GA Experiences with Jeppesen

[Timothy]

Following a series of unfortunate errors and misjudgements, and my vociferous complaining, including to the European Parliament, the Head of Sales and Services at Jeppesen Europe has invited me to a meeting at their office in Crawley.

It would be useful to have some first hand accounts of experiences with their sales and service team to take along to discuss. These could be either anonymous (I will respect that, even though I have stuck my own head above the parapet) or ascribable, in which case a customer account number would be helpful.

Please feel free to eMail me or to post here.

[peterh337]

A big disconnect between their excellent IFR plates team and the rest of the company.

The German office is a bit better.

[achimha]

Just one major complaint: the pricing for their European IFR plates. The Eurocontrol plates are free of charge but Jeppesen charge over 2000 €*a year. Their charts are better but not that much better to justify the expense. They should come up with reasonable pricing. There are now half a dozen businesses that transform the Eurocontrol plates into something usable on iPad, Kindle, etc.

[Timothy]

...but we can only get our datacard data from Jepp. There is no choice.

[Contacttower]

I have had their paper service that covers UK, Ireland and Northern France for about 18 months now.

Issues so far:

Around February of this year I was sent a renewal notice and invoice in Euros for whatever the amount usually is. As far as I can remember the only way of paying this was to take it into the bank and do a bank transfer. I'm not sure whether this was the banks fault, because a fee was applied or what was the problem but somehow they claimed to be 100 Euros short. So I had to give them card details over the phone to cover the extra amount.

Revisions have not reached me on at least two occasions meaning I've had to email/call to chase them.

In general it probably would have been easier if I used their website for these things but since the service was originally bought through Transair I'm not on their online system. Being sent a paper invoice in Euros is slightly cumbersome!

Overall they haven't seemed too bad, emails have always been answered quickly and the two above issues dealt with.

I would agree with the above as well though that considering all they are essentially doing is standardising already publicly available data I think the cost is rather high.

[stickandrudderman]

I've had issues with VFR jepp data on my EFIS.
I had no NDBs and apparently LHR is in class G airspace.....
It was a struggle to strike up a dialogue with anyone from Jepp and when I did I was told "NDBs are not included in VFR data" to which I replied "Then why do you include VORs?". "Good point" was the response, "I'll look into it and get back to you. That was at least 6 months ago......
Luckily my American EFIS manufacturer sorted it all with a software update but I would still rather not have to use Jepp data.
The web site is a minefield; so difficult to navigate.
I have tried to find a decode for colours and symbols used on their data and failed.
Having recently spent circa £12000 on my (non-certified) upgrade I find myself using the iPad and Skydemon rather than the cockpit screens!

[Timothy]

Here (http://ftp.artifax.net/misc/JeppesenComplaints.pdf) is the document I am preparing for Jeppesen, so far.

[A and C]

The service has turned to rubbish, it would be a pleasure to talk to the rude lady in Crawley, I can never get them to answer the phone !

It is quite disturbing how a company that five years ago was first class at customer service has lost the plot so badly.

[dutch crosswind]

In the end of 2009 I emigrated to Thailand (out of the Netherlands). In 2010 I got a reminder that I had not paid my bill for JIFP (Jeppesen Internet Flight Planner). The reason is that the Thai post does only deliver about 50% of the mail. So I paid immediately and just in time. But nevertheless they closed my account, I could no longer login. After many e-mails I got back my entrance. BUT: all my airplanes had been removed. I had to put in all the data again. Much work.

So three months before the date of subscription-ending in 2012 (July 1) I sent an e-mail with the request to send the invoice by e-mail. No problem, they said.
Ofcourse this did not happen. I was really angry.
Fortunately I still have my angry e-mail (because I am afraid I need it next year again...)

This is my e-mail in june 2012:
"Ofcourse you did NOT send the new invoice to my e-mail address. Ofcourse you did NOT send the new invoice to my correspondence address in the Netherlands. Ofcourse you send it again to Thailand. But I was lucky, the Thai post did deliver it to me intime. AND I PAID THE INVOICE AT 30-4-2012. One month before due. SEE THE ATTACHMENT!! I also send some weeks ago an e-mail that my subscriptions at the Jeppesen website did not mention my prolongation. But ofcourse NO ANSWER! Today, June 1, I try to log in at my JIFP. NOT POSSIBLE: "I HAVE NO SUBSCRIPTION" !! This is really unbelievable! What an administrative mess at Jeppesen. Every year big problems. The biggest problem is that you will probably have deleted all my airplane data in JIFP. You did that before and I had to input all the airplanes again. I DO NOT DO THAT AGAIN. There are two possibilities: 1) You repair my JIFP INCLUDING ALL MY AIRPLANE DATA (but I suppose that even that is too difficult for you) 2) You pay back TODAY my money, and you you will never see me again at Jeppesen. You understand that I am very angry."

I tried to login every day and after some days I succeeded, and all my data were still there!! I was very lucky.


One week later I got an answer:
"I apologize that we have not met the standard of service that we strive for. I show all your JIFP services are Active. Can you please explain what the problem is that you are experiencing? Are you unable to log into your service or is there an error when accessing the data? Our technical Support team is available 24/7 to assist and would be happy to trouble shoot any issues that you are experiencing."

They clearly talk cross-purposes!

Another complaint is the bad working search engine at their website (Jeppesen Direct); when you put in the search window "vfr chart Thailand" you get 551 hits, but not even ONE for Thailand...

[n5296s]

Jepp service in the US is a disaster. It was Jepp's downward spiral that finally persuaded me to get an iPad. Unfortunately I am still dependent on them for the data service for my Garmins. The actual customer service people here are generally helpful and friendly, but their systems are hopeless. Every renewal involves multiple phone calls, mistakes, etc. For me the last straw was when they stopped the "Jepp Express" service which sent me a nice new set of plates every couple of months - they stopped it without even telling their customers.

They obviously have a set of bean counters in charge of the place who are saving money everywhere they can and don't give a whatever about customer service. Sad really.