u/fenrisvulf

Considered to not risk my lurker status and just leave it be, but the amount of bad reviews of WinWing customer support motivated me to post this.

Got my WinWing Ursa Minor Space Fighter HOTAS about a year ago.

Never had a problem with it, until a fortnight ago I smashed the USB-C-Plug into the casing, while I was changing sitting-position. I was furious because of my mistake and sure that the warranty wouldn't hold this up. Thought I could maybe solder it, but as many of you know, the USB-C on the circuit board is just layed on the print, with only 4 tiny points to hold it in position and my mistake broke some pins away anyway.

Searching the internet for other solutions, made me unsure if I should bother getting in contact with the customer support. Reviews of "prewritten questions and answers", bad english (like mine ;]), long reaction times and overall a Do-Not-Care-attitude.

Was thinking about just getting a new one (VKB space-STECS looks reeaaally nice), but was hesitant, because after all I was happy with the throttle.

So I was getting in contact with customer support and while, yes, the first statement was already, that it's not within the warranty, they quickly were ready to send me a spare circuit board for 20 Dollars (and another 30 for shipment but oh well). After a week it finally arrived and i was eager to try it out. Circuit board was identical, but the USB-C seemed to be better mounted than the last. I read many stories about broken USB-C-Ports on WinWings hardware so it seems like they optimize things by user feedback?

Plugged it in only to realize that both the X- and Y-axis are dead. The LED's were blinking in 3 different magnitudes, which strenghtened the feeling, that this is a faulty circuit board.

Mood ruined and the VKB STECS was somehow relevant again.

I decided to pull through however and after a see-saw with support over 2 days it turned out to be just a calibration issue. Very straight questions, every step foolproof written and outcome-oriented. Now everything works again for a week so I'm happy to be a satisfied WinWing-customer once again, being one of the few, who had a pleasant experience.

And now I'm baffled how long this text already is...so:

tl:dr - Throttle dead, cuz my own fault, was demotivated by people on the internet to go through customer support, did it anyway, after waiting for spare part and quick troubleshoot with support, everything works fine.

So there's a positive story about customer support and maybe it helps someone out there to get ready for the customer-support-battle.

Have a nice one.