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A gift came today

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I was contacted a few days ago by a yuneec rep and was asked to make 3 reviews and send him links to the reviews and i could receive a new set of props or a yuneec shirt.
17abc09961ba13d9c2c103f83169a537.jpg


Bill W.
 
LOL I did the same and wrote a winded review and haven't seen anything yet. Either way I don't care, I'm happy to leave my review and update it as necessary. So far I'm happy [emoji4]


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Yep I got a T-shirt also.
 
So long as they are not requiring people to be 4 out of 5 stars or better (buying reviews) to get the gift.

My initial reaction is that this is unethical.

There was no requirement of stars, it being favorable, or influential beyond asking anyone to leave a review, here is the actual ask.

"Would you be interested in a free set of props or a T-shirt? All we ask is to leave a review on the following links of your Typhoon H experience."

If you'd like a screenshot of that message I'd be happy to oblige, there is/was NO requirements, only asking.
 
By the way I didn't have to lie I just had to tell them that I had no problems which I didn't have with my TH.
 
So long as they are not requiring people to be 4 out of 5 stars or better (buying reviews) to get the gift.

My initial reaction is that this is unethical.

It would be if they insisted on a positive review. There was nothing to suggest that in the request for review I received. Nor was there any mention of stars.

I'm well aware that some have experienced issues not of their own making, from hardware to firmware, but I have not been one of them, having an H that has worked as expected from day one. My review was based on my experiences, and did not incorporate anything from the experiences of others. I will only relate what I can personally verify. With the massive anti H campaign that was initiated by a competitor, on EVERY social media outlet, before and after the H was released, requesting a review from actual users is not out of line. That anti H campaign is still in play.

From my perspective what is written in a post or review is established by the writer. If the writer is honest and true there's no ethical issues. If the writer is one that embellishes, has a hidden agenda, or outright lies there would be tremendous ethical issues.

Therein lies the problem with any review or forum post. Many product reviews are written by people often provided free product to review. We should never accept them as factual or fully descriptive and expect only the good to be mentioned, rarely the bad. The one time "user" reviews we see at places like Amazon, Best Buy, Adorama and such can come from users, non users, brand zealots, paid writers, and haters. We just don't know but we can read as many reviews as possible to develop a feel for what and how they are written to generate a reasonable sense of accuracy.

We all use the internet to assist our decision making but we always need to remember what we read will be heavily influenced by the knowledge and experience of the writer relative to the product discussed. Someone writing a blatantly negative multirotor review or problem description with little or no previous experience is suspect in anything referenced. We have to ask ourselves if the lack of experience may have been a causal influence. Someone that never finds a negative is equally suspect because there will always be "bad" points. Ethics and integrity in an individual are everything in who they are. It generally does not take long to determine if they make the cut.

For me, when I write a review, if there's something I don't like you'll hear about it. For the H that's how they set up team mode by keeping the camera controls on the primary flight controller instead of shifting them to a secondary, along with advertising the H as something suitable to a new flyer. Then there's the massively abbreviated system documentation that limits the ability of many to learn the aircraft. Aside from those complaints mine has worked as expected from day one and there had been no issue that would persuade me not to buy another. I'm impressed enough to be considering the purchase of a 920. Others have not been as fortunate.



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Pat there are a lot the first time hex copter quad copter owners on this forum that have never flown anything before. That is how simple this machine is to fly.
 
Agreed, but without understanding it is much too easy to be error prone. The situation is not germane to Yuneec, it occurs across several brands. Making it easy is laudable but omitting that users should have some general experience and understanding causes them to believe the aircraft will save them from themselves, which is not the case, with any of them. Aviation is all about "what if" and when people lack the knowledge or skill set to deal with the unexpected "what if" becomes more of a "when" than an "if". Happens the same way in larger unmanned aviation as well. Those with knowledge and training have vastly lower incident rates than those just entering the game, even when flying a highly automated and programmable system that has the ability to fly itself.

Part of what I do for a living is investigate and find causes for unmanned aerial incidents. Over the years of doing that some common themes emerged. There are soft/firmware and hardware failures and there are people failures. The soft and firmware failures get addressed through a constant series of upgrades. The more complex the system the easier it is for small code errors and oversights to generate difficult to pinpoint but large problems. Hardware failures, once exposed as a recurring issue, get resolved through improvements in hardware R&D. People failures are generally more difficult to correct because there are many variables in why they fail. Haste, fatigue, failure to read and follow published documentation, lack of experience and oversight, incomplete training, improper weather decision making, over confidence, forgetfulness, all make up the human factor issues. It's the same with multirotor operations. I believe it's a bit worse because users are told "no experience necessary" before they buy something. They aren't told to "go slow and learn one thing at a time well before moving on to the next".
 
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OK Pat let's talk about the people failures on these different forms. We have people in authority on this form who have never flown anything remote control or hex or filming platforms ever in their life yet they are in positions of authority telling other people who've never flown how to do it. It seems it is the blind leading the blind.
 
Often times I'm afraid you're right in this;)

Truly, my intent is not to initiate a negative discourse in anything, but to illustrate some areas we, and manufacturers, could do better. I'm certainly not suggesting problems people have experienced are all on them. Some have experienced things that can only ever be generated by the product itself. OTOH, many view these things as they would a toy and both limit themselves and increase risk by doing so. There's much to know and learn and the learning never stops, especially as manufacturers release new and improved products faster tha users can fully appreciate the last ones.

Making that even more difficult is when there are limitations on what and how people can share those thoughts;)
 
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I'm not disagreeing with you on this at all. One way people can improve their TH experience is finding someone in their area that has flown before and go and find them and fly with them
 
...Or learn first on something smaller and simple instead of "Go big or go home".


Which makes me a bit of a hypocrite, since my first was a Q5004k, but I can say that my many years of playing a lot of FPS Flight type video games all the way back to when 3DO Was the only CD format video game system out there, that it helped a lot in what to expect.

I also did the research and read the owners/operations manual several times before I even made the purchase, and still took baby steps in a large open parking lot, instead of going straight to the worst place to fly, slapping a battery in it, and pushing the go button.

Back on topic...It's hard to say what is an honest review anymore. You almost have to grade the on the bell curve, Throw out the glorious and the horrific, unless you start reading a pattern in experiences with different reviewers.
 
Agreed, but without understanding it is much too easy to be error prone. The situation is not germane to Yuneec, it occurs across several brands. Making it easy is laudable but omitting that users should have some general experience and understanding causes them to believe the aircraft will save them from themselves, which is not the case, with any of them. Aviation is all about "what if" and when people lack the knowledge or skill set to deal with the unexpected "what if" becomes more of a "when" than an "if". Happens the same way in larger unmanned aviation as well. Those with knowledge and training have vastly lower incident rates than those just entering the game, even when flying a highly automated and programmable system that has the ability to fly itself.

Part of what I do for a living is investigate and find causes for unmanned aerial incidents. Over the years of doing that some common themes emerged. There are soft/firmware and hardware failures and there are people failures. The soft and firmware failures get addressed through a constant series of upgrades. The more complex the system the easier it is for small code errors and oversights to generate difficult to pinpoint but large problems. Hardware failures, once exposed as a recurring issue, get resolved through improvements in hardware R&D. People failures are generally more difficult to correct because there are many variables in why they fail. Haste, fatigue, failure to read and follow published documentation, lack of experience and oversight, incomplete training, improper weather decision making, over confidence, forgetfulness, all make up the human factor issues. It's the same with multirotor operations. I believe it's a bit worse because users are told "no experience necessary" before they buy something. They aren't told to "go slow and learn one thing at a time well before moving on to the next".
Well said -- and right on.
 
I was contacted a few days ago by a yuneec rep and was asked to make 3 reviews and send him links to the reviews and i could receive a new set of props or a yuneec shirt.
17abc09961ba13d9c2c103f83169a537.jpg


Bill W.


Did they contact you via email?
 

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