[PCR-1000] Icom Software and software products

[Larry Kayser]

Greetings:

This discussion about ICOM policies is seemingly never ending, it has been 
going on for years and years now.  ICOM has a policy problem between ICOM 
Japan and ICOM USA.  This has been obvious since the beginning of the 
PCR-1000 era starting some 5 years ago.

ICOM Japan has never been open to any input, that I have know of, since 
they first came on the scene in my case by with the first IC22, a crystal 
controlled FM 2 Meter rig about 30 years ago.  I used to see their stuff at 
industrial shows and I was always amazed that they had a distinct policy of 
"ears off" to all issues of how their products worked and the feature set 
they included.

They have of course continued this process since then with change.

Beyond the Corporate inability to hear is the independent attitude of the 
ICOM America.  This bunch have what seems to be a franchise for ICOM 
products.  I have often wondered if someone really dug into the bottom of 
ICOM America one would find a licensed dealer arrangement - i.e. the way 
Sony operated for so many years back.  This might be the reason that the 
ICOM America are so very seriously out of touch with reality about customer 
service and product development.

Changing ICOM America is a chumps game.  I know of two major industrial 
accounts that dumped them over feature sets and product reliability - one 
was a software issue interestingly enough.  Both were summarily cut off, 
even parts for existing products became hard to get and some early 
write-offs were taken to get ICOM stuff out of the system.

For myself, I did business with them once, and found out that I was given 
information at one point that was known to ICOM America to be faulty.  I 
lost a lot of time until I found a soul mate off continent who was having 
the same problem.  We now share, his ICOM representative is aggressive and 
very helpful to those who OEM ICOM products.  I get all my software and 
information through him.  There is a world out there beyond ICOM America.

Hint, buy your ICOM radios in Europe.

Larry
VA3LK