I am really curious about the decision to hold these auctions from a business standpoint. What benefit is there for the company?
I am not able to discuss this unfortunately.
The fact you don’t get it is what scares me away from Fanatec. Last year’s auction was horrific. Between connection issues and the entire 1 bid thing it was terrible. Half way through the rules changed and the system didn’t register the same. It was frustrating.
Last year's auction is completely unrelated to the DD1 auctions. They are running a different system and are hosted on different servers.
This year, the auction wheel has an upgraded motor. But we can’t get info on if the motor upgrade is just the servo motor or the electronics too. We don’t know if the upgrade is limited by the DD1 electronics or not.
It's not just the auction bases, it's all pre-orders of the DD1. It has been stated several times that the DD1 (and Podium Racing Wheel for PS4) is using a DD2 spec motor, running at lower performance. This is electronically limited. It is difficult to go into the specifics about the hardware as the servo and electronics are integrated and there is proprietary technology in place.
We can’t get a straight answer on delivery times (which I get but it’s frustrating).
The latest information about Podium availability was recently posted on our blog. This is still the most recent information I have, I'm sorry I can't give you anything else.
I had connection issues for the first 15 auctions, half I could see but not bid, the other half it wouldn’t even let me in. And it wasn’t my internet as every other site worked.
I'm sorry to hear that, but according to our logs, this did not seem to affect many people. The site was stable throughout.
Multiple times through the auction the past auction list reset/disappeared.
This is because the auction units were run in batches of 50, and we had to continue to list new batches (which reset the past auction list) as we would not stop until 30 units ended below $970.
I don’t mind that people didn’t get a high demand item for a huge savings. It’s high demand. But it wasn’t like the auction, outside of as you said 2 units with technical issues, had any savings of any significance. If you’re bragging about a 2-5% discount I think you miss what is bray worthy.
I am not 'bragging' about anything. I am providing the numbers to demonstrate that we delivered on what was advertised.
It can just be me. I certainly don’t speak for the crowd. But all of the holiday hype has been a disappointment the last two years. And for that I’m going to a company that isn’t a disappointment, last year was Thrustmaster and this year is for an AccuForce. At least with them everything is up front. I’ll take up front over half info and a half baked hype system.
I respect your decision, and I appreciate your feedback. In our case it is difficult to provide all the information you might be looking for because the product is not yet released.
You are right that I don’t have to participate in the auction system and honestly I won’t do it again. I won’t be buying any Fanatec items other than potentially a shifter second hand. Your system, which may work well for plenty of others, is frustrating to me and drove me away from the CSL package last year and has drove me away from the Podium this year. It’s how everything is handled that is frustrating. And the fact you don’t see it as frustrating is possibly the most frustrating part.
I can indeed understand your frustration, but I can only pass on the information that is available to me.