It's their attitude. I hardly even used my wheelbase because I was so afraid it was going to break, after I had issues with it during the first year. Support took ages to respond, and left me feeling not confident, and not feeling like waiting 6 weeks and paying for the shipping there was worth it. Then it died, and they want $170 to fix it. The problems I had in warranty were indicative of this common failure as well. Thomas' argument is that support offered to fix it, and I didn't send it in, he can't see the viewpoint that when your support is slow and not reassuring, people won't want to send stuff in. If I have a problem with most any other product I buy, I can start an RMA, and they will send me a new product immediately, or once they receive mine at the worst. You buy pedals, wheels, bases, and shifters, and then one piece breaks you are down for a month or more, how is that good customer service? My problem is that I tried to tell him a lot of this stuff, and have a constructive conversation (unfortunately a ton of these posts were lost when it was deleted), and his attitude was always defensive even when everyone was just trying to explain our frustration from our point of view. I didn't know about the warranty thing until my issue. People talk about Fanatec all over, and the people not in the US usually say one of two things, "My Fanatec stuff has always worked", "I've had a lot of problems but Fanatec fixed it under warranty". The problem is, I bought a lot of Fanatec stuff, as did many others, based off the fact that we knew the stuff had not great QC, but at least Fanatec would support us if something happened. So, the anecdotal evidence out there is that most people get taken care of by Fanatec. If you dig further, you'll see a lot of unhappy US people. It's not because we are more demanding, it's because these wheelbases die between 1 and 2 years, which is great if you're not in the US, horrible if you are. He thinks that EU people don't complain, it's because they are covered under warranty! Also, the turnaround for communication and RMA is measured in hours and days. Communication to the US support usually takes 1-3 days for responses, and RMA 4-6 weeks. I guess all things are fair and Americans just complain...
PS - how many other crazy posts by their CEO, or how many other mistreated customers have had their posts deleted? That's my concern. There is no record of what I linked except for my screengrabs. One account, no biggie right? Would you feel that way if you had heard about this happening 10 times? 100?