DG Service Agreement

[glider[_2_]]

If someone can come up with an ethical way for DG to make needed
income in servicing older Glaser-Dirks and Rolladen-Schneider
sailplanes, I am quite sure the DG would be most appreciative.
Yes, I am serious.
Should they charge more for parts? More for shipping and handling?
Charge for consultation? Engineering?
Sailplane parts from other manufacturers have never been cheap.
Can we pay more?
The present exchange rate is awful.
How much more should we expect to pay?

Bob Gaines aka GA
800 owner

[jcarlyle]

Bob,

Weber goes through all of this on the DG web site. The English version
is slowly being translated, and you can read his thoughts here:
http://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/betreuung-e.html

The German version has much more information, and you can read a
machine translation of it here:
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dg-flugzeugbau.de%2Fbetreuung-d.html&sl=de&tl=en

If you read the translated German version under "looking to the
future" he states that doing anything other than charging everyone is
"fantasy". It's also instructive to read the section "a personal
note", where essentially he says that DG was going to implement the
service contract slowly, but since people were mean to him he decided
to speed it up. There is also some discussion in there about other
options, but that he wasn't going to consider them.

-John

PS - a lot of this is being discussed under the "LS and DG Tax" and
"Monster" threads on RAS.

glider wrote:
> If someone can come up with an ethical way for DG to make needed
> income in servicing older Glaser-Dirks and Rolladen-Schneider
> sailplanes, I am quite sure the DG would be most appreciative.
> Yes, I am serious.
> Should they charge more for parts? More for shipping and handling?
> Charge for consultation? Engineering?
> Sailplane parts from other manufacturers have never been cheap.
> Can we pay more?
> The present exchange rate is awful.
> How much more should we expect to pay?
>
> Bob Gaines aka GA
> 800 owner

[Guy[_7_]]

My two cents.

I run a service based business. I am a dentist. We responded to the
huge push to go on-line to answer customer's questions and provide a
point of contact other than the customer coming to the office. Of
course, coming to the office almost always involves at least a charge
for an office visit or consultation. People responded very well and
my mailbox had ever increasing volumes of mail. To the point that it
was taking first 30 minutes, then an hour, and finally almost two
hours A DAY to answer the mail. Multiple people trying every which
way to avoid coming to the office and trying to get me to diagnose
their dental problems via E-mail. Essentially all I have to offer the
public is my time. THis is not / was not a viable business model.

I don't like what DG is doing but I understand from a business point
of view. The ever expanding size and demands of their produced
products dwarfs the time and effort it takes to produce current
products. The staff has to expand to service the existing client base
while the current production staff stays the same or shrinks due to
the sales of new products at the moment. Then you add in the efforts
by all government agencies to charge for their services as if they
were a private business and you have a very rapidly increasing
overhead expense as a business.

I think the two tiered approach of charging a modest annual fee to
gain discounted and preferred pricing on products versus charging
inflated prices to one time services and products makes sense.
Essentially that is the business model of virtually all the computer
products I use in my business.

In the USA, those of us with Experimental Airworthiness Certificates
used to be able to thumb our noses at the factories because we could
repair our planes anyway we wanted as long as an inspector would sign
off the repair as being airworthy. The wording of the current
"conditions and limitations" attached to the Experimental certificate
and the litigious nature of aircraft repair in the USA is making it
more difficult to be a "lone wolf" in maintaining our aircraft. We
need manufacturer's support.

I am sure Mr. Weber is ****ed off at the hostile attitudes of many of
the people who call him. The 80/20 rule is based on human nature and
the 20% who eat up all his time and refuse to pay for any services
just wear you down.

Having owned a glider where the manufacturer just stopped providing
any support (Grob 104), I can tell you that the price charged for a
replacement part provided by the manufacturer looked pretty reasonable
after getting various quotes on re-engineering and producing a custom
replacement part. Some people love re-inventing the wheel and that is
their recreation. They probably have a full machine shop in their
garage or a friend who does that stuff for fun. But for most of us,
we just want to get the part and fix the problem so we can
fly....tomorrow.

I just hope Mr. Weber reads all of this...has a couple of stiff
drinks...and mellows out with a more reasonable and balanced business
model to provide support for all of the wonderful LS and DG products
that are flying in the world.

My two cents.

Guy Acheson

[Bob Kuykendall]

On Dec 23, 10:51*am, glider > wrote:
> * *If someone can come up with an ethical way *for DG to make needed
> income in servicing older Glaser-Dirks and Rolladen-Schneider
> sailplanes, I am quite sure the DG would be most appreciative.
> *Yes, I am serious.

Bob, I know you mean well. But Herr Weber has demonstrated to my
complete satisfaction that he does not want, nor does he deserve,
either my help nor my respect.

Thanks again, and best regards

Bob K.
http://www.hpaircraft.com

[Lars Peder Hansen]

It looks like your Christmas wishes come through, to some extent. Since
yesterday, Mr. Weber has added a section to the German text, called "looking
to the future". He now talks about doing as announced for 2010, but now it
is called "buying" a new handbook for EUR 250. Then it becomes interesting:
He says that after evaluating the mass of suggestions that people have sent,
they are considering another scheme for 2011 and beyond. A kind of "offer"
where you could be Silver, Gold or Platinum member and receive services
accordingly. Silver would then be "cheap" but you would have to pay for
services, if needed.

Who knows, maybe tomorrow he will revert again. But this is better than
nothing, even if I suspect they will still try to force people to
participate.

The German text is here:
http://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/betreuung-d.html#Ausblick Google does a fair
(but entertaining) job of translating it.

Morale: Complaining (especially with constructive suggestions) does actually
help, now and then.

Happy Holidays!

Lars Peder
DG-600, Denmark


"Guy" > wrote in message
...
> I just hope Mr. Weber reads all of this...has a couple of stiff
> drinks...and mellows out with a more reasonable and balanced business
> model to provide support for all of the wonderful LS and DG products
> that are flying in the world.
>
> My two cents.
>
> Guy Acheson