Phil bought himself a voice recorder and an audio cable that converts the different jack sizes and allows a pass-through for your headset. The cable is manufactured by Barnstormer Audio, and the story of it arriving to me was quite the saga.
One week? Nothing. Okay, expected.
Two weeks? Nothing. Partly expected, but an update would've been nice, even just to say "still waiting."
Three weeks? Nothing. At this point, an update should really be happening.
I sent an email requesting the status on September 23. No response.
Four weeks? Nothing, and no response to my email, so I sent another on October 1. No response.
A couple days later? Nothing, and still no response to my email.
I sent another email on October 3. No response. This email, like all of the others, indicated that all I was looking for was an update. Unlike the others, however, I included that I would have to take action with PayPal if I didn't hear back by Friday of that week. PayPal's official policy is that you have up to 45 days to submit a dispute, but I didn't want to press up against that deadline.
I believe it was one or two days after that I received a response through PayPal's resolution center asking me to remove the hold so that the item could be shipped, and that the backorder issue was noted when I purchased the product. As I noted above, this is very true. The issue, however, was the complete communication blackout. Selling products to pilots, I would have thought that would have been an understandable expectation.
As far as the performance of the cable goes, it seemed to have done really well on my last flight. The video in my last post is proof that it works, and works well. The video does have audio from both sources - the ContourGPS and the voice recorder through the cable - mixed together, so if you're thinking it picked up a lot of background noise, it's probably the audio from the ContourGPS.
To me, I feel like they have a good product. It works, and it's really simple. It just feels like a great idea with poor execution. Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not dismissing them. In the end, I'm hoping the emails I sent, along with dealing with the PayPal dispute, left somewhat of a mark that will push them to fix the communication issue.
It really does actually pain me slightly to say that the product itself is well worth the money spent on it, but that you might be waiting a while to get it. My verdict is that if time isn't an issue, it's well worth it, but make sure to set yourself a reminder to start the dispute process if you haven't received it within the 45 day time frame.
