Do you think that a company should stand behind it's products even after it changes ownership?
I've had a lot of problems with a BME Edge 540 and the company has changed ownership during the time I've been building it.
I contacted the company through the same website that I purchased the kit with my latest problem and I recieved an email back
stating the it was under a new owner and that he will not replace parts for this aircraft due to the fact that
he didn't own the company at the time I purchased the kit. He said that he only purchased the inventory, the website,
and the company name which he is phasing out. It seems to me that he wants all of the good that came with the name
and none of the problems.

I would think that if the new owner didn't want the previous problems of the company that he would buy the
inventory, start a new website and change the name outright.

He did finally offer to sell me parts to replace the defective parts at 20% off. Under these circumstances do you
think that it's reasonable to have to buy new parts that should have beed good to begin with?

The major reason I bought this kit was because the thread here on RCU showed that the company was customer
service oriented. I guess he bought everything except the customer service.

When someone buys out a business- he can do it in whichever fashion he likes- with or without past obligations or debts.
It's a legal thing - and he may be under NO obligation whatsoever to a prior purchaser of the product.
Most returns on merchandise are done as a customer service -NOT any legal obligation.

Did you buy it from BME or a distributor ?

Albert

This is an ARF, right?

When did you buy it, and when did you contact the company? How long a time frame are you speaking of?

I think my opinion will depend upon the answers.

Good luck,
Dave Olson

I understand that there is no LEGAL obligation. I believe that there is a MORAL obligation if you are continuing the business and want to keep the previous customers . I don't know about you, but customer service is a top concern when I shop via the Internet. When I shell out hundreds of dollars, I need to know that if there is a problem that it will be resolved fairly. I purchased two aircraft from the BME Website. The Yak went together with few issues. The Edge has had several issues. The most bothersome was that the elevators were not drilled properly for the hinges. I contacted Max and he resolved the other issues for the most part.

I have been working 7 days a week for the past 10 months, so there hasn't been a lot of time for building. That's the major reason for building an ARF. I learned about BME here on RCU, and from the post it appeared to not only be a quality kit, but Max seemed to care about the customers.

The other kit makers that I have dealt with, namely SIG, HANGER 9, GREAT PLANES, QUIQUE'S AIRCRAFT, and other companies in the industry have been fantastic and they don't care how long it's been since you bought the item. If something's wrong or you just need help they take care of you. My experience with these and many other companies have been very good and in several cases where it was my fault they haven't let me pay for the new parts.

Here’s an opportunity to give SIG a public pat on the back. I have one of their Extra 300’s that is a few years old. When I was at the Ihobby show in L. A. last year I spoke to the person in charge of the company. When we were talking about the Extra she learned that the canopy and one of the wheel pants had been damaged. I hadn’t contacted the company because I let the kit sit on the shelf for two years and didn’t feel it was fair to complain about it after that time. She sent out the new parts free of charge. Now that’s a company that has customer service. Have they made more money off of me since that time. Of course they have. I continue to buy products from them. They had no LEGAL obligation but they kept a customer.

If it were the case that I screwed up the elevators, I'd be the first one to say, I screwed up and can I buy the replacement parts. This is a company that is continuing on with the same name, same website, and the same merchandise. If he doesn’t want to service previous customers that's his choice. I purchased a plane from this company, not from Max. The company is still in business. The plane has defects, the company should stand behind it's products, regardless of who is running it at any given time.


I think that if he wants to keep the previous customers he should have stepped up to the plate and taken care of it. Actually if his response was, "Hey I just took over the business and I'm not financially able to take care of you the way I'd like, but I'll give you the new parts at my cost>" I'd have a totally different attitude. But the " I wasn't the one that made the money off of you, so it's not my problem" doesn’t make me want to purchase any other product from him. And that's a shame, I was about to place an order for other planes. My Yak fly great. I have no complaints. I bought the Edge prior to the Yak and the reason that the Edge isn't flying yet is due to the extra work to resolve poor quality of this particular kit. If I hadn't bout the Yak prior to starting the Edge, I would not have bought the Yak.

My point is this, there are too many other manufactures out there that make awesome kits with great customer service, for me to spend my money with a company that doesn't have great customer service. With the kits that I had intended to buy from BME , Herve would have made far more money than it would have taken to make this right.

Ill start off my saying I have the edge, and the ultimate, both went together with no problems, and both fly awesome.. In my opinion, new owners of an existing business have the choice to do what they want, keep in mind, they just got done shelling out alot of denaro to aquire a company, and have to figure things out and go from there...

My question, did you assemble it 'stock' with the stock parts, or did you modify it? Lets see some pictures of the problem.

The other manufacturers you mention, have they changed hands recently and are going through what BME/PAU is? To my knowledge NO. Herve cares about his customers, and does a fantastic job taking care of them.

I know for a fact the customer service is even better under the new ownership. Going back through the Edge thread, I’ve not seen one post of yours speaking of anything wrong with the plane and you’ve had it for time now. I feel that 20% off for the parts seems reasonable to me, You bought that plane from Max, not Herve.

What recompense do you think you'd have if Max had just closed BME Aircraft's doors? Who would you go to for ANY help or parts? Who would then be "morally" responsible for your issues?

The facts are that BME Aircraft is NOT still in business... but rather a new company, Performance Aircraft Unlimited (PAU) owned by Herve Lejune purchased the inventory and rights to continue manufacturing these designs. Nothing more or less. Had this not occurred, there would be noone you could go to for help.

And it's probably a good thing that he did... as it may have been VERY possible that these great designs would have disappeared from the market entirely... and you'd not be on here ripping an entirely innocent company for your problems.

Instead... they offered you 20% off the cost of the replacement parts... I think that is a very fair offer and shows willingness to help you. Certainly on a set of elevators he isn't making a HUGE profit on you... perhaps enough to break even after handling the order.

Truth is you stated you bought the Edge prior to the Yak... Just how long ago did you buy this Edge? You mentioned too being busy to build it for 10 months... but you still had time to assemble the Yak instead? Seems to me you should have resolved your issues when you had them... instead of letting it sit for 10+ months.

If you were so unhappy with your purchase initially you could have contacted your credit card company and disputed the charges... instead you chose to buy and build yet ANOTHER model instead???

I don't think any manufacturer (even one that hadn't sold out) would offer AS MUCH. Seems to me it's more a matter that the issue was denied by BME Aircraft and now you are trying to use a public forum to "strongarm" PAU for something you should have dealt with LONG AGO.

If you read the Extra thread, you'll find where several cowls arrived damaged... these were PROMPTLY replaced... and many of the replacements were SMASHED by UPS and PAU promptly replaced THOSE COWLS TOO...

It seems quite clear that PAU is dedicated to taking care of it's customers... as well as offering reasonable support to those that purchased products from Max prior to their purchasing the inventory and intellectual property.

You mentioned "if I had screwed up the elevators I would have just bought new ones"...

Seems to me PAU is saying the same thing... "If I had sold you those elevators I would have warrantied them".... the only difference is...

They chose to offer you 20% off the parts as a gesture of good business... and you chose to try and sully their name publicly and harm their sales because they didn't give you a free set of elevators on a plane you bought OVER 10 MONTHS AGO???

Seems to me PAU is the party here with good intentions. My interactions with Herve have been nothing but upstanding... he seems like a nice fellow with good, solid business practices.

Personally I think you reacted out of sorts and I would ask a moderator to delete this thread... you really didn't do yourself justice here.

Now... ALL this aside... maybe can HELP you with the problem... if you are unwilling to take advantage of PAU's offer of 20% off new parts... maybe we can assist you in FIXING the problem...

If misalignment of the holes is your issue... why not just plug the holes and redrill? not a big deal at all...

Or (as I think is the case) you already hinged anyway... you can either cut the hinges and re-drill beside the existing holes... or pehaps cut slots and use pinned hinges.

Well I have never done business with Max in the past, yet I have watched in "AWE" at the sight of his planes and prototypes fly as Max is a member of the same flying club as I am. A number of our members have purchased BME planes and Max has always made good on any issues, however I will say this PAU is under no obligation, LEGAL, MORAL or OTHERWISE to resolve your issue. It is new owners, under new circumstances selling new product. You chose to wait a long time to try and resolve this issue and in the meantime the company changed ownership, you are no longer dealing with Max and BME Aircraft, you are dealing with Herve and Performance Aircraft Unlimited....If Herve wants to make good on your issue that is purely out of the goodness of his own heart...and wallet.

Do what you should have done, take advantage of Herve's offer, get the new parts at a 20% discounted price and then ask for assistance to rectify your issue.

Now let me ask this, what do you think of the following scenario:

A company produces a product, they sell thousands of units however in the meantime they receive complaints that the units are failing within a short period of time. The company then does some of their own research and realizes that the complaints are valid, they do in fact have an issue while continuing to sell other units they have recieved complaints about. They make a running change in production to recitfy the problem and phase that inventory into existing inventories to be sold making no one aware of this. Meanwhile more complaints come in, more problems arise, however they blame the issues on everything but their own product. A customer sends in product for service repair, the company repairs the problem, the same problem they rectified in their production change, and charges the customer for the service work performed and not under warranty at all. They never divulge they have ever had an issue and deny that there ever was a problem, yet many people have had problems with them and continue to do so. Is this company expected to make good on the all of the losses incurred by people using thier products? Should they have in fact made it public knowledge that they had a problem and risk losing key market share and customer base? Should they have published a recall notice and offered free exhange and repair to all previous customers at their own expense? What are your responses to that?

He bought the assets of the company, and you sir would be considered a liability, it is a legal issue and he has no obligations to you, however I do agree that he should be the nice guy and help you out in some way, shape of form.

which this man did do he offered 20% off, as i see it that is very fair. he wont make much if anything on this sale after manufacturing, handling boxing and shipping this small order. yep very fair for someone that is not legally responsible for the plane you bought from someone else.

Well it appears that everyone thinks I'm being unreasonable, and I did ask for your opinion. I wish him luck with the new company. But as far as I'm concerned it appears to me to be the same company. I've lost all interest in completing this plane and doubt that I'll do anything more with it.

You asked if I built it according to the manual and what the problems were. The only place that I deviated was to pull off the rainbows and I used Robart hinge pockets because I was worried about getting glue in the hinge joints. It was the first time that I've used them and I don't feel that they are worth the extra work. I didn't use them on the Yak and it worked out fine.

The problems I had were that the canopy/ hatch was too short and the top edge had about a 3/4" gap at the top where it meet the turtle deck and the bottom had about 3/16" gap wich was probably due to shrinking. I had to take it apart and redo it. The cardboard wing tubes are too tight. It's impossible to grab the wing hard enough to pull the wing away from the fuselage without crushing the wing. Max told me to try baby powder which did absolutely nothing to cure the problem. I spent hours wet sanding the carbon fiber tube. By time I got it to fit loose enough (still really tight) to be able to get the wing off it was so thin that it cracked. The elevator hinge holes were not aligned and I didn't discover it until after I glued in the hinge pockets. Now to take out the hinge pockets it will leave 1/2 inch holes. I've also had some issues balancing it with the 4lb G-62 Lite that I got from Ralph wich I don't feel is the kits fault. By the way Ralph is a FANTASTIC guy to deal with.

Thanks for you opinions even though I really didn't like what I was told. I can see you point of view.

hey man.just wanted to chime in here for a second. I read that you had problems with the wing tube not fitting , and being to thin after sanding it down. check out the Market place for a guy who sells CF wimng tubes and stab tubes. I have heard nothing but good things from his products. here's a link for ya >>>> http://www.rcuniverse.com/market/item.cfm?itemId=231431


Hope this helps your problem with the wing tube. And as far as a canopy goes.........those things are usually pretty cheap , i would scrap building a plane for something like that. good luck and get that bird going!!



Jeff

Next time - review everything before doing any mods
Having assembled a sh-it pot ful of ARFS and BARFS - I agree there ar errors in some and if I were to just sit back and send problem pieces back to th seller - I would still be assembling ones from years back.
The wing tube -- NEVER sand the tube - sand the socket it goes into.
wrap stick sandpaper say - 220 grit around a slightly smaller tube/pipe/stick - and turn it slowly in and out of the socket --always moving it in one rotation such that the sandpaper does not bunch up- remove and dust often - I have fixed a bunch of them this way .
Take some soft balsa and using a piece of brass tubing - plunge into the end grain and make some plugs which you can glue in with Gorilla Glue - - insert these in hinge locations and install (when dry and sanded ) the new hinges . Dun this one too fixing screwed up hinge alignment
these tricks are far faster to do then ship sh-it back n forth and wasting time oand money tryingt o get things exchanged

Well, all I can say, I have the edge, I assembled it stock, it went together fine and zero problems, Ive been beating the heck out of it, and I think its an awesome plane. For all the bme planes Ive seen up here in person, all were a great buy. I am buying more.


http://media.putfile.com/BME-Edge-540-II

I'll give ya 50 big ones for it.

Seems to me you have only built ARF's in the past.

Go experence a kit and pre drilled holes not lining up will seem like easy stuff.

It still takes some modeling skills to get these things in the air.

Well put.

Anybody remember when Jack Devine bought the inventory of NWHT? (was that way back in the Pre-RCU days, on RC Online?) NWHT required payment in advance, promised delivery within 2 months, and reportedly delivered no sooner than 6 or 8 months later, if at all. At the end, a lot of people were left holding the empty bag. When Devine neglected to change the name of the business, he took a lot of the same kind of heat.

Good luck to the new owner.
Dave Olson

Fotunately for PAU... BME didn't really have a "horrible" reputation to begin with... neithe were the planes of low quality (or else PAU would not have purchased them).

I'm sure that Max/BME Aircraft did their best to satifsy those they could in as best a way as possible. The original poster himself stated that Max HAD taken care of MOST of his issues that arose with his plane... and it seemed only this last issue was unresolved (and had been for quite some time).

In short... PAU isn't inhereting any bad rep or product. Just the opposite.. if you read the varied threads around the Yak, Edge, Extra and Ultimate (as well as the Mini Yak) people are quite pleased with the quality, performance and service... of both BME Aircraft and now Performance Aircraft Unlimited.

My only issue was that my Edge (VERY nice product/quality) was the first generation and was going to have to work at getting balance. Mostly because I am a light builder and wanted to keep it as light as possible... yet it was obtainable. Future revisions were slightly modified to make it easier.

Now PAU has a stable of tweaked aircraft that should please anyone... and if there are isolated issues... are there to stand behind the prodcust they sell.

This is why I decided to order the Extra 330L recently (due to get it soon).

I think it's time for someone to do another phantom all aluminum scale blah blah ARF- and market it on EBay.
The suckers would line up like kids to a video game sale -
This isn't aimed at any sales group mentioned here
Just noting that what the buyers perceive and what the vendors offer are sometimes a wee bit different.

All I can say is that Daimler-Benz just bought Chrysler and that did nothing to negate the warranties on Chrysler model cars. I could be totally wrong but I really believe most of your advisors are. If they bought the company and did NOT change the name they are responsible for any warranties issued by the company they aquired. Sounds like a lot of people are trying to defend a guy that doesn't have a leg to stand on. My advise to you is to look up the e-mail address of your State Attorney General and send them a full disclosure e-mail detailing the warranty you received and your problems and ask them to resolve it under a consumer complaint issue. I think you may be surprised at the rights you have under the stated warranty. It doesn't cost you a thing and if you have no rights they will tell you but, I doubt that is the case.

That WALL you pulled off at 3:20--3:23 into the video was SICK (that means "oustanding" )

Nice flyin'

haha, thanks RC!! I liked the takeoff wall personally, but that one definately pulled some G's! This edge rocks! w00t!

I'm new to RCU and was looking around and came across this thread. I had a version 2. It flew great, but I was dissapointed with the kit. It had several problems. It also had a stab and elevators with misaligned hinge holes. The hatch had about a 1/2 inch gap between the canopy frame and the rear turtle deck. I had to cut it apart and reglue it. The fit between the canopy and the hatch was also not the greatest. The wing tube was way too tight. I spent a while sanding the cardboard tube to get it to fit. When the plane arrived it was covered with wrinkles everywhere. The covering job looked like it had not been properly sanded prior to covering. The cowl had about a 3/16" gap and the stripes were about a 1/4" misaligned. I also purchased the control linkage that comes with version 3. They were very dissapointing, they looked nice, but there was a lot of slop in the fittings. Also the foam tires would develope flat spots if left to sit on them, I had to store it in a cradle. Probably the worst was the tail wheel bracket. After the maiden flight which had a very gentle landing, I found it delaminated just from the trip home in the trailer which was only about 20 miles. There were other planes in the trailer that were unharmed, it wasn't that rough of a ride. Like I said in the begining, it flew great, just a couple clicks for trim and it was good to go. I wouldn't buy another one, not with quality kits from companies like Airwild, Aeroworks, Dietrich and others for the same price range.

There will probably be those that flame me for my opinion, but that's just what it is an opinion and they are entitled to their's.

First, welcome to the forum. I think your points are valid, properly delivered, and well taken. I was more fortunate with mine, it didn't have many of the problems you listed. We all got stronger tail wheel brackets and mine has not failed in many many landings...some not very light. The landing gear and wheels were a different story. Cracked that gear and peeled the paint in no time. The foam wheels should not go on any planes this heavy. I went with Graphtech CF gear ($25 clearance at Toledo, love that) and Dubro light flight tires and it's way better. I love it. As far as the plane's performance, unreal. I sold all my glow stuff after flying this plane. Nothing came close to this plane.

Edit: Came back to post this. Funny how the first bad experience can turn you off forever. Take the DA50 for example. Many people love theirs, but I had this annoying dead stick problem at idle while inverted (others have too). After a summer of flying and too many close calls, I threw in the towel (after DA said there was no problem when I sent it to them). I sold the DA 50 and bought (2) ZDZ 50's. Take JohnVH for example, has one in his BME Edge and does not have the problems I did. It's an older engine. Well anyway I will never buy another DA 50 again. That's my personal decision and all it took was one bad engine to do it. Even if it's possible if I were to buy ten more and they all turned out perfect. I won't buy another. ***** happens.

We hava handfull of DA50's up here, they fly inverted fine, in fact, I just ordered another DA100