>Manufacturers have a moral obligation to support their equipment for the >duration of their useful life.
Yes and no! I agree about the moral bit, but commercially it is a killer and I think that other manufacturers will find this too. DG have always been very up front and open about what they do… look at their website and the information on it compared with other manufacturers. I confess to owning a DG glider. I have wasted a lot of time looking for alternative sources for spare parts but now I don't bother. I have found that spares bought for my DG glider direct from DG are cheaper in almost all cases that I can buy through local trade suppliers (ie at wholesale). My questions to DG get answered promptly. But most of my questions are almost routine. How long does it take to answer a question such as: >I would like to change the instrument panel on my ls6a, but currently i have >the original old one. >I would like to know if i can safely order the panel of an ls8 on this site >wich has a différent form but similar to the récent ls6. >Is there any technical issue to do that ? >My LS3a flaps have been standing different angel between them, and I have now >adjust them to stand alike. >But I don’t know if they follow the flap position -7, 0, 5, 10 and 20 degree. I am sure that at $6.00 per hour, you'd do OK if you answered these questions properly! So far as "strange contractual obligation"s go, it's not so strange, especially in Europe. Our distributors there regularly get 4% for warranty and 9% for on-site maintenance contracts. This isn't something I agree with, but it appears to be the cost of doing business in that part of the world and is sustainable. Personally, I don't think this is a DG specific issue. It's a problem with trying to support any mechanical device which is more than a few years old, and in the case of a stink-wing or 2 stroke self launcher which is a fairly complex electro-mechanical device, the problem is an order of magnitude more complex. And the problem is for the glider owner as well as the manufacturer. D _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
