Quote:
Originally Posted by MIKe86
[...] I hope it's more positive things about the kit. So far it seems the best and worst things about the kit are it's service. On one hand people are getting shipped kits with missing parts consistently and on the other Roman gets great praise for doing the right thing and fixing errors ASAP. So while its disconcerting that people are getting incomplete kits and waiting weeks for a full kit to arrive, it's nice to see that at least when something goes wrong the issue is taken care of and not pushed to the side. [...]
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To give my honest opinion on the situation, as in-progress as it is:
1) The praise for ESS' kit quality is abundant and diverse. There are some very well-repped independent folk who call their actual tuning prowess second-to-none. Component quality is top notch and system reliability / testing is renowned.
2) Posts from the past speak very highly of ESS customer service. More recent posts have indicated there has been a significant slowing of response time to emails, even from customers who have already placed orders. E.g., at times I even had trouble getting a tracking number. I suspect this is related to the rapid increase in popularity they've seen, even over the past two months alone, and that they are working to staff up and defend their customer service reputation.
3) When there IS an actual problem, the guys are certainly right there to help. Their warranty is great and they spare no expense fixing any mistake, overnighting parts or rushing them from Europe as standard procedure. In addition to working me in so quickly, Roman takes it for granted that they will replace the intake pipe that has gained a scratch from hitting the hood (though that will probably happen back at home, since that part wasn't overnighted with the pulley).
I suspect that some of the recent mistakes that have been discussed, particularly the kits missing parts, are also directly related to understaffing and their abrupt popularity increase. The IC pipe issue is not that surprising given the kit was just adapted for our cars--they spent the time getting the tune right and probably reused a pipe from the E46 kit without realizing that non-ESS mechanics might have a lot of difficulty getting a proper fit. Based on the way these guys run their business, I'm sure a resolution is forthcoming.
It really sucks to see my car in such an unhappy state, but human errors happen and I couldn't imagine a much better response to the problem.