elCheng

*no i don't work for MTM*
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In the business of selling things, everybody slams on everybody, regardless of what kind of product it is. Ever been to Best Buy? They are calling the PEOPLE across the street at Circuit city a bunch of hamsters....not just their product.

The level of slammage that was dished out today may have sounded harsh to the 1st time caller on the phone. I've never received that level of slammage from stratos. When i calleed them for the 1st time i was 99% sure i was going to buy a nonMTM chip, and my questions to them were answered in a very professional way, so much so that i decided to go with the MTM chip. This again is my personal experience, but if you search the archives for stratmosphere, or Bob Hamme, you will see tons and tons of praise.

It's sad that it only takes 1% of someting to ruin a good thing.

It's funny but i've had probably the WORST experience possible with the GIAC product about anyone could have. If you care to know what happened, just let me know. I'm not in the parts business but i know enough not to bring negative propaganda onto a public forum...

Nothing against Garrett Lim himself, he's a cool guy and all, it's just that a product with his name on it affected my car negatively, and the similar results to the other car on the dyno too.

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///Mike@Boston Audi

the car, but rather how it was socketed. Blame the person that didn't socket it properly or the fact that the chip is a socket chip, not the programming in the chip itself.

$0.02 - no change given

Innovator

Wasn't the chip defective Cheng?

elCheng

I don't know what i can say about the socketing however, the 2nd time there....garrett was there in person and the car would not start......

elCheng

i don't personally know if it was a defect in the chip, as i did not see the socketed chip come unseated. The car started, no error codes were present, throttle ADP was OK.....confirmed by both VAG1552 and VAG-COM.

carlsonmike

Hi Cheng,

I agree that often, in the "business of selling things, everybody slams on everybody" That doesn't mean that it is right, should be ignored, or that I should buy into it and be a lemming.

However, bringing this back to aftermarket car parts, it isn't as though I haven't bought performance parts for a car before. (though it wasn't for an Audi) What I got from Pete at Stratmosphere was a surprise to me.

For the most part, I EXPECT a company to try to sell me parts that they carry. I don't even have a problem with a "fair" comparison that is slanted towards themselves. What I received today was a clear attempt at creating a "fuzzy" perception of one of their competitors. Now that it has been pointed out to me that Stratmosphere doesn't have anything to do with testing or creating the MTM chips (ie, they are just in the "business of selling") the reason to slam on GIAC is very clear to me.

I understand that each person has their "favorite" tuner. I kind of like to take the [drop the high, drop the low] approach - dismiss the most fervent - whether they be positive or negative.

In this case, though, I was very disappointed specifically because, as you mention, there is good praise for Stratmosphere. My question is, for all of that good experience, how many other people have had their questions answered in the way that mine were? I also talked to a guy named Mike? (you'd think that I would remember!) at AWE Tuning today and I received a (what I consider to be) pretty fair pitch on why I should get a GIAC chip. He talked about mid range power, the stock chip option, and the upgrade options. No where during the conversation did he take the opportunity to slam APR, MTM, Stratmosphere, etc. That to me, is what a Real Business should be doing to sell things. From reading the archives, it looks like lots of folks have had good experiences with Awe Tuning. (BTW, is it AWE - separate letters or Awe as in awesome?) I held off on a chip (pending the discussions here) but decided to order a Borla exchaust and some kind of cool backlit shifter **** from them)

In my mind, (sorry for rambling here but my mind is starting to heat up!) a company only slams their competition when either their product doesn't have a significant performance advantage OR they see the a advantage in ragging on and bad-mouthing a competitor. In this case, it certainly had the effect of turning away any business that I might have considered giving to Stratmospeere.

As far as the problems that you had with your GIAC chip, I won't comment - but I have noticed that all of the chips available for my S4 have *similar* power upgrades. I think I'll go for the one with the proven performance (and I will include customer service/ disservice in that consideration of what I deem to be performance)

thanks for your comments,
Mike
2001 Nagaro S4
Go Buckeyes!

///Mike@Boston Audi

test runs done on it?

Innovator

We have talked about this, and I totally respect your positon.

I just think that maybe that day was a coincidence. I never had any major problems with his chips before, and my car was awesome with the chip. Too bad it's stock now :-)

NASA racer

having gone through all the flame wars from Dyno day, I am not going to get into this one again. I can honestly say that my box (which is the one I always had and was the one used in the retest and the one I STILL have) has been flawless and has delivered smooth reliable and error free performance.

Our intention had been to see how what we had put in our cars performed and we believed we accomplished this. A number of people on this board know me and have seen my car run and know I haven't had any problems with it.

elCheng

I like them. I've never directly spoken to them...but in the emails that i've swapped back and forth, they seem to be a nice bunch of gearheads. =)
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