Fanatec Appoints New CEO To “Tackle Delivery Issues”

For me its unforgivable that they LIE to their customers in the online-shop.

Products say "in stock" or "2-3 days delivery time" and then after ordering, no reaction or delivery for months.

Update your delivery times or shut down the shop until the problems are solved!

I recently bought a Fanatec handbrake. Because of the design of where the interface plug is, it was dead within 4 months because of it being accidentally touched/etc. Wrote them an email to tell them my **** broke and their design is ****, and I'm not requesting a repair/replacement unless the fix the design. B/C the same **** will happen agin. 3 weeks later they sent me an RMA shipping label. Did they even read my email. Dumbshits.

“Delivery issues”? Absolute liars! The warehouse excuse stopped being credible about 4 weeks after Black Friday.

Given the financial hole TJ put them in with all the millions borrowed and spent on new facilities, sponsorships, looks like they no longer can borrow more money to actually produce any product. THEIR SUPPLY CHAIN IS NEARLY EMPTY OF PRODUCTS! The problem is not that they have all these products they just can’t get put in a box and shipped, there’s very little product TO ship! Goodbye and good riddance Failtec!

I have ordered on 27 march for the first time a fanatec oroduct. On 8th April I got info my order is on the way from their warehouse. Finally I got my wheel a week later.
The quick release adapter was the problem.
So all on all it could be better, but not bad at all for me. Btw. i am in Germany so maybe it helped.

I am very pleased with the product itself, now I hope everything will run fine few years

New CEO: “Right now, my priority is to tackle delivery issues arising from overwhelming demand."

No, no and no.

Typical tone-deaf corporate spin where you try to make a virtue of your failings but it only makes you look like a smug tw*t.

You have significant delivery issues. Admit it and say what you are going to do to fix it.

Honesty. Goes a long way.

There may be high demand but that is irrelevant in this context. As another poster has pointed out, one solution is not to sell stock you don't have. If you do have the stock then the demand is not the problem.

• Jackoffmeier "Sorry we over sold on Black Friday". No you under stocked and sold people a promise.
• Selling a Playstation compatible wheel but only getting the license from Japan 4-5 months later. What if the Sony license was postponed even further or maybe even cancelled?
• They're sitting on people's money without delivering but meanwhile pay for expensive sponsorship deals like the GT series.
• That QR web page with all these options, that's the sim scam of all sim scams. A wheel base needs to fit a wheel properly to be used safely and correct. Especially for direct drives.
• They make it look like you have QR options, but poor quality control forces some people to upgrade eventually because their wheel is wobbling all over the place. Making an E 800,- wheel base cost E 1000,- eventually.
• Cherry on top of the pie is that you need wheel side + base side QR upgrades. Quite costly when you own a few wheels.
• DD1 and DD2 ar the same. One is tuned to 20nm and the other to 25nm.
• Then came the 5nm DD with its underpowered power supply. So you have the 'option to upgrade' to 8nm. That's planned obsolescence. They apparently learned from the DD1 and DD2.
• Introducing a new product like the DD+ while people are still waiting for their order and not having this option to choose from is disappointing.
• I was on Reddit for a while, checking out r/Fanacrap. Every negative reply about the company was down voted immediately. The impression I got was they hired click teams to influence public opinion on the web. (If so, they weren't able to respond to emails but were pretty fast when it comes to altering public opinion.)

To me, Fanasheiss shows they structurally (for many years now) keep the quality of their products low in order to sell you the improvement later on. They call it an ecosystem. I call it misleading. Fault tolerance in (CNC) parts is deliberately kept high, increasing the chance of people buying upgrades.

If things continue like this I wish them nothing but bankruptcy. Plenty of other brands to choose from nowadays. But I'll keep an open mind to see what the new CEO brings. And (s)he has a lot more to do than simple delivery issues. The entire company needs restructuring. Moving a box from A to B is childsplay.

To me this looks like the bankers who effectively control Fanatec have appointed this "Restructuring Officer"to get the business back on track so they can sell Fanatec in a few years and profit or decrease their losses.
The "delivery issue"is really a stock issue.If you order & pay for an item on Amazon and the it takes weeks to deliver it is because the item is not in stock.The item is not sat on a shelf waiting to be picked or lost for months in a warehouse.If Fanatec had enough stock they could have it all in stock at a DHL
warehouse and DHL would deliver items in 1-2 days to most people.This will probably happen in the next 12 months after orders decrease and the banks finance the stock.Prices will definitley need to go up because TJ would still be in place if the company was profitable.Fascinating to see what happens.

Kevin Troschinski said:

I have ordered on 27 march for the first time a fanatec oroduct. On 8th April I got info my order is on the way from their warehouse. Finally I got my wheel a week later.
The quick release adapter was the problem.
So all on all it could be better, but not bad at all for me. Btw. i am in Germany so maybe it helped.

I am very pleased with the product itself, now I hope everything will run fine few years

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That sort of timeframe indicates that your order has to be assembled from parts they have (or waiting for?)rather than picked off a shelf and put in a box.That is so bad on so many levels.The communiction is also terrible!

How do uou intend to deliver quickly when you intentionally make you totally dependent on the chinese.
This is a general problem in germany .

They won huge amoubt of money, now they are losing everything.

Fantec should concentration on high end product, made in germany with german / european parts.
No delivery problem anymore.

I bought my set up in August '23. Everything arrived on time except for the quick release that arrived a few days later. I had no issues with that, things happen.

Two weeks ago my power brick stopped working. For some background, I work on electronics for a living and has a hobby as well. I checked the outlet power, it was fine. I checked the power brick power out put, nothing. Power brick has burned out. Here's were things go down hill. I tried to contact someone for a warranty return through several Fanatec channels and got no reply. I finally received an email that read like a Chinese translation into English that had no information on how to return the power supply for warranty. I am going to try again later today.

Here's my biggest issue I have found with Fanatec. They have signs on nearly every racetrack on the planet. They have sponsor deals with dozens of racing series. Their name is across the windshield banner of thousands of racecars. How many sim YouTubers use and promote Fanatec. They need to stop spending so much money trying to get new customers and spend some retaining the customers they already have.

And one final thing : Nothing to see here
This link is TOPSECERT

"experience predominately in the food and beverage industry."

No electronics, mechanical hardware or manufacturing experience ? Really????!!!!!
What could go wrong?

I will never buy anything Fanatec.

driver22 said:

"experience predominately in the food and beverage industry."

No electronics, mechanical hardware or manufacturing experience ? Really????!!!!!
What could go wrong?

BTW, I will never buy anything Fanatec.

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Indeed the food and beverage industry is highly demanding in terms of delivery.
And with 12 as a consultant he probably worked in many other sectors.
I'm not saying he will do the job right, I have no idea about his experiences, just that it's not surprising especially since the former CEO still has a position in the company.
He probably will do what he is best for, dealing with the technical innovation ; he is the technical guy, the company doesn't need another one, it needs an organisation guy, the new CEO.
It is a clever move for all parties involved, it is surprising that they made this possible.

roadyroad said:

the former CEO still has a position in the company. He probably will do what he is best for, dealing with the technical innovation ; he is the technical guy

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You actually believe it was Jackermeier himself doing the "technical innovation"?

I was recently trying to order a steering wheel from them for a buddy of mine. They make it so hard to just give them your money. One of the few wheels they had in stock, required that you add a hub/QR to the order. Their "free" one that kept getting added to the order was out of stock, forcing you to pay extra for their other options.

I emailed them saying I wanted to buy a wheel but that I have spare hubs and QRs at home and therefore I wouldn't need it. I asked if they sell JUST the steering I wanted.

They said you have to select a hub/QR in order to even purchase a wheel, so needless to say, they didn't get my money.

Skinny McLean said:

You actually believe it was Jackermeier himself doing the "technical innovation"?

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I don't know and I really don't care. That's what all this communications seemed to tell, and as the company funder and formrt CEO he must have a leading role in that area.
If he can't run a company properly and don't know anything about the core aspect of this business, then he is unfortunately useless, which I doubt ; Fanatec would have diseappeared a long time ago if he was that incompetent.

A year ago I changed my Fanatec CSL V2.5 to a DD solution. Fortunately, I changed the manufacturer. I bought a MOZA R9 and a GT steering wheel. Great decision and maximum satisfaction with this solution. We already have 5 pieces of MOZA in our team.

I bought a DD1 system in November, waited almost six months for it (including patiently nudging Fanatec for updates as no update specific to my order was ever provided and no emails were responded to). Finally in March, a rushed reply six weeks after an email, then a shipment arranged to me... And once out of the box and connected per the instructions, the base started disconnecting after an hour or so, then needing to have its firmware flashed each time it was started up, before failing completely (cannot start up, stuck in a WQR firmware mode which fails as the firmware utility cannot reach the ) less than two days after being unboxed. I am presuming it may have been a reworked/repaired V1 hardware unit which still had the microcontroller issues.

I was overcharged import VAT on two deliveries (not Fanatec's problem per se, but their courier UPS was also extremely difficult to deal with and I'm still owed a refund). They also so far haven't accepted a return of all goods in the order. Some are "mint" (wheels, QR2) and functionally fine, but the faulty equipment has a UK address to return it to, whereas other goods have a Germany address, costlier and more complicated in terms of UK/EU customs paperwork. A very disappointing experience all round.

I was able to buy a Simagic Alpha system to replace it - three weeks lead time on the GT Neo wheel preorder, but the UK supplier kept me informed with preorder updates, the unit arrived on time and they even arranged Saturday shipping at my request. The system worked out of the box and has not gone wrong yet! Very good pre-sales and after-sales support by email and phone. Both supplier and manufacturer have active Discords for support and discussion.

Such a shame about Fanatec but they really death-spiralled themselves towards the drain over the last few years with their poor planning. My suspicion is a combination of running too 'hot' in terms of operating costs, ongoing sponsorship agreements for real world racing series, poor inventory management, plus insufficient R&D to develop their products.

Fanatec then hit Covid times, experienced the China manufacturing disruption, then shipping disruption, then component shortages, plus all the other ongoing delays & cost hikes. It could have been a boom period for Fanatec - and should have been, had they adequately managed inventory and lead times. Instead they're still overselling older product lines with known issues, while increasing their cost base with new products in unimportant areas like cockpits/mounting metalwork which are costly to make, warehouse and ship. I've heard they've changed their warehousing arrangement which is probably burning a hole in their pocket. Their returns / RMAs backlog must be astronomical and I imagine the preorder queue is still also fairly significant.


Fanatec's DD bases seem increasingly dated in terms of design and internals and from my own observations and research seem to have quite widespread, significant unresolved reliability problems. I've spoken to retailers and other users who have had the same problems as I did, plus other issues. Some bases have broken completely after two or three years' normal use, which is really unacceptable - my Logitech G27 is still working and that's the best part of 15 years old.

Fanatec spent too long messing about with race series sponsorships, events/marketing and peripherals. Other manufacturers have now caught up to Fanatec and some are surpassing them. Their products are riddled with problems, and their customer support exacerbates things. It's not hard to casually look around for examples very similar to mine, with some pretty terrible after-sales experiences. Granted the size of the customer base might result in more bad experience stories, but there's some strikingly obvious trends through all of these stories, including the same issues repeatedly occurring for different people.

The only real differentiator for Fanatec seems to be their existing licensed wheels, but even those are now compatible with other bases with the use of adapter kits from places like Sim Racing Machines.

~cw said:

I was overcharged import VAT on two deliveries (not Fanatec's problem per se, but their courier UPS was also extremely difficult to deal with and I'm still owed a refund).

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It might not be Fanatec's fault, but it's definitely their problem. Under no circumstances should the customer be expected to sort out problems created by the shop or its fulfillment partner*. It's a preposterous and simply bad business practice that's only going to lose them even more customers in the long run.

*If this were a normal, acceptable practice, it could have Monthy Python-esque consequences. Imagine you call Fanatec, but they say it's UPS' fault. You then call UPS, but they say its their warehouse's fault. You then call UPS' warehouse, but they say it's their employee, Mike's fault. You then call Mike, but he says it's his girlfriend's fault. You then call Mike's girlfriend, but ..., and on and on you go.

Skinny McLean said:

It might not be Fanatec's fault, but it's definitely their problem. Under no circumstances should the customer be expected to sort out problems created by the shop or its fulfillment partner*. It's a preposterous and simply bad business practice that's only going to lose them even more customers in the long run.

*If this were a normal, acceptable practice, it could have Monthy Python-esque consequences. Imagine you call Fanatec, but they say it's UPS' fault. You then call UPS, but they say its their warehouse's fault. You then call UPS' warehouse, but they say it's their employee, Mike's fault. You then call Mike, but he says it's his girlfriend's fault. You then call Mike's girlfriend, but ..., and on and on you go.

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It was, as you might say, the icing on the **** sandwich.

“Rest assured, we are diligently working to return to optimal operations."

They never had optimal operations, so I will assume this is regular (and mostly meaningless) CEO-speak.