Finally got around to putting my Spektrum / M8 in my bk2 tonight, piece of cake and works great on the bench, will race it tomorrow night and Saturday.

Stormer Hobbies has the Hitec/Futaba units in stock

idiots at horizon\spektrum

I got a spektrum module and tranceiver from horizon directly for my KO. IT did not work off the bat. Call them up and told them to fix it or keep it and I was not going to wait more then 2 weeks. I have heard of guys waiting almost a month for their stuff to come back from repair.

They fixed to transmitter module and sent it back and could not fix the rtranceiver, so they have it on back order. How am i to test the system to see if they fixed it. I am not about to go spend more money on a non working system. This system obviously needs more testing before release. This is worse then MS and their product releases and service packs. I mean mine did not work out of the shoot and they expect me to wait for mine to be repaired as opposed to sending me a new complete unit. what a bunch of dumb a$$.

I already called the credit card company and dispute the charges and I will not pay for my spektrum till I am satisfied that it works 100%. AND I MEAN 100%

WOW!!!! You do realize that this is "Brand New" technology, right? I understand you are upset.... I would be peeved too. But to dispute charges when you clearly bought the unit and are working out warrrenty claims is a bit dramatic.

If you bought the KO unit then you most likely knew that there were some unresolved issues. You would have to have been under a rock or on another planet to not know problems were happening. Just relax a bit... after all this is a toy. Not a life or death situation.

I personally hope the credit card company laughs at you and gives you the run around. There is no chance of you winning the dispute. Horizon already has plenty of proof that you purchased this product. A better way to handle the situation is to "calmly" ask to return the product for a full refund including shipping. Good luck.

For the record, I finally got my Futaba model and it seems to work fine. Even if it craps out tomorrow it was worth the risk.

Lighten up and take a pill!
Late!
Jon

Its worth the risk? Why should there be a risk involved when buying a product . Yes they had problems with the M8 version but if they have not fixed the problems then they should not be releasing anymore...period.

I run 401K plans for a living....if you call up and attempt to move your money from one fund to another and it does not happen because of a system issue......I better damn well figure it out before bringing on one more client and I certainly should not be advertising that I can do something that I cant do consistantly. I doubt it very much that the next person it happens to will really care if I am trying to fix it or not....i just better be able to cough up any loss of earnings.

You are right this is only a toy car but I dont care if its 10.00, 100.00 or 1000.00 dollars, they better fix the problems before they sell one more unit. And if I call them with a problem....it should be them bending over backwards to make me happy....not me wait for them to figure things out. I had one on order for my helios but I cancelled the order because of this very reason. This product release has been the biggest letdown of anything i have seen in the 4 years I have been racing. How could these issues not have been found before hand.....that is absolutely mind boggling!!!! Horizon is obviously a much better company than it has shown here....everyone I have met there has been first class but the ball was dropped here big time and it looks like its still bouncing around!

by the way....your comment about realizing its brand new technology.....well, my Acura has some things that everyone says is innovative......would it be acceptable if only some of the things worked? We should not have to chalk it up to "new technology"....if its being sold...then it should work...if you accept anything less than that then you have more money than you need, your not real bright or your too nice of a guy. I will give you the benefit of doubt and say your too nice a guy.

this is the biggest f*** up in rc history ever! people were so hyped up about this spektrum thinggy (lol). wheres the R&D? so in the magazines, team drivers were paid to lie about these thinggys. "it will change rc forever!"

My Spektrum works flawlessly. Binded first shot. No problems whatsoever.

I love mine and to me it IS the biggest improvement in RC in years. Of course I can only go by my personal experience

I'm diggin' my Helios unit too...no problems...oh crap..now I jinxed it...now I'm going to have a runaway.....

WOW

if you have followed this thread YES Spektrum unfortunately missed a software error in the first batch of unit for the M8. There have also been some "buttons" that do not allow the binding process to begin or finish. They have also published what the problems are and are upgrading the software for the both transmitter and tranceiver units with very quick turn around time. but due to the demands when a bind button problem is found they are replacing them as soon as they receive more from manufacturing.

but to blast the product because a few units have a problem

locally we have quite a few now using the Spektum systems and all wearing smiles i am using the JR R1 unit and it hasn't given one slight problem over the last three weekends of racing.

i believe the Spektrum has been a welcome addition to our hobby

we have a horizon sponsored driver using one in his R1 right now...working fine...but that does not change the fact that there are still units being sold that dont work. "a few units have a problem" isn't that a bit of an understatement. When I feel I can order one and not have a problem then I will jump in with both feet....but there is no way I am odering these for my cars and then have to wait until they can fix it. It is great that you are not having any problems...but look no further than the nats last week....not all the factory guys that have been running them ran them...that says volumes. And lets stop making excuses for a company this large....say what you will but they should not have hit the market until issues were ironed out.

I guess you have never read about all the "bugs" more expensive auto makers like Mercedes, Audi and others who adopt newer techologies in their highend cars and release them? It happens all the time. Acura is actually a poor example because they tend to not put new techology in their cars until it's been tested for a longer period. So while other cars had navigation and other "techno" goodies in their cars year ago, Acura waited. In fact, most new models have more problems when they are released. People want the new thing first and often pay the price. My 350Z in the first year had lots of issues. I waited til the second year to buy it and most of the issues have been fixed. Unfortunately there's no way to find out about mass production problems until it's out. Part of the way things are done.

Derek....yes, I do know that many times automakers iron out some of the issues they find in first run production cars. My analogy probably is not the best because a car has thousands of pieces that do many different things. The spektrum is supposed to do one thing....control an RC car.....it says its supposed to be faster then any current system. If the product does not do the one thing its supposed to do then thats a problem. My Acura TL happens to by built late 2004 so I dont have 1 or 2 of the rattles that had been reported but nowhere did I read that people had TL's that would not start or that had only 180 hp instead of the reported 270hp.

I do understand that there could be issues with new technology but I dont like to hear excuses being made and just think that when they all pulled them from their cars the week before the indoor champs then a red flag should have went up and nothing should have been released until 100% sure it was fixed. a member gets on here and is obviously frustrated about his spektrum system and then gets told to chill because thats the gamble you take....my point....why should it be a gamble. Why should I pay 150.00 to test their system?

There is "risk" in everything, how mny children were killed by airbags until they figured it out? I'm sure Horizone would return your money if requested. Regular AM or FM radios glitch and thats a known problem thats never been completely fixed. There just for fun, try and have some.

you are correct. new technology. AS Joneser said every one of us has at one time used new technology. Just like Joneser, I have a 2002 M3. This is the car with the motor that grenades and throws rod. They went through 2 iteration of oil and I have had 3 bottom ends re-done. Oh yeah this is a $68k as opposed to $159. But the principle is still the same. BMW to date has only shipped 250,000 untis of this car since it went on sale 9/2000. You think that if it were not for a select few (less 10%) of the people compaining about the vehicle that this problem would not have been solved and resolved with no cost to the owners? The fact is that A company put out a product, if the product is "NEW" and the technology is "NEW" their customer service should be 1000% better then an established technology. The Fact is that new technology will always be under evaluation. So it better be good. Look at technology that was cool, but failed because fo execution. I understand that there are units that work, But to sell a product and then get it back and find out that it is non functional, and then to tell the customer, yeah new technology, yeah it does not work, but sorry we can not give you your money back and yeah sorry, we will send you another unit and yeah we can not tell you when it will be available to you, but we will be shipping more of these things out to other people. I don't think so.

I guess you have not been around the block at all. The way a credit card company works, is that the disbut has already been processed and then they go to the vendor to validate the claim. The funny thing is that Horizon can only say to them, yeah we are working on it and yeah we don't have anything to replace it with, but your customer has to pay for something they did not get. funny funny, the law will laugh horizon right out of the court room.

You are right, it is just for fun, funny thing is that it was not fun that when this happened my xray $90 chassis was folded in half, it was not fun that I paid to race and got zero track time and it was not fun that I just had to sit and watch. And what is even funner is that I get to pay for the stuff and not even have it. Horizon said "not sure when we will have a replacement for you and no, you don't get your money back even though it does not work."

wee, what fun