ALK (copilot) customer service

paulwall · Occasional Visitor Joined: Sep 26, 2004 Posts: 2

Emailed alk with a query about my desktop portion of copilot v5 always starting up with an illegal operation (which i ignored and carried on regardless). No response for 2 days . Bearing in mind that my pc is below min recommended spec as its almost 5 yrs old now. Crying or Very sad

Was very suprised to get a telephone call from ALK informing me of a patch/update just released and reading out the link to my girlfriend. This has cured the problem and is an excellent personal service as far as im concerned. :D [/i]

Dave · Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2004 4:37 pm Post subject:

That's good to hear. I wasn't aware that a patch resolved the minimum spec issue, but never the less, it seems there may have been something there causing the problem.

ohm62 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 27, 2004 Posts: 19

I don't know now, but in 2002, TravRoute support sucked big time.

After dropping about $550 on their Door-toDoor Copilot bundle (GPS+Softw.) in 1999 + upgrade in 2001, and fighting tons of bugs thereof, I was obstinately and arrogantly refused the replacement of a defective CD. TravRoute wanted me to upgrade again to the latest version for another bag-full of dollars. As I refused, and threatened to drop their case and go with a competitor's solution, their proposed alternative was for me to pay $45 for the CD replacement. Eventually, after lots of arguing, they promised they would send the replacement CD for free.... and actually never did!

Not only they were by far the most expensive of the bunch (which could be, at the time, partially justified by a superior software indeed), but they had the ultimate arrogance to argue with a good customer on some small issue to grab petty cash. I'd guess their balance sheet was in real bad shape by then; maybe were they a tad too concerned by the shareholder's equity line, in view of their acquisition by ALK... Well, taking customers as hostages is no proper way to fix it!!!

Then again, now that ALK drives the game, Copilot and associated upgrades still are bloody expensive compared to the competition... and the quality gap between them all narrowing, this is not good for them. Now they really cannot afford losing customers the way they once thought amusing...

-- OHM

Dave · Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2004 8:21 pm Post subject:

ALK have reacted immensly since 2001/2002/2003 to customer demand and are now much better since their re-branding and re-focusing.

I can remember dealing with ALK and certainly in the UK (TeamWarrior) back in the early days, but since ALK have created a UK presence and started to increase that, the company has got better (albeit support are inundated with a high demand of calls since the release of CPL5 for PPC and SmartPhone due to the customer take up of CPL), product design and development has also increased substantially.

Not to say it's perfect, no company is ever perfect, but ALK have improved substantially in terms of re-focusing and listening to customers.

ohm62 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 27, 2004 Posts: 19

FWIW, I'll find out very soon if progress was made in the US as well: I finally ordered my 3rd upgrade; this is v8.0 for Laptop software. No GPS (already got a new Holux GR-230 and a data cable for it so to use it with both laptop and bluetooth PDA), as well as my old Copilot 2001 USB GPS (small, round, white, USB...). Hoping that either or both of these will work with the new software...

That is definitely the last shot I give to ALK. I'll also see how they match or not concurrent offerings on the software upgrade next year. Looks like they made some efforts in that area as well this year, but still are far from par.

Thanks for your inputs. Very useful!

-- OHM.

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