What's new
Van's Air Force

Don't miss anything! Register now for full access to the definitive RV support community.

Beware of XCOM

Status
Not open for further replies.
patterson

patterson

Well Known Member
Patron
[ed. Sentence here that violated the civility rules removed. dr]


I have the XCOM 760 and yes, the intercom works well. The radio had a problem with not receiving strong transmissions from towered airports, so XCOM asked me to send it back (Australia) for repair. That was NOVEMBER! I still don't have it back and the company refuses to reply to my inquiries about when it will be fixed and shipped back to me. :( (I have an email from December acknowledging they received the radio)

Having the intercom connected to the radio...while it works well from this brand, puts you in a very vulnerable position if the radio needs to go out for repair. I'd never do it again...I'd also never deal with XCOM again unless I am forced to by my initial poor choice. :mad:

Ron
RV-4
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I know the guys at X-Com personally. I will get your problem solved, or you will have a new radio.

Did you talk to the US service center guys? They are top notch avionics techs.

I have heard nothing but great reviews about the radio. They are a small company, and growing pains are normal. I know they were in Sebring, FL for 2-3 weeks for the SP show. They may be intransit back to AU so it may be a day or two. That's not an excuse, they still get e-Mail and should have responded.
 
Last edited:
I too had issues with my brand-new factory installed XCOM 760, fitted in my Pipistrel Virus.

Pipistrel's distributor for the US and Australia is Michael Coates who is also the owner of XCOM, and we've been in touch over email and tried to debug the issue. In the end we could not fix the issue (in the transmitter) so I shipped the radio to Pipistrel, and they promptly returned a brand-new shrink wrapped unit, which I hope I will be installing this weekend.

I agree with the comment about the intercom pain, once you've disembarked your radio for maintenance. Infact, the lack of intercom prompted me to do even more gliding than usual with my Virus, so that I would be bothered by the reassuring sound of my Rotax 912UL only during climb... :D

Ciao, Luca
 
XCOM service

I have to go along with Geico266 (BTW, you have a name?) I don't think I'd send mine back to Austrailia, especially when the US service facility promises to provide a loaner while they repair yours. Probably the AU folks wanted to see for themselves what was wrong.

Bob Kelly
 
Reply from XCOM Avionics

Hello all and thank you to the user of this group which allerted me to somebody with problems and pointed me here to assist.

Firstly, information regarding the intercom. As mentioned by one of the posters the mike gain needed to be turned down from 60 to 50, the default setting for our radio is 50 and this is how it is shipped from the factory. We find this to be an ideal setting for the majority of aircraft so when turned up to 60 the microphone would be much more sensitive than it should be and transmit a lot of noise. I'm glad this customer corrected the problem by returning the radio back to the factory default setting.

When in dual watch and receiving a secondary frequency there is a momentary pause in the reception to let you know that you are receiving on the standby frequency. The pause is long enough to let you know which channel you are receiving on but it is not long enough to actually miss any of the transmission. It actually works really well.

Poor customer service, I don't really want to get in an actual argument with this customer but to let you know the radio arrived at our premises on the 11th of December. From there was sent to engineering who have looked at the radio, made any adjustments or repairs that were necessary and have sent the radio back. I imagine the customer who is in the USA will receive the radio by the middle of next week. The problem and delay here would either be with replacement parts or the fact that everywhere is shut in Australia from about one week before Christmas until the 15th of January because this is the middle of our summer it is when most businesses shut down and take an extended break.

XCOM has a U.S.-based service centre and the majority of repairs are sent to this location. Sometimes however, especially with unusual problems we like to have the radio shipped to Australia so we can see what is going on. Our last correspondence with this customer was a reply to his e-mail on the eighth of January.

If anybody ever has any problems all of our contact details including my mobile phone number on the website. Because of the large amount of spam we are getting we now have a lot of filtering on our website and have recently changed the way customers contact us to using encrypted forms. We have found this a fantastic way to eliminate the SPAM and in the last three weeks since making the changes there has not been any reports of e-mails going missing which is really good news until the spammers worked out how to get around encrypted forms.

Thank you again for bringing this customer's concerns to my attention and I will contact him directly with this information. Kind regards Michael Coates XCOM Avionics
 
Last edited:
Bravo!

Michael,

Good to hear such a response! You DO have a great product. Having a U.S. based service dept is a nice benifit I hope I never need.

Bob Kelly
 
I have a MicroAir 760 radio that I purchased from Mr. Coates. I found him to be honest and helpful in the few dealings I've had with him (three years ago or so.) My radio has been working fine ever since Michael talked me through (via email) the fix for the problem I was having.

A lot of us are geeky and like our email but remember the telephone. A phone call will usually solve a lot of problems.
 
Last edited:
Michael Coates sent me this e-Mail last night I though you guys might like to read.

G'Day Mate......Sometimes people complained and we don't even know about it. I just found some posts on the website from a guy in Denmark complaining that his radio never worked. Well the radio finally turned up at our business today and behold he has ground the four corners off the radio face with a bench grinder to make it fit his application, and still expects it to work. Sometimes customers amazed me with a modifications they can do and still expect the product work.

Speak with you soon, kind regards Michael

This is the kind of stuff manufacturers put up with every day. People slamming their products only to find out the problem was caused by the user.
 
Last edited:
Patterson,

Have you recieved your radio yet?

You haven't posted a response to any of the offers for help, an offer for a loaner radio, my PM's, or posts from X-Com.
 
Last edited:
XCOM update

First, I want to say thank-you to Doug and to Geico266 and the rest of you who replied about my problems with XCOM. I have waited to write anything more because I felt the most important thing had been accomplished...Michael Coates actually replied. NOT to me, mind you. I have yet to receive any direct email from him since November 2006 asking me to send the radio to AU (he did cut and paste his email from this list that he responded to your inquiry, but included no personal communication to me). I heard nothing from Michael or from the technicians at XCOM despite my 3- 4 emails over 4 weeks asking to please update me. Then I got mad. Then, and only then, did I post this problem on this list.

In my email box yesterday was a notification from some unknown source that a letter was on its way from XCOM via UPS. A letter, not my radio. It is due to arrive on Moday the 24th, so we shall see.

A loaner? I had no idea this was possible. In fact, if you look on the classified list under WTB, I just purchased Paige Hoffert's spare XCOM last week because I was desperate. I have been traveling to Arkansas this week but understand that (his) radio is at my mail box address and I plan to pick it up today and install it. $900 in order to deal with this...wish I had known that there was a loaner program. :eek:

Michael said (in his post) that he emailed me on January the 8th. That is not true. Or he sent it to the wrong address. I have zero correspondence / answers to my 4 emails in the past few weeks...none, but what you and I read once this hit the list.

Here is my deliema. I truly like the radio. The intercom WORKS GREAT! I don't want to speak badly of anyone if I can avoid it. This has been a real pain and "Summer in Australia" is no excuse for this (lack of) service....at least in my opinion. I have no reason to embellish here. Today makes seven weeks since I sent the radio in...7 weeks without a radio or intercom in my plane. Not fun.

GEICO266...thanks for your help. What is your connection to XCOM? Can I, and other customers, deal with you from now on? Who/where is the US Support center for XCOM?

Ron Patterson
N8ZD
 
I have had an Xcom for 2 years now, serial no 183, so one of the earlier ones. The only problems I had were the transmit jammed once - and only ever once - I think it may have been some kind of spike (power off then on sorted it out). The other week the flip button broke. Michael returned my email within one hour, then over the course of the evening, I had three other emails, trying to precisely determin what was wrong. In the end the diagnosis was a broken switch. Posted the radio next day. Took 4 days to get to their repair place in Aus, fixed and shipped 2 days later - over the weekend, and had it back within 4 days. So total time out was less than two weeks. New display PCB & updated software.
No charge, other than shipping to Aus.
Couldn't ask for a better service.
Only my experience, but I'd happily buy another one & would have done so if it came in the standard radio stack shape.
On the other hand, Microair charged us over $400 to get the upgrade to their transponder, to make it compatable with Mode S. Not their fault it needed the upgrade, but it still hurt anyway.
 
Reply to Ron Patterson

Hello Ron, i have emailed you many times but it keeps bouncing back, i havent been able to get anything to you in at least 4 weeks. Sorry but it's not my fault that it wont go through so hopefully now we have contact !

Your radio is on the way back, i dont know why UPS call it a letter but its on the way back and should be with you Monday or Tuesday. I am sorry for the inconvenience but hopefully you will be right to go for the foreseable future once the radio is back in and flying.

Geico266 is a good freind from Nebraska and i appreciate his time in emailing !, no he is not a dealer.... he doesnt even have an XCOM but he managed to get an email through.

The problems we are having is spam and **** to our email address's... as much as 600 a day to each address, we got smart and put up filtering but that kicks good emails sometimes. We are in the process of putting up double encrypted forms on all our websites and on the sites already completed there is zero spam so we live in hope!

Finally sorry to Ron but we didnt get the radio until mid December and the radio's fault was unusual enough to insist the designer looked it over. I know it doesnt help you here on this occassion but we only have your radio for 8 working days. Thanks Michael Coates XCOM
 
Michael,

just to add my 2 europennies to the discussion.

I too had issues with one of your radios, as you know, and the only way to get in touch with you was via Ivo. You said you did receive my email and replied to it, but I never saw your reply. So if you saw my email this means that spam was not the issue, and for sure spam is not an issue with me as I don't receive much.

So definitely your company might benefit from some improvement in communication over email! ;)

But after the contact was made, you tried your best to support me, and I did what I could do to better debug the radio, but in the end returned it to Pipistrel, who promptly returned a brand-new sealed XCOM 760 which I installed yesterday, and everything works great now on my Virus.

Overall, I am very happy about the product and OK happy from the support. Wish I would never need to use your support, but sometimes things happen...

Now, if you'd only work things out with the FCC on that MARS/CAP feature... :rolleyes:

Ciao, Luca
 
Thanks for Writing Michael

Good to hear from you about this. Would you please post who the US support center is. I wasn't able to locate that info on the website. I installed my new spare radio yesterday and it works perfectly. You make a good product. No complaints there.
Thanks,
Ron
 
Like I said - Be very Wary of XCOM

I too had issues with one of your radios, as you know, and the only way to get in touch with you was via Ivo. You said you did receive my email and replied to it, but I never saw your reply. So if you saw my email this means that spam was not the issue, and for sure spam is not an issue with me as I don't receive much. LUCABERTA

Dear Michael Coates,
This is an open letter to you. I just received a call from Great Plaines Radio, your repair station in the US, and they informed me you were not honoring a warrantee repair on the second XCOM radio I had to buy off this list to deal with your not getting my first radio back to me for 3 months. (that second radio was never installed in ANY airplane except mine, and then for only 5 minutes before it stopped working because it was On when I started the engine). Nothing else on my panel needs to be OFF on start-up except your radio. I can also not find anything in my XCOM users manual prohibiting start-up with the unit On.

Your posts here and elsewhere are defensive, filled with blame toward the customer using your products and you NEVER take responsability for having a radio that isn't up to modern standards of today's avionics (ie, won't tolerate 12-33 volts like most others in current production). You also don't take responsibility for your company's poor customer service.

By the way, the technician that repaired my second XCOM radio at Great Plains Radio said I needed a 22,000iu Capacitor intalled in-line with power and ground. He said it helps minimize voltage spikes. However, I still have the email you sent me last year saying I definately DID NOT need that capicitor and my install was fine as it was. What is the truth, anyway?

I am openly challenging you to honor your responsibility and re-engineer your product to be able to work properly in the aircraft you say they are designed for, stop blaming your lack of performance as a company on poor email communication due to SPAM, vacation time in Australia, and whatever else you can come up with to shed your responsibility for poor performance.

I can say unequivicably that I would never again use an XCOM product.
Ron Patterson
[email protected]
510-421-2316
 
Rubish, Rubish, Rubish

Lets start by thanking the person who sent this to me, I must say I don?t get on these lists everyday.

Firstly the information about not honouring warranty is absolute **** !! We (as in XCOM AU) don?t even know about your second radio in for repair so I cant comment more than that ?? I also have no personal emails from you for months but I am always available on phone or fax, ring reverse charges if you financially need to!.

The XCOM radio exceeds DO-160 which has the standard regarding spikes etc and will handle starting an engine when the radio is on.... Its just NOT GOOD AVIATION practice to do this with anything electronic turned on. Our testing included repeated starts with an engine till the battery was flat as well as simulated bench testing which is documented and exceeds the DO-160 requirements, there were over 1,000 simulated electronic starts as part of the testing.

The capacitor issue is a REQUIREMENT of both the Rotax and Jabiru engine installs... you have neither of these engines so DONT need a capacitor. Understand this is NOT our requirement but because most of our customers have these engines then we include the information on our website and manual.

If something is wrong with your radio then we will fix it under warranty if the radio is still within the warranty period. That being said we have never charged for a repair from our AU base even when the problem is obviously the customer wiring the radio up wrong. I can?t comment on the service centres charging but i believe they are very fair (they also need to feed families). Our payments to our US service centre are LESS than $1,000 a year so they are not being kept busy.

We have 1500 plus XCOM's in service, there are a few problems but most are isolated to the same customers over and over, most times the radio is sent for repair 'because the intercom doesn?t work' for example and when we turn the intercom volume up from ZERO to say 20 it works again.... amazing. If we had major issues like you suggest we would be out of business long ago.

There is no need to re-engineer the radio because it exceeds the statutory requirements for its intended operations (VFR and LSA aircraft), it has both FCC and FAA approvals and samples are regularly checked for conformance against the standard and results submitted.

Don?t expect that email just works all the time, because it doesn?t! (We have now implemented encrypted forms on our web site which are proving to be very reliable and are automatically sent direct to our inbox without any filtering) If in doubt about communication then call, fax or send carrier pigeon. Your lucky I was sent to this email today otherwise I probably wouldn?t have ever seen it and you would have not received any reply.

You should at least give XCOM the courtesy of emailing them directly to address your problems or concerns and not try to discredit us on the only soap box you can find.

Finally we are here to assist you and any other customer who has problems with our product, a lot of the time the problem can be corrected by email or over the phone but when it cant be fixed then you need to sent the radio to the service centres. But most importantly you need to actually make contact with us; I am hoping you will email me with details from the US service centres inspection of your radio and the identified fault. Thanks Michael Coates Director XCOM Avionics
 
Rubbish is right

"I]We have 1500 plus XCOM's in service, there are a few problems but most are isolated to the same customers over and over, most times the radio is sent for repair 'because the intercom doesn?t work' for example and when we turn the intercom volume up from ZERO to say 20 it works again.... amazing"

Yes, apparently your customers are intellectually challenged... At least the ones who have broken or unusable radios.

Doug reminds me that there is "no vendor bashing" allowed here. I do feel it is necessary to point out a serious issue when discovered. Everything I have written here is true. So...Buyer beware.

I have written you and have copied this objection to your business practices. So far, no reply. I invite you to buy back your product and stop dealing with me.

Ron Patterson
510-421-2316
 
Doug,
End this thread. X com has responded appropriatlely. There is no pleasing this guy.


[ed from dr. it's now closed.]
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top