I am posting this issue here because I have been asked to do so by FLightAware staff. I don’t believe it belongs here, because it is not of general public interest. Still, in the absence of other support options, here goes …
I have been using your FlightXML API successfully for a few days until it stopped working a few hours ago. I am not receiving any more results and no error messages. I am on the Silver Plan. I don’t believe that I have exceeded my allocated 20,000 queries, but I also have found no way of checking my actual query count.
Thanks for your note, but your billing records appear to be incorrect. I
query “AirportBoards” maximum once per minute, yet your system shows in
excess of 600 queries per hour, unless I interpret your “Count” value
incorrectly. Similarly, I query “AirlineFlightSchedules” twice per hour,
yet your data sometimes shows 20 queries per hour, other times even 40
queries per hour. This is crazy stuff and unacceptable. Please investigate
urgently.
My timed queries are still happening, so you can check against those.
15 results is equal to 1 query. If you adjusted you “howMany” to 200, that would count as 14 queries for each request. Any fractions of a query are rounded up.
Thanks for the explanation. The answer is of course completely
unacceptable, particularly since this fact is described nowhere before a
subscription decision is made. Please forward to sales with a request to
cancel my subscription and execute a refund.
As a (almost) client of Flightaware for FlightXml service, Im worried about this too. You (Flightaware) should work on make things more transparente and clear for your clients (already ones, recent and future). You have to give us tools, information clear to not let give space to any suspicions on your services.
Here is a post of mine regarding the delayed information displayed regarding requests history made to your services, and Im still waiting response.
Sorry, a word about this topic. @dietmar concerns, are mine too as I’ve expressed. Transparence, not giving space for doubts is very important for clients and for your credibility.
I recognize the need for everything that you mention. And, although I dont want to use this as an excuse, FlightXML 3 is documented as being a beta product and not complete. I agree that, even as a beta product, there is no excuse for not having the complete pricing documented, however, there have been other projects that have required our attention before we were able to complete additional work on FlightXML3. We are working to to provide updated information on the FlightXML 3 page.
What I find truly disgusting is how the issue has been handled since. I am
now told that I can’t even get a refund. I have been screwed out of USD 100
and I must just accept it? And you still want me to accept FlightAware as a
legit operation? With blatant disregard for genuine customer concerns?
Please !!!
No, I am requesting a refund for a product that I wasn’t able to fully use,
because it didn’t even survive the testing period and it didn’t function as
advertised. The fact that you are counting each group of 15 result records
as a separate query was not mentioned anywhere and hence you have mislead
me. If I had known that, I would never have signed up even for a trial. You
guys are truly something else. Why don’t you look at my request data and
tell me that this represents “full use”. Your attitude sucks and your
practices should be exposed to a wider community. It seems that I am not
the only one who has “not read” or “misunderstood” your pricing details.
For the sake of USD 100 you are quite happy to have an entirely
dissatisfied customer spread the bad news when the core problem is quite
clearly due to your own omission (deliberate or otherwise) of pertinent
pricing details? What I find even more amazing is that this relatively
small problem has now been blown up through the exposure of your attitude
towards your customers. I am sure there are a number of books that list
scenarios like this as efficient case studies of what NOT to do. And when
ultimately your business has failed, you wonder why?
I have put in a request for a refund in the amount of USD 99. I recognize that it was not expressly dictated on the page and this has been documented in the forums, however, there are several posts in the discussion forum referencing how the queries are counted, and I have created a ticket to have how the queries are counted more expressly defined for FlightXML 3 Beta. Additionally, it appears you were testing how the API functioned from 11 Nov and you would have been able to see your usage to determine how queries were counted. I noticed that there were several times you increased your ‘HowMany’ to continually increase the number of results. Additionally, if you had questions regarding how pricing was determined, we post our support phone number, have a chat system, have email support, as well as respond to questions in the discussion forum in a timely manner. If you do not want caps on queries, you are welcome to use the feature complete FlightXML 2, which is charged on a per query basis and also counts 1 query per 15 results.
After all the previous correspondence and your assurance that you had
canceled my subscription, you have just billed me again!!! Simply
disgusting.
I expect an immediate refund and the assuurance once more that my
subscriptions is canceled!
WHEN ARE YOU FINALLY GOING TO STOP YOUR CRIMINAL ACTIVITY?
That’s right, why apologise or explain? I didn’t ask for my account to be
disabled, just the API subscription to be stopped. But you obviously have
to need for my datafeed anymore, so I have shut that down as well. Is your
senior management aware of the level of service I have received?
I did just as you asked. I disabled the FlightXML account that was being charged and put you on a free FlightXML account. I would be interested to receive your feedback on the level of service provided. From my interactions, I addressed everything you mentioned and how we were working to correct some short comings in the documentation for FlightXML 3 Beta. We refunded any charges that you deemed were erroneous in a timely manner. Since these interactions, we have released new information about FlightXML 3 Beta that can be found at the following link. https://flightaware.com/commercial/flightxml/v3/content.rvt.
Additionally, we value all of our feeders (by continually offering new and exciting features to them, including Enterprise accounts, in depth stats, free API queries, etc.) and I did not disable any of your user account info.
