both, but being kind takes priority over being right 100% of the time. The moment that being right takes precedent over being nice is the moment when everything else you say or do ceases to matter, because it was not done with kindness and love. This applies not only in the world of business, but also in life in general.

Rob, you, as the CEO of PMDG, should be ashamed of your comments. It is one thing if a lesser employee says something bad or gives bad customer service. However, you, as the CEO, Founder, and face of PMDG, are held to a much higher standard of customer service. Part of the job of a CEO is to be the highest and greatest example of what every one of your employees should look like and strive to be like in their jobs, and that includes customer service. If a subordinate says something bad, it mostly does not affect the company. However, if the CEO of a company says or does something bad, it tarnishes the name of the company and affects everyone else in the company for being associated with a bad name.

In addition, if you do lose customers from your comments, I hope you realize that the income that was lost due to the loss of customers will not only affect your income, but that of everyone else that works for PMDG as well. The best thing you can do to remedy this situation is to take down your comments. While some people may have supported you for saying what you did, that does not make what you said right. In my customer service job, if I had called my customers “ignorant” or “fools,” I would have lost my job right away, even if I was completely correct. Thus, while what you said may have been factually completely right, it was completely wrong to say. I do think you were being overly petty about what happened. At least for me, PMDG’s reputation, or at least the regard at which I hold you and your company, has dropped slightly due to your vitriolic and insensitive comments.

I do honestly hope you will take what I have said sincerely. I want you to know that I am not attempting to be mean or abusive. No one is perfect, and even CEOs make mistakes, in which case I think it is good for someone to call such mistakes out, even if that “someone” is a customer. It is not for the purpose of breaking the person down but for ultimately building that person up and making them a better person through it. I hope for nothing but the best for PMDG, as I have been buying your products since the days of Flight Simulator 2004, and have been left breathless at everything you have created. We often cannot see where we went wrong on our own, and that is why other people are so important. Therefore, I hope you will see this not as an attack on PMDG, but as a direct but very gentle rebuke, for the purpose of showing where you went wrong. I am only saying these things because I do care enough about you to say something about it.

Sincerely,

Nathan Sumarsono

Just a comment. It is officially 747 v3, RSR made the correction about 9 months ago.

747X – FS9 is v1
747 – Queen of the Skies is v2
747 – Queen of the Skies II is v3

PMDG apologies for the mass confusion.