RuhiA

I have posted under numerous topings with regards to my experince with 5Star Tuner and the customer service that Mike provided or there lack there of. In a nut shell, ordered the product for my 2012 EB, got it, followed the instructions which I have to say pretty poorly written (I will get to the that shortly) but after trying three differenet computers, I found the one that satifies the needs of the tuner in terms of operating system. Then, I've loaded the tunes which he provided via email. First attempt to upload to my truck failed - it interrupted the process on its own and I had to restart it. It would be nice to provide a disclaimer that tuner would not be recognized by operating systems other than Vista. Then, there comes the problem with the interface window not displaying the contents. Buttons to select the option to choose the tunes were not visible because it is badly configured. There are others who had the same issue so it was not an isolated case. Mike, based on his lack of understanding of the interface window and desktop contents, advised me to change the screen resolution of my monitor. Einsteinian, I'd say.
Eventaully, sorted it out and went my marry way. Not so fast. Few hundred miles away from home, hitched a trailer with three motorcycles but nothing else in it. Milage dropped to 4-5. Drove like that for a while to see what happens but since I couldn't make it from one gas station to the next one without filling up again, I took it off and went back to stock tune.
When I came back from my trip, called him up to let him know what happened. He said "return it" and hung up on me. I did, but he took his 30% off for "restocking" and refunded the remainder shortly after. Here is where it becomes funny though. I have disputed through my credit card for the difference. His repsonse was;
"... website has been online for 10 years. These were custom MAID[sic] for vehicle thats why are charge return fee... spent 2 hours on phone with customer helping him use product. Customer uneducated on PC and internet and agreed to terms and conditions."
I've got my money back from the credit card but I couldn't refrain myself not sharing my experince. First of all, with his command on English language and computer skills he demonstrated, it is ironic that he claims that I am "uneducated", he had to spend time with me on the phone, therefore why he keeps 30%. Also, because he has the web site for ten (it is "ten" by the way not "10") years therefore I should have known the terms and conditions is way beyond my comprehension. I guess, I need to study more to learn some intervent and PeeSee skills since obviously Mike thinks that me having an Aerospace Enginering PhD degree and being a computer user/programmer for over 30 years ain't enough.
I am not saying anything other than just sharing my thoughts and I am just laughing at him. After all, it is a forum here, right?


P.S. I should know better not make fun of someone else's language skills since I am not the one with the skills myself being a non-native speaker but hope he gets the message.

obusnizzle

He never loaded the tunes on the programmer prior to sending it out? I've had my car/truck tuned by Lonnie Doll [MENTION=50338]BlueOval[/MENTION]chips, Justin Starkey@VMPTuning, and Jerry Wroblewski himself....and never had to load ANY initial tune. ever. The tunes were emailed so that I would have a secondary/hard copy. It seems to be incredibly lazy to send out a blank flash tuner and require the customer to load it himself.

Hell, I've even had an SCT employee send me guinea pig tunes to try out setting on my car!

Dwl0222285

Great and I was just about to order his tunes too. Looks like I have some thinking to do.

Highwaystreets

Interesting.... I've heard good things so I'd like to see how this plays out.

montanaman

I've been in sales for most of my life, and it sounds like you had some bad luck - it happens.

My tuner from 5SATR was pre-loaded, worked flawlessly, and like about 99.99% of the people on the forum I'm happy with it.

SpeedViktm

+1... I ordered tunes yesterday AM and had them early afternoon.

-1... He called because his email attempts to the provided address were failing, so I gave him an alternate. I politely asked that he FW the bounce emails to me so I could see why they bounced (I had added 5startuning.com to my exclusion list earlier) but never got that info.

Droop408

+2
I ordered 2 tunes from Mike via email in the morning and got them the same afternoon. Great service, imo.

codeblue48

I love my 5 star tunes and Mike has been awesome to me and responds almost immediately to any email I have sent him. If you provide your strategy code at time of order the custom tunes will come preloaded on the SCT tuner and be ready for immediate use. If you don't do that, or think there is a possibility that your truck has been updated by your Ford dealer you can opt to wait till the tuner arrives, plug it into your truck and get the strategy code that way. In other words, it's just an "in case" measure. The strategy code under your hood may no longer actually be the computers strategy code if it has been updated by Ford at your last service. (Hope this makes sense)

I opted to wait for the tuner and ensure my strategy code and then waited for my custom tunes. The turn around time was about 2 hours! And no, I did not pay for rush service. I loaded them into my tuner without any difficulty, and as stated, the directions Mike sends with the tuner are pretty good. My computer has windows 7 on it though so I don't know??

RES4CUE

I think this is a situation where you may be smarter than you need to be to use a tuner on your truck.


I spent hours on the phone with mike BEFORE I purchased anything going over specs of tunes. I ordered the device and it was shipped to me in "2" days with tunes already on it and a nice little folder with several pages of instructions including pictures of what the screens would look like when loading tunes ect.

The product is by SCT and Mike has no stake in how it operates with various systems, he is just a distributor that loads tunes and sells them to the consumer. You should have called SCT about your interface problems.

Also if note is that you will lose MPG while towing, just the nature if the beast. There is no magic tune that gives you more power with more MPG unless you swap out for a crap load of batteries and electric motors!

Dwl0222285

Could I order the tuner to take advantage of the memorial day sale, but not fill out the cal request form for possibly a couple weeks till I'm able to get a tsb performed? That way I have the tuner ready, but nothing custom was fine yet until I have an updated ecu.