Hi Michael,
We went all through this about a year and a half ago. I think it was Debby McDowell I emailed with this story. The name sounds familiar, but it was definitely a woman with the same title. She sent me a reply that someone would contact me about it and you sent the reply directing me to the parts link at your site.
Since then, I've bought another throttle (which spikes like mad) and a few more sticks, as you can see. Every single one has something wrong with it.
Anyway, I mentioned before that I did get the distributor to send me another set of pedals. Credit cards are used infrequently in Japan, and the usual method of payment is COD, bank transfer or a post office payment. The pedals were mistakenly sent by post office payment, which means that the product is delivered with a form that you take to the post office to pay for it.
I know that sounds strange to you, but in Japan there are still many businesses that ship that way. The product is expected to work or be up to the customer's expectation, so the customer pays the bill whenever they go to the post office.
I told the distributor I was not going to pay unless they exchanged the pedals. They sent another set COD and took back the first set. My point is that you should have gotten those pedals back from the distributor, right? You should have just as many returns, statistically, from every location. If that isn't happening, then maybe your distributor is not returning them to you. They could be going back out without you knowing it.
Another reason could be that I have all the defective products in Asia at my house... Statistically unlikely, but you never know.
The retailers insist that the distributor handle any warranty claims, and the distributor insists that the customer contact you for warranty service. If you get very few returns, then I can understand why. The customer still has any defective product (like me), or has thrown it out, since no parts or warranty service is actually available. They cannot navigate the English CH site to return product any better than anyone at CH can navigate the distributor's Japanese language site.
If your sales aren't what you expect, then there may be some answers somewhere in the above. Sorry that I got this thread from Citabria sidetracked. I'm not trying to be preachy or belabor the obvious about business or distributors. It's your business.
Sure your product is a little expensive here (I've spent about $1,200 in the last year and a half), but I just wanted it to work. That's all I asked for. I just wanted it to work. Call me crazy, but I'm not going to buy any more. It's too frustrating and something doesn't seem right here in Japan that I should have 7 controllers and not one that works normally.
I'm ready to try something new anyway. Maybe I can start collecting all the bad X-52 sets in Japan? I think I can buy a new X-52 every 60 days and spend less money. As long as it works for those 60 days, I'll be happy to do that.
And everyone will be happy to hear that I'll exit this thread now.
