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      06-27-2020, 08:47 PM   #1
gnjax
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ESSTUNING bad experience

Hello everyone,
I just wanna share my experience as a second hand customer with ESS. I bought my E92 M3 with an ESS VT1-550 kit already installed.
I quickly decided I wanted to go with a vt2 kit.

I contacted ESS about the upgrade (For either 625 or 650 kit). They've been very friendly with me at the beginning (Of course). I started discussing a bit with them, I had some power missing from my VT1 at that time. I had one of the older kits with the red injectors, I was not sure if the tune was from them as well.
After some discussion, I decided to upgrade to the newest blue injectors and buy a flashing cable to re-flash a proper tune with the newest injectors as a temporary solution before I upgrade to my vt2 kit. They affirmed this was part of the upgrade kit and the price would be deduced from my upgrade (I have this on e-mail if anyone is doubting it.)

Now a few months passes, and I decide to order my a vt2-625 upgrade. And now of course, the injectors and cable are not a part of the upgrade and the price is not gonna be dedcued from my order.
I started arguing about it for a bit, even quoted them about it. No way to even get them to apologize for a miscomunication, let alone giving a discount to honor their word.
I still find their hardware great and it's not like I have a choice to source it from somewhere else anyway so I'm going for it and order my upgrade.

I receive my order, it's missing a hose and every single clamp. I had to find a local shop and buy the missing parts. Hopefully they reimbursed me for the price paid at my local shop for those parts.

After installing the kit, I remember about the core charge and the return of old parts. We haven't discussed this, but I recall a few posts (probably here somewhere ?) saying the total upgrade cost was around 2600$ once the core charge is deduced. I payed 3000$ for mine, so I e-mailed AJ about it and he told me they didn't made me pay a core charge.
I answer exactly what I said above, that I recall people saying the upgrade totaled about 400$ less than what I payed when returning old parts, and I tell him that I don't want to push for money once again (After the injectors/cable thing) and that I have a project for E85. I basically offer him to return my old manifold + pulley + red injectors in exchange for a smaller pulley and putting fuel tables from my upcoming big injectors into the tune they provided for my 625 kit (Because I like their tune, didn't want one from another provider, just the exact same tune with my new fule tables inside). I even explicitely tell him I know they do not support or endorse it, and that I will not ask for support and I can sign a waiver or anything to not hold them responsible in case of engine failure.

Apparently this really offended him, I'm just gonna quote the answer directly :
Quote:
It has never been $2600 + core.

And I am very sorry, but I have reached the end of the road with arguing over price with you. It severely annoys me and luckily we have the option to chose with whom we do business.

If you do not like your upgrade kit and the cost you agreed to with me, then just send it back for a refund. We are done here, and I will not entertain a lot of custom build questions that does not else but completely waste my time.
Note that I didn't even asked any custom build question at any point. I'm a grown man, I think I just could have taken a "no" as an answer, or maybe an alternative option or even a proper quote if the deal didn't seem fair to him. I struggle to understand how you can run such a successful business for so long but be that childish when dealing with customers.

Anyway it's been quite a long rant, I'll add I'm not criticizing their product which I still think is great, but if I had to redo everything as of today I would clearly have bought a car with an SC from another brand. It's a shame to receive that kind of answers from a business you've been giving thousands to in the span of a few months.

Last edited by gnjax; 06-28-2020 at 03:50 AM..
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      07-01-2020, 07:02 AM   #2
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who was it from ess that you spoke to?
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      07-02-2020, 03:17 AM   #3
gnjax
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who was it from ess that you spoke to?
AJ
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      07-02-2020, 08:02 AM   #4
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Sorry to hear, but understandably vendors are often operating on tight margins.

Something about the whole review feels skewed. That quoted response from AJ, would imply a lot of back and forth exhaustion... If you settled on a price, why sit on the decision for months before pulling the trigger? I don't think many businesses would honor a quote after 30 days. Lastly, I would suggest "support" and continued discounting are not one in the same. Especially considering you're not the original customer.

I can appreciate it's a huge bummer to drop $3k for an upgrade, but did you complete the install? Are you happy with the new performance?
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      07-02-2020, 08:11 AM   #5
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Perhaps you should have done price research before buying? I wouldn't expect them to honor anything you "heard" someone say. Always get pricing direct from the source and do your research before buying and use what others say as just a guide, as things change, as do the prices.

Perhaps you handled it in the wrong way and the relationship broke down. If you were missing parts you should have brought that up as the first.
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      07-02-2020, 10:20 AM   #6
gnjax
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DRLane View Post
Sorry to hear, but understandably vendors are often operating on tight margins.

Something about the whole review feels skewed. That quoted response from AJ, would imply a lot of back and forth exhaustion... If you settled on a price, why sit on the decision for months before pulling the trigger? I don't think many businesses would honor a quote after 30 days. Lastly, I would suggest "support" and continued discounting are not one in the same. Especially considering you're not the original customer.

I can appreciate it's a huge bummer to drop $3k for an upgrade, but did you complete the install? Are you happy with the new performance?
Of course, I can understand they have tight margins and all (Although this is subject to debate, 400$ for a flashing cable, I doubt the margin is even close to tight on that for example), I'm not a choosing beggar I'm fine as long as everything is clear from the beginning.
I'm trying my best to not leave a skewed review and base my judgement on facts rather than emotions. I am trying to quote only relevant parts of the conversation as we had over 70 e-mails of exchange (mostly at the beginning when I was talking about my then-current kit and underwhelming performances based on a dyno result), but I'm not quoting them out of context to bend things in my favor. I very rarely had bad experiences with business as I usually try to check with them the most I can about a product before ordering to avoid disappointment later on.

I didn't pull the trigger earlier cause I contacted them as soon as I bought the car, but when starting the registration process in my country later on, I was told I had to go through a special testing process as the car was US spec (I'm in EU). Knowing it would take months and require me to put the car completely back to stock, I prefered waiting until that was done instead of going through the effort of upgrading right away and having to take everything back off then on again few months later to pass the tests.

Actually there wasn't much of back and forth concerning the price, they first told me the upgrade would be 3k and what was included in the upgrade (They mentionned injectors and flashing cable). I asked them if I could get the injectors and cable first and get that deduced from my future 625 upgrade order (Because they do not check for tune nor injectors upon registration test, so I could get the benefits from clean new injectors and tune right away, and it would be one less step to do later as it is part of the upgrade anyway). They answered me directly to that question by Yes.

Here are some quotes :
Quote:
Upgrade to VT2-625 91aki fuel is $2995 plus shipping.

Upgrade to VT2-650 93aki fuel MINIMUM is $4495 plus shipping.

VT2 kits have a water to air intercooler built into the intake manifold, front mounted heat exhanger, with lines, reservoir, and Bosch electric pump.

Upgrade kits would be new manifold, intercooling system, belt, injectors, tuning cable with new tune, pulleys.

You would return your injectors, manifold, and pulley to us.
.. few mails talking about stuff

Me :
Quote:
Also, if I end up ordering the cable and eventually injectors, will you deduce that from the price of the upgrade to the 625 kit when I sorted everything out on my 550 ?
Answer:
Quote:
Yes, the new injectors are the same ones as used in the 625 kit.
Note I specifically asked if that would be deduced from my 625 kit upgrade.
Now fast forward to when I ordered the upgrade :

Them :
Quote:
The upgrade cost is 2995 + shipping to VT2-625.
Me :
Quote:
Wait i'm confused. When I first asked about upgrading, you told me the vt2-625 upgrade is 2995. The upgrade kit includes new injectors and cable. I already bought that separately, you told me it would be deduced from the price of the upgrade kit whenever i'm ready to do the full upgrade.
Them :
Quote:
The upgrade cost I quoted you was from a VT1-550 to a VT2-625.

If you have a VT1-550 kit then you already have the cable and the correct injectors. IF you had an older kit with different injectors and you did not have an E-Flash cable for the car then obviously the upgrade kit would be more money since you did not have what was needed to perform the upgrade.

$2995 is for the chargecooler manifold with front cooler system/pump/lines and pulley/belt + manifold attachment brackets + matching software.
The thing is when I asked about the injectors and flashing cable deduced from my order they indeed knew that I had no cable and that I had older red injectors cause they asked me about it when we started talking about injectors. They even told me injectors and tuning cable was part of the upgrade on the first quote they gave me for the upgrade ...

After that there's been a back and forth of 3 more e-mails, essentially me quoting them like i did here before I gave up, they wouldn't even apologize for misleading me I mean how could I have figured this out by myself with the informations they gave me ... Even a little "sorry, that was a miscommunication, although we cannot honor these prices because of our tight margins, we can take off 50 bucks of your order or give you a discount on this or that if you want to make another order with us" would have been enough (And that is how any reputable business would act as well. We're not talking about a 5$ mistake, it's a freaking thousand). It's not even a money problem, hopefully I had the money, it's just about doing business properly and acknowledging your mistakes.

Anyway I went throught cause there's no one else I could buy the upgrade from. And then there was no back and forth about money before the answer I quoted on my first post.
Just me asking if I was supposed to send back old part to get a core charge refund, them telling me yes but there was no core charge applied to my order, and me telling them everywhere I saw people talking about upgrade had a core charge reimbursed and that it amounted to a total of roughly 2600$ for the upgrade after being reimbursed (And proposing an alternative deal as described in my first post).

I agree we did not settle on anything about it beforehand, and that's my bad for not asking this particular question earlier. It was just common sense for me, I don't see why they would not have charged me a core return, I live on the other side of the planet and they don't know me. There's no reason they would trust me to send them back the parts on good will, especially after what happened with the injectors and cable.

To answer your last question, I did complete the install and as I said in my original post, there's really nothing bad to say about the product. It's working fine, and they sure know how to make proper hardware.

Last edited by gnjax; 07-02-2020 at 01:39 PM..
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      07-02-2020, 10:28 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tdott View Post
Perhaps you should have done price research before buying? I wouldn't expect them to honor anything you "heard" someone say. Always get pricing direct from the source and do your research before buying and use what others say as just a guide, as things change, as do the prices.

Perhaps you handled it in the wrong way and the relationship broke down. If you were missing parts you should have brought that up as the first.
Indeed, as far as the core charge goes that's my bad for not asking them prior. As I said in my previous answer, that was just common sense to me, even if we didn't specifically agree on a price. I didn't expect them to honor what other people say, but at least give me an offer. I don't really trust they didn't apply a core charge on my order, doesn't really makes sense that was the quote I got from my first ever exchange with them. Did they trust me right off with sending back old parts after I received the kit ? I don't know I may be wrong but from my research on that matter everyone I saw talking about it had core charges applied to their order. Anyway, it's just the way they answered to that, after all the quirks that happened with the injectors and cable beforehand that made it the cherry on the cake. Again, not really a money problem it's just the global feeling of carelessness.
Maybe I handled it the wrong way, I tried my best to be respectful and give them options, not imposing what I want (Essentially tried to not be a Karen). I never had problem with any business before, I usually have good exchanges with most business owner I buy from especially in the car business as we share the same passion so I was a bit surprised by how this conversation turned out.

I'm not sure what missing parts you're talking about though

Last edited by gnjax; 07-02-2020 at 10:34 AM..
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      07-02-2020, 12:33 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gnjax View Post
I'm not sure what missing parts you're talking about though
Quote:
Originally Posted by gnjax View Post
I receive my order, it's missing a hose and every single clamp. I had to find a local shop and buy the missing parts. Hopefully they reimbursed me for the price paid at my local shop for those parts.


Your long rambling doesn't really make sense, best of luck, maybe there is a language barrier.

Last edited by tdott; 07-02-2020 at 12:38 PM..
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      07-02-2020, 12:50 PM   #9
gnjax
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That's why I told you I did not understand what you were talking about, because I thought it was clear in my first post with the sentence you just quoted. I brought that up to them as soon as I noticed there were missing parts in the upgrade kit I received. They told me to just go and buy them from a local shop, and then refunded me for the price I payed at the local shop for all the missing parts I had to buy myself.

I was just trying to make a point about how careless they've been with handling my order. It's just simple "quality control", the kit doesn't have that many parts, forgeting 1 hose out of 5 + every single clamp for these hoses is really low effort. Even if this is not a huge inconvenience, it's still disappointing to receive a product with missing parts, having to find a shop that sells those parts, drive there etc ...

Sorry I try to explain the best I can, english is not my mother tongue, please point out any part that doesn't make sense and I will try rephrasing

Last edited by gnjax; 07-02-2020 at 01:25 PM..
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