Which is worse? Jepp or NOAA/SarSat?

[wsuffa]

/rant on

Just got plane back from avionics shop. Had a Garmin 430 upgraded to a WAAS unit. While they were in there, the discovered a the Ameriking 408 ELT was bad ("electronic noise from the remote switch unit" traced to bad ELT box).

OK, so it should be pretty simple to:

1) change the navdata subscription on the Jepp site from 430 to 430W
and 2) change the ELT registration.

You would be wrong.

My password didn't work on the NOAA site. They have no means to reset the password without actually talking to a human. The "forgot password" link takes you to a page that allows you to set a password for a registration done by mail. Bad site design. So it'll go by mail and cost the government more money.

Jepp, on the other hand, will allow you to buy a new subscription, but won't let you edit or delete an existing one. To do that, you must call them. They apparently don't care because they don't have to. Oh, and they have a "survey" they want you to fill out that 404's after the first page.

Why should we customers (and we "regulated entities" that are REQUIRED to register our ELT units with the government) have to put up with this kind of shoddy and customer-unfriendly service?

/rant off. Please resume your normal kvetching.

 

[4CornerFlyer]

You have a device that when activated will call forth the vast resources of the United States to contact and find you, possibly incurring great expense in doing so, at zero cost to you except for perhaps one postage stamp. Let me shed some crocodile tears about that.
Yes, all websites should function flawlessly.
Jon

 

[JGoodish]

You have a device that when activated will call forth the vast resources of the United States to contact and find you, possibly incurring great expense in doing so, at zero cost to you except for perhaps one postage stamp. Let me shed some crocodile tears about that.
Yes, all websites should function flawlessly.
Jon

The fact that the ELT requirement and SAR model works the way it does in no way excuses shoddy implementation or support. Nothing is "free;" those of us who pay taxes are paying for those services. If a product or service is going to be offered, it should work properly and, ideally, be intuitive for the end user.


JKG

 

[wsuffa]

You have a device that when activated will call forth the vast resources of the United States to contact and find you, possibly incurring great expense in doing so, at zero cost to you except for perhaps one postage stamp. Let me shed some crocodile tears about that.
Yes, all websites should function flawlessly.
Jon

The fact that the ELT requirement and SAR model works the way it does in no way excuses shoddy implementation or support. Nothing is "free;" those of us who pay taxes are paying for those services. If a product or service is going to be offered, it should work properly and, ideally, be intuitive for the end user.


JKG

Exactly. Nothing is free. There is no excuse for not making it easier - if my bank and brokerage can both do it, the government certainly can, too. Some contractor got rich building this.

Make it usable. Save money. And perhaps, just perhaps, it'll make it easier to convince people to upgrade to a new ELT. I cannot recommend it at this point.