Second guessing my interest Tim Fanatec products
Ryder Smith
Member
I came in to ask about when potential availability’s might happen for the DD1, but after reading some of these threads about the lack of Support has put me off.
After all this isn’t exactly cheap gear to have issues with and a company that doesn’t follow through is concerning. It doesn’t appear to be one-offs as there a quite a few experiencing difficulty.
Are they under staffed, poorly managed, incompetent or just don’t care once they get paid?
I was super excited to dive into Direct Drives and Fanatec appeared to have quality stuff, but that now not soo sure.
Comments
I think it depends on where you are. Personally I have had only one problem with one of my wheel rims. The vibration motor on my formula rim went bad. I sent it in and it was fixed very quickly. But I am also in the states. Maybe it's a little different across the pond.
If your region is covered by other vendors and you're not interested in console compatibility, I'd say it's worth at least looking elsewhere.
I myself had a Fanatec wheel about 10 years ago (911 GT3RS), which I sold after a year to get a Thrustmaster T500RS, as it felt too fiddly. Sometimes it would simply cut out requiring a power cycle. As I'm a console player, I decided to give Fanatec a second try and recently got a DD Pro, but the hardware seems to be just as finicky as it was back then: plagued with questionable design decisions and EMI/static buildup still causing a bit of a ruckus (the root cause of my original problems, which I'm yet to experience now but I have a grounded rig).
And the support, holy smokes. To say it went downhill is an understatement, it absolutely plummeted.
When the equipment works it is wonderful, truly. If you need Fanatec's assistance for anything, prepare to wait for a long time. And considering how fragile some aspects of the hardware are, you're likely to need them at one point or another.
The ecosystem system is great, most of the wheels are beautiful, and the sum of the parts on a rig looks great.
Their customer service has been bad for years, maybe not this bad, but bad.
Despite people saying over and over that this is high end equipment and they expect better, and I agree high end or not people deserve better, but its really not high end. Go look at pricing at other manufactures. Heck even look at the pricing of Thrustmaster. Which leads to the issue with the new base, it looks like they wanted to come in at a certain price point and my guess is design decisions were made to manage that price point which compromised quality.
Bought a GT DD Pro 8Nm in March. Switched to Simucube 2 Pro yesterday. Because of various stuff. For example the DD Pro is not as good or as "strong" as it is portrayed to be. Everywhere on youtube or anywhere else everyone is saying how great it is. Well, my personal opinion is that this is simply not true. Not by a longshot. It is waaaaaaaay to weak and it also have a lot of problems. Thats my personal opinion at least. Plus you also have the poor poooooor customer service with Fanatec.
Anyway, I switched brands. Best decision ever. Fanatec is dimentions away from the feel of a proper Simucube wheelbase.
Was just in the same position as you, ended up biting the bullet on a DD1 and it's brilliant. Does exactly what I wanted across console/PC and supports analogue paddles (simucube does not as an example). Having said that I haven't needed support and there does seem to be problems there if you do...
Ultimately it will come down to your requirements, the competition did not have a product that ticked all the boxes for me.
2 years in with DD1/V2/V3. No issues.
This my point your not comparing apples to apples, the simucube is over 3 times as much!
Avoid at all costs...biggest regret ive had.
They basically dont give a shit.
Took me 8 weeks for an RMA....Recieved the item back after 1 week of them apparently fixing it.....and it still doesnt work.
I actually dont think they even attempted to fix it as the screws were still sellotaped to the inside of the box and the plate was still set at an angle just the way i sent it.