Well, all good things must come to an end it seems. My TX which has worked flawlessly for 6 months bit the dust on the 1st of July, I was in talks with Thrustmaster, who said they would replace the wheel for me on the 8th of July. Roll onto the 10th of July, and Thrustmaster decided they would not be replacing the wheel after all, and where 100% not interested in honouring the product warrenty; stating to “go to amazon” for a replacement. Considuring I have had the wheel for 6 months, I was surprised when Amazon ordered a replacement within minutes of contacting them on the phone. The new wheel arrived today, I set it up; alas it was not ment to be. The new wheel is DOA, 100% not working out of the box. Unfortunately Amazon do not have anymore in stock, so both wheels are been returned now; and I will be getting a full refund. I cannot fault Amazon, they have been amazing, and very easy to deal with. Thrustmaster on the other hand, I will not trust them as far as I can throw them. They are breaking uk and EU law by not honouring a warranty replacement or repair, and now I am left without a wheel. Past experience with Madcatz wheels, means I will not be buying their offering. I may relent and repurchase a TX, but it will probably be much later in the year; if not next year. But I am debating buying a Fanatec at this point, and may just remain without a wheel on the Xbox one altogether; I just havnt decided yet.
My advice to anyone who wants a wheel for the X1, be very very careful when dealing with Thrustmaster. The wheel works great, when it actually works. When it doesnt though, in the uk at the very least, they just don’t want to know!
They cannot fail to honour the warranty unless they can prove misuse of the product on your part. The other thing they can request is that you correctly follow a reasonable procedure to sort out the problem. Unfortunately, you can demand that the retailer replace a brand new item as a swap out, but the manufacturer is within their rights to repair rather than replace, meaning you would be without your wheel for a while. Assuming you have followed their procedures, why have they refused your repair?
Trust me, I followed everything they said, and provided pictures on the issue I was having with my original wheel. I provided high quality HD pictures of the product itself, including serial numbers of all parts, a copy of the invoice, and screen caps of what windows was saying whenever the device was connected to my PC. There has been no misuse of the wheel, and was working perfectly fine from January till the 1st of this month. I look after all my stuff, I keep them in a clean environment, they are not knocked about, and I have use it mostly for racing on Forza 5 and the pc sims I own. I have uk trading standards involved in the matter, who also have the same HQ pictures, invoice details, and copies of ALL emails sent between myself and thrustmaster. Their official response to me on the 8th of July
"Regarding your TX Racing Wheel Ferrari 458 Italia Edition.
Thank you very much for the information provided.
Please be informed that we placed an order “order number removed” to send you a new wheel base to the postal address you provided us with.
In a few days you will receive a delivery slip from us so you can send us back the current wheel that you have.
After receiving the replacement wheel base from us please mount the peripherals from the current unit that you have - pedal set, steering wheel, power cable - on it and first test it with the computer under Game Controllers Panel, as shown here:
Make sure that the wheel is detected, that it calibrates correctly, that the firmware of it is displayed in the testing panel and up-to-date, that all the wheel’s functions (pedals, gear levers, buttons, steering) are working as they should, including the FFB effects. Take your time and do a thorough test of all the functions.
Then you can take it with you to the Xbox One and use.
After using the wheel for several days, whenever you have the time, use the packaging from us and the delivery documents that we will soon be providing you with to send the faulty wheel base back to us.
We thank you for your cooperation and we rest at your disposal for any other inquiries."
This was their further response on the 10th of July, after I had asked them if they could provide me with a tracking number and estimated delivery date.
"Regarding your TX Racing Wheel Ferrari 458 Italia Edition.
Thank you very much for your reply.
I am very sorry it was a misunderstanding form our side in regards to the RMA process.
We will not send you a new wheel base"
They further told me on the phone, because who would honestly except an email response as above, to “go to Amazon” for a product replacement or refund.
In all the time I have been gaming, I have only ever had to have one warranty issues dealt with prior to this, and that was with my original xbox 360 which suffered the RRoD after almost 3 years of solid use. That 360 was a day one premium edition, I take very good care of anything I buy, especially when something has cost me upwards of £300!!!
I wasn’t offered the chance of a new base unit when mine went wrong, I had to package it all up and send it to France for repair. To be fair, it was back with me around one week from when I sent it off. I can’t imagine why they would refuse to honour your warranty to be honest, I can only think that someone has screwed up there. You are doing the right thing with trading standards, it’s just a shame since that will be a very slow process
Oh that sucks! Really sorry to hear this. I hope that you get it sorted quickly, but i do suggest that your next step would be to respond to their email with a formal complaint and ask them to reconsider providing you with a replacement or a repair - you should give them an opportunity to rectify the situation. However, I believe that it is within their rights to arrange for a replacement via Amazon, and doing this is normally meant to ensure that you (the customer) gets a replacement quicker - their RMA process will then be with Amazon not you. I know this because I bought a shower from Triton and it developed a fault during installation (3 months after I’d actually purchased it). Triton RMA process was going to take 10 to 15 days so their customer support lady said I’d be better off contacting Amazon. Amazon delivered a new one next day (came direct from Triton) and a couple of weeks later Triton arranged for me to return the faulty one.
Lame! For lack of a better word. I am sorry to hear that you have to wait now for a while. After reading your post (along with others in this forum) I am a little bit nervous. Best Buy Canada does not even have it listed on their site anymore. So I don’t know what would happen for myself If, or should I say when it happens to me
Yeh, its pretty bad. Trading standards are involved in the matter anyway, and Amazon are giving me a full refund; which is really good of them. I am very disappointed in Thrustmaster however, they dont exactly have a bad reputation; but they have severely damaged their rep with me. I am looking at the possibility of buying an Nvidia GTX780 for my pc once I get the refund, as it will force me to have to save for a wheel again. This way, I can wait till Thrustmaster possibly get these TX issues resolved once and for all, and then buy a new TX. Unless something better comes along.
Yeah, sometimes products need to be in the consumers hands, then the developer can make improvements to the design. Flat top surface stove elements used to burn out fast back in the day. Now they are just as reliable as a regular stove.
I thought I’d share my recent experience with the Thrustmaster TX for those considering purchasing one. I sure wish I hadn’t. I posted the same review below on Amazon.ca and a shorter version on Costco.ca:
Just bought this in September of 2014 from Costco (they sell if for $379.99 CND). After hearing about the various problems (non function wheels on arrival, overheating and electrical smoking) with this wheel when released nearly a year ago, it seemed as though most of the issues had been resolved by Thrustmaster. Unfortunately this isn’t the case. I was happy to see that I received very new stock (my wheel came loaded with v47 of the latest firmware just launched in July of 2014). So I simply downloaded the PC drivers so that I was ready for future updates.
Initially I was disappointed with the TX wheel. Yes, it’s a scaled down version of the Ferrari 458 wheel but I’d rather it had a generic rim that was round and had metal construction (like the new Thrustmaster T300 wheel for PS3/PS4). The wheel rim feels very cheap. It’s entirely made of plastic and the buttons even feel cheap. It’s very lightweight and has a flat bottom. The paddles are metal and have a nice click engagement which is really the only thing I liked about the wheel rim.
The pedals are also very plasticky other than the pedal plates which are actual metal. The brake pedal is harder than the gas pedal but feels only slightly progressive. It’s a shame that Thrustmaster doesn’t use the conical brake mod like the T3PA 3-pedal set as it would al least make this a better pedal set (despite no clutch pedal).
First time I set it up to play on My Xbox One with Forza 5 was when things took a turn for the worse. For some reason in the advanced controller settings I couldn’t toggle between the varying degrees of rotation. I had to manually do this by pressing the “mode” and either left or right on the D-pad (this allows you to change the degrees of rotation in-game on the fly). So I started up my first race and soon realized that the pedals were not function. After checking all the connections and re-booting the Xbox One things worked for a very short time.
No more than 30 seconds into my race (this time with working pedals), the wheel locked up through a turn. All the lights went dead and you could hear the motors struggling. Next came the wonderful potent smell of burning electronics. Unplugged the wheel and waited an hour. I’ve tried it again both on the PC and Xbox One but it won’t turn on or be recognized by either device. Every time I plug it in it smelt like an electrical fire and nothing happens.
For the 30 seconds it worked it felt really good. The force feedback and vibration felt realistic. The pedals weren’t great but I have no doubt I would have adapted to them. So frustrated, I thought I would call Thrustmaster support and get a new wheel base (one that hopefully worked) in the morning (this happened on a Friday evening).
Then came Saturday morning. At 10 AM (12 Eastern Time) I called Thrustmaster support (manual said it was open for Canadians between 8AM and 2PM Eastern Time Saturdays). I’m greeted by a voicemail saying that Thrustmaster support is closed. The message continues on listing the exact same hours of business as what the manual says (claiming to be open during the time I’m calling on Saturday). Tried again later but had no luck getting through.
For $400 this is a disappointing experience made worse by customer service you can’t get a hold of when they are supposed to be open. I took the wheel back to Costco and got a refund. I’d love to have a wheel for Forza 5 but the TX appears to still have bad reliability issues and Saturday is the only day I can contact Thrustmaster support (and they didn’t answer my numerous calls during a period of time Saturday when they were supposed to be open).
I would stay clear of this wheel. Unfortunately the only other option the Mad Catz Pro wheel does not sound any better (but al least doesn’t have serious reliability issues). Hopefully someone comes along and makes a better quality wheel. Fanatec has one coming but it is very expensive. For $400 (the price of an Xbox One) I expected much better quality and obviously superior performance than what I got.
That sucks to hear about your troubles with your wheel. I had my first one for a while until in finally went out and luckily, Thrustmaster honored my warranty and sent a replacement wheel out that has worked flawlessly ( knock on wood). Last gen, I had the Microsoft WRW and this is the first expensive wheel I’ve owned and have been happy for the most part with mine. Hopefully, you can buy a wheel again without having any more troubles.
Actually its the seller who is responsible if a product is faulty, not the manufacturer.
The mad catz is also a very poorly designed wheel and all of them grind, I’m trying to get a refund for that but I might have to get legal advice because mad catz support are ignoring me, I got it direct from them, all the xbox one wheels are very problematic and its going to hurt horizon 2.
This is what happens when they are too greedy, yes they make money art first but lose it all when they have to keep replacing or refunding.
Hi guys i brought my tx racing wheel and it worked all of 39 seconds i brougt it from playseat and thrustmaster have offered me a repair should i get it repaired or try get a new 1???
I’d go for the repair, at least you know it’s fixed then. If they (the retailer) give you a new one from their stock you’ll just be rolling the dice again and you could get another broken one. If it goes back to Thrustmaster they will either repair it or give you a new one from their own stock, which is newer and therefore presumably doesn’t suffer from the same issues.
The RMA procedure is pure agony, and they sent my broken wheel back to me…still broken, so I ended up sending mine back TWICE. But it’s still your best bet.
This is sounding more and more familiar to my current situation. they are wanting me to film how it reacts etc and send that to them… ive already done all there other requests…
Got this wheel November 2014 as a birthday gift. Wheel works fine for a month and then one day this issue comes up where all the buttons on the wheel would completely stop working after the wheel does its calibration upon powering on, so basically rendering the wheel completely useless. I would try to reboot the xbox and the wheel would calibrate again as it should, but the buttons would just be non responsive. Strangely the buttons would work when using the Windows Thrustmaster wheel calibration software…
So i contacted Thrustmaster. After a few emails where they kept asking me to perform the same troubleshooting steps over and over again, They insisted nothing is wrong with the wheel and suggested me to contact Microsoft. I contacted Microsoft and they suggested me to remove and recreate my XB1 login profile–that didn’t work.
So now i am stuck with a paperweight. Cannot refund it back to the retail store that i bought it from as it’s past their refund period. Thrustmaster’s useless tech support won’t do anything for me, as they are blaming it on Microsoft, saying it’s a problem with my XB1.
I am left with no choice but to contact VISA and ask for a full refund. Hoping they would help me out otherwise i would be stuck with an expensive paperweight.
You guys tell the same sad story as mine. Fortunately, I will be able to sue them quite easily in the United States and then seize their assets if they do not pay the judgement, but it’s a pain nonetheless. The wheel is a great product when it works, unfortunately, the right side stopped working and after replacing the base, they are refusing to even respond. Now I can see why…either they are swamped with quality issues or they simply do not care about their customers. Well, it’s up to us to make them pay…and pay dearly. I’m going to ask for treble damages and then appeal is the magistrate does not grant it. Then I can buy three wheels. One is bound to work. The ONLY think corporation like there, with horrible customer service, respond to is you taking their money.
I’ve had my Thrustmaster TX Racing wheel for less than a month and I’m also having the same problem. It worked great for about a week then my Xbox One wouldn’t recognize it. I would plug in the wheel, it would calibrate but nothing would work. I had to keep unplugging the Xbox One from the outlet and plugging the power back in to get the wheel working again. This happened a few times to where it was a pain and got worse from there. Now no matter if I plug the TX wheel into my Xbox One or PC it will calibrate and then the lights on the right side go out. I have left it plugged in for a while and neither system is recognizing the TX Wheel after the calibration process. After trying different computers and USB ports I think the problem is with the built-in USB cable. I happened to move the USB cable a certain way and my PC started recognizing a connected device. So I moved the USB cable slightly in the opposite direction and my PC failed to recognize the device & posted an error message. I wasn’t moving the USB plug that plugs into the USB port. I was just slightly moving the USB cable where the break free\quick release adapter is on the built-in USB cable. I really wish that cable was like the power cable and wasn’t built-in because I really think the issue is with that adapter. I’m in the processes of contacting them now and will let you all know what happens. Has anyone spliced that built-in USB cable to remove that adapter and got the TX wheel to work?
