Yep that's the company. The very same one that offers a "lifetime guarantee on all remaps":rofl:

I've lodged a paypal dispute for all the good that will do, and I'll be speaking to CAB tomorrow.

I'm thinking about posting a link to this thread onto seatcupra.net to warn other 1.8T engine owners...

(am I allowed to mention other forums??:eek:)

So long as it's factual you should be fine.

Edited 29 April, 200917 yr by coursemyhorse

It sounds like if you'd been more diplomatic they might have been more helpful - and in that respect I can't really blame them.

In the meantime I'd be careful what you do and say publicly.

Follow the correct legal channels and then you can safely tell your story once your case is won/proven.

I think I was quite diplomatic actually. Below is what I said to them...

Hi Gary,

I have a problem with the postal remap you did for me on my Skoda Octavia vRS.

As we discussed on the telephone last Tuesday, the ECU developed a fault whilst I was en route to Cardiff from Southampton, causing the car to "die" and me having to pay the AA £150 to have my vehicle recovered to Cardiff.

The error found by the AA man was "internal checksum error"

As you know, I sent you the ECU back for you to return it to standard - when I got it back it would still not start.

Having done some research and spoken to tuners such as Jabbasport, Oscarli, REVO etc, I have discovered that the breakdown has been caused as a result of "out of date" or "cracked" software being applied in the remap. (apparently the newer vRSs use a Bosch ME7.5_1 ECU with very slightly different checksum calculations)

This would not cause an immediate failure of the ECU, but allow the ignition to cycle about 10 times or so before writing a "hard error code" to some other part of the ECU.

I am now faced with quite considerable bills to rectify my car.

So far I have incurred

£95 for the initial faulty remap, plus two lots of £6-70 postage (total of just under £109)

£150 recovery fees

At the moment, I am looking into having the "error codes" rewritten (they can't be cleared using VAG COM or similar - the chips have to be re written apparently)

- this is likely to cost in the region of £250 - if this does not work then the only option is a new ECU, which as you know is over £500.

This email is to inform you that I will initially be looking to have the ECU repaired, and if successful I will be expecting you to cover the costs incurred by me to date.

Obviously, if the ECU has to be replaced then the costs will be far higher.

PLEASE RESPOND BY RETURN TO ADVISE HOW YOU INTEND TO DEAL WITH THIS PROBLEM.

Regards

Absolutley nothing wrong with that Email IMHO

As i said in a previous post they are a buisness and a customer is allowed to question their product should something be found to be faulty

I really hope you get this sorted mate and to your benefit not their's

Carl:thumbup:

What's the upshot of this, are you still without your car?

Yep that's the company. The very same one that offers a "lifetime guarantee on all remaps":rofl:

I always looked upon lifetime guarantees as "it's guaranteed until it breaks".

Sorry to here of your woes.

What's the upshot of this, are you still without your car?

At the moment, yes. My car is in Cardiff, I am back in Southampton (with my mum's car!!)

ECU evolutions now have my ECU and they are sending it to their file writing guru who is going to sort out whatever problems were caused by the faulty map, including resetting the eeprom (I think)

They've said when I get it back, it SHOULD plug in and work fine, but on the offchance it doesn't, they will pop down to Cardiff from Ross on Wye and sort it for me, on the car.

I've generated a paypal dispute against custom tuning, which is currently being investigated...

Another update:

PAYPAL have politely told me they cannot help - their dispute department only deals with tangible items, and a "service" such as a software remap is not covered.

Thanks Paypal - as I expected.

On the upside, Chris from ECU evolutions phoned me today to say his file writer has looked at the map Custom tuning put on, and he said it is one of the worst maps he has seen in a long time. He reckons is it about 4 years out of date, and has used hacked software, containing a checksum error which has then sent some kind of a "shut down" message to the eeprom after numerous ignition cycles.

(Don't shoot me if I'm getting this slightly wrong - I'm not an expert, although I'm learning more all the time!)

Hopefully, it will be fixed by the weekend, so next week I can go back to Cardiff and collect my car!!

This is not good :(

If you can get a letter to that extent. Then if you go to small claims court you could use that as expert witness (I think), or at least would be very useful.

Everybody slags everybody off in the tuning world which is a big problem.. good luck getting it sorted out.

Thing is - there is a big difference between flashing a map sourced from wherever with a knock-off chinese bit of flashing hardware and really tweaking parameters and knowing what you are doing.

The saying you pay peanuts and you get monkeys is a good one when it comes to remaps.

Hope it all gets sorted out in the end, some things to chalk down as a learning experience.

On the plus side, sure you will be happier with the new map.

Do let us know how things work out.

Cheers

Bas

Everybody slags everybody off in the tuning world which is a big problem.. good luck getting it sorted out.

Not all, but yes most get involved in mud slinging. Shame really but I suppose most trades have a similar mentality. : (

Sounds like the guys repairing it know a little better about fixing it than the original tuner, I hope you get your car back and sorted real soon.

Maybe this should at least be a lesson in the saying "too good to be true". I do see a UK company offering so called specialist tuning for £175 a throw and they do some pretty wierd things to your car for 2 hours to make it look like its value for money, However £95 for a postal remap is quite obviously a route to disaster when all the reputable companies are asking for £300 to £500 for 1.8t tuning.

Can the guys that have seen your ECU print out the code or supply it in a word file?

I'd second getting the letter from them, stating versions loaded and then go to the software co and get them to validate it as a) valid (correct for your ECU and legit) and up to date

Then use this as you claim evidence.

I suspect they will already have history on many sites. Most bargain basement firms like this often do.

This is definitely the feared "when it all goes wrong" story and I feel really sorry for JCB. You have to wonder; when is cheap too cheap?

I cant see it being that hard to repair. With the CORRECT tools you can flash the eeprom and the psop over the OBD port or with an offboard cable. Even if you were locked out of the ECU bootmode should recover it.

I still think its probably the later software in yours and the tuners might not have used the latest checksumm calculation on the modified file.

These ECU's can be easily fixed, indeed i repair a few each week for people who try tuning there own cars with ebay cloned equipment and DVD files.

One last point not all "cheap" tuning is crap. I dont charge massive fee's myself but by providing good value for money i have built up plenty of return customers.

I cant see it being that hard to repair. With the CORRECT tools you can flash the eeprom and the psop over the OBD port or with an offboard cable. Even if you were locked out of the ECU bootmode should recover it.

I still think its probably the later software in yours and the tuners might not have used the latest checksumm calculation on the modified file.

These ECU's can be easily fixed, indeed i repair a few each week for people who try tuning there own cars with ebay cloned equipment and DVD files.

One last point not all "cheap" tuning is crap. I dont charge massive fee's myself but by providing good value for money i have built up plenty of return customers.

Cheers mate - I agree not all that is cheap is crap. What I can't get over is the lack of support and help from Gary at custom tuning right from the start - as soon as I started telling him the car broke down it was instantly "It's nothing to do with what we did..."

That's what p*ssed me off more than anything:mad:

I cant see it being that hard to repair. With the CORRECT tools you can flash the eeprom and the psop over the OBD port or with an offboard cable. Even if you were locked out of the ECU bootmode should recover it.

I still think its probably the later software in yours and the tuners might not have used the latest checksumm calculation on the modified file.

These ECU's can be easily fixed, indeed i repair a few each week for people who try tuning there own cars with ebay cloned equipment and DVD files.

One last point not all "cheap" tuning is crap. I dont charge massive fee's myself but by providing good value for money i have built up plenty of return customers.

I agree that not all cheap is crap. Someone can sell something "cheap" but still make enough to keep them happy and cover their costs. Don't ECU evolution do similar prices to custom tuning for postal upgrades and their reputation/feedback seems somewhat better.

I'm sorry to hear of this problem JCB. I think between them Chris and John will sort this problem out for you and i'm pretty sure you will enjoy the new remap

Sorry to hear Paypal didn't offer a more positive response - what was the method used to fund paypal? Credit or debit card? If it was credit card you may still have a chance of refund. If not does anyone know if distance selling regulations apply to services?

Hope you get this sorted out soon.

I think I was quite diplomatic actually. Below is what I said to them................

It's not as bad as the response you put up would suggest! But even so it still isn't the way to go to get satisfaction. In the first instance you should have just said what the AA said and asked their advice. If you hit the wrong buttons you just turn people off helping you. If they had declined to help, you should have then got at least 2 independent qualified automobile electronic engineer reports on your ECU and recovered your costs through small claims.

By rubbishing them all over the internet you've torpedoed any small claims action and you risk being sued.

Been away for a week and was hopeful for the OP that this would have been resolved by now. Any news from Chris yet? if the ECU was sent to John then I would expect you should get a good result.

Cheers mate - I agree not all that is cheap is crap. What I can't get over is the lack of support and help from Gary at custom tuning right from the start - as soon as I started telling him the car broke down it was instantly "It's nothing to do with what we did..."

That's what p*ssed me off more than anything:mad:

I have to say, I was disgusted by their attitude. A quick route to a bad reputation...

By rubbishing them all over the internet you've torpedoed any small claims action and you risk being sued.

Why? He's not slandered/libeled them- I'd say his posts have been factual.

Hello everybody, my name is gary and i own Custom Tuning, i would just like to clear a few things up, there is a few people on here putting posts that john was well within his rights to act the way he did, well i don't agree. His attitude was all wrong, instead of talking to us and trying to get to the bottom of the problem with his car whether it is the ECU or not he chose to come on this forum and get a load of misguided information and then blatantly sent us a bad email with accusations of us using HACKED CRACKED and OUT OF DATE SOFTWARE, that is the reason that he got told that we would not be helping him because of his dusgusting accusations, john sent his ECU back to us and we checked the remap that we did and it was fine, the checksum was fine and so we sent it back to him because we thought that there must have been another fault with his car and not the ECU, it is possible that his ECU could have developed a fault but it would not have been anything to do with the remap that we did, if john had found out that his ECU was at fault and not been nasty in his emails then we would have helped him no problem, we could easily have sourced him a second hand ECU and put his hardware software version and his immobiliser codes in it and it would have cost very little, this is if his ECU is at fault, but when we get downright nasty attacking emails then i am sorry but i lose the will to want to help, john has come on this forum and started to slag us off and he isn't even sure that it has anything to do with us, can i just say that we DONT use cheap programmers, we use cmd flash, byteshooter, powergate and other expensive programmers, our software that we use for writing maps is genuine with all updates paid for which can be proved, john has said in one of his posts that ECU EVOLUTION has said that our remap is the worst that he has seen, well i welcome ecu evolution to write a post on this forum stating that and that we use cracked and out of date software and i promise to take them to court and i will be asking them to explain exactly how our remap is the worst they have seen, can i just say that we DO NOT put generic files inside peoples ECU'S, all our remaps are written for every ecu on its own merits, johns original file was read out of his ECU and remapped and put back in so how we can be using a file that is 4 years out of date just amazes me, also if it is the worst remap that he has seen then why would he be needing to send the ECU to any file writing gurus, surely if he has a file writing guru then he is in no position to judge anybodys remap, also i will just say that all our remaps are done very safely and are within all the acceptable levels of adjustment ie turbo pressure, fuel increases, torque limits etc etc, so if anybody would like to state otherwise about our remaps on this forum then i welcome your post.

Thanks for listening

Gary

Custom Tuning.co.uk

P.S if anybody would like to discuss this incident then just phone me and we can talk about it on 0800 44 88 678

Hi Gary

I hope this thread doesn't degenerate into a slanging match and the fact that you've even bothered to sign up and post shows at least some integrity to me.

The main thing that sounded odd to me is that the ECU had to be opened up.. what method did you use to carry out the flash on John's ECU? I would have thought you'd have done it on the bench, especially if you have Byteshooter. Even if the flash failed I still wouldn't have thought there would have been need to open the ECU?

well i welcome ecu evolution to write a post on this forum stating that and that we use cracked and out of date software and i promise to take them to court and i will be asking them to explain exactly how our remap is the worst they have seen,

They can’t, They have been banned for unauthorised advertising , and although we respect your right to defend yourself in a public forum we don’t want this turned into a peeing contest so will discourage any gauntlet slapping to other tuners, you have an issue with them, not Briskoda.

This issue is between you and the OP, your post has shown your position and stands in your corner, In my opinion any further correspondence should be carried out privately and I’m sure the outcome will be posted here.

Someone will be in touch regarding usernames soon.

Ta