PDXEvo

iTrader: (4)

My journey with Dynoflash started on Nov 12th, 2005.

I was scheduled for the 10 - 12 spot for a custom tune. I had sent my list of mods before hand, as requested, and was ready and waiting at 9:00am at the location selected for the tune.

Al drove up about 11:30 and started talking to everyone. It was just above freezing, with the wind chill, and everyone was cold. Al popped my hood and immediately started bashing my car. "I cant believe you have the stock air box!", "WTF is a stock BOV doing in here.", and many others. Al then started yanking hard on the intake snorkel and broke the clips. "Ill buy new ones for you later", he said. Then onto man handling the hose going to the stock BOV, where he broke the tip off the BOV, making it useless. "Its your fault dude. Your hoses are all fugged up. Feel how stiff they are." Not sure why this was my fault. The hoses were all stiff from the cold weather.

So Al moved on to the next customer, and while tuning his car comes back with some super glue and new clips for my intake snorkle. He then proceeded to glue the tip back onto the stock BOV. I found this unacceptable and asked him to replace the BOV, since he broke it. He refused to replace it, due to the cost of the aftermarket ones, and told me I would have to buy a new one myself or wait for him to send me a stock BOV in the mail when he got back home. Well, none of these options worked for me since I had just driven 300 miles and paid for a hotel room the night before. Fortunately another guy had a stock BOV on hand that I could use. I told him I would send a replacement to him as soon as I got one back from Al.

Back in my car and its now 2:30pm. We start tuning and Al starts complaining about my large injectors. Now, I know that the injectors were too large for my current setup. But I had been able to tune them just fine with the UTEC so I didnt understand what the big deal was. This guy has tuned thousands of Evo's right? So a little fuel tuning shouldnt be a big deal. Anyway, we start the tune and my car starts dropping to 10psi boost at about 4k. This happens a few times and Al tells me that my car is fugged up and its broke. "I knew there was a black cloud over this piece of s**t when I saw", he says to me. We get back to teh shop and I pop the hood and notice that the new clips that Al has purchased fell out and got sucked into the air box. I proceed to just pull the snorkle off so I dont have to worry about it anymore.

Back on the road.. The tune gets completed and Al is all proud of himself. Once we get back he starts complaining that the only reason he is running late is due to my piece of crap and how its wasted his entire morning. To note, he spent exactly two hours actually tuning the car. It wasnt my fault he didnt show up on time, and then broke soem components on my car.

On my long drive back I my SES light goes off and I notice that I am only getting about 14 mpg on the hwy. I get back home and pull the code and find that I am getting the Fuel Bank 1 too rich code". Yep, looks like Al didnt tune the non-WOT areas of the map. Why did I get a custom tune again?

I spend the next 3 month trying to get Al to respond to emails, phone calls, and PM's. He never responds... Finally, I call him at 2:00am his time and he answers. I ask where the stock BOV is and why he hasnt sent it. He says he sent it and it must have got lost in the mail (suuuuure it did). However, he is comming to my area in another month so he will bring it with and look at my fueling and try to fix it.

A month passes and by and I am once again waiting at the tune location for Al. Again, he shows up almost 2 hours late, without the stock BOV he promised to bring, and tells me he may not have time to look at my car until later in the day. So I come back about 6 hours later and he sits in my car for 2 minutes and makes some changes. "Go test it out". So I run out and do some highway driving and find that I am still pulling -12 on my LTFT and -25 on my STFT at partial throttle. I go back and he says "I cant tell you what mods to put in your car man. It is what it is. You have to deal with it." So I just leave. No sense in talking to him. He isnt going to give me the custom tune I paid for anyway.

So I ask for my money back. "Nope, you are beyond your time period for getting your money back. Just put the stock injectors in and mail it to me for a base flash". So I send my ECU to him and it doesnt get sent back the next day, as it was stated on his website. I get it a day later and, once again, without the stock BOV he promised. So, I basically paied for a custom tune and got a sweet base flash. Awesome, what a deal. I also had to purchase a brand new BOV to replace the one I borrowed from a guy on my original tune.

The WOT tune of the car has always been good, even with the original tune. I am disappointed in Al's customer service, and promise breaking habits. I feel he is unreliable and does not provide the full service you pay for.

Ratings (1 - 5)
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Power Gains (4)
Driveability (2)
Customer Service (1)

AtO-MiX

iTrader: (1)

wow srry to hear you went through all that...and thats why i went with john @Jestr he is def top notch.

Cali2MDevo8

iTrader: (22)

sounds like you got a raw deal.

bluebanana23

iTrader: (26)

sorry to read this but let's hear Al's side but i'm pretty sure slander wouldn't benefit you anyways. I hope everything works out for you. GL.

johnturbotron

iTrader: (4)

I hope Al is not like that because I am planning on a custom tune in the next couple of months and I definately do not feel like driving six hours to Buschur Racing to be treated like that.Al lets here your side of the story.

bluebanana23

iTrader: (26)

i think al can only respond in the dynoflash forums but I also think he can delete them as well

Killboy

iTrader: (2)

Wow...that's just...incredible. The thought of someone reaching into the engine bay of my car and breaking something, then saying it's my fault...unbelievable. I wonder how many more of these testimonials it's going to take for him to realize there is a problem with the way he treats customers...if he ever does.

forbidden color

wtf? how is that a slender. I didn't think he called Al a name or made up things that didn't happen.

UpstateEVOVIII

iTrader: (13)

Sorry to hear about your experience Defenitely not cool...but neither is posting things like this...should've just said you had an unfavorable experience and weren't satisfied with the customer service...posts like this are how arguments start

BADEVO

iTrader: (35)

Thats because people make it that way. His post was not inflamatory, meerly stating his side of a story. If it informs then why shouldnt he post?

PapitoEVO8

iTrader: (24)

+1.

There might have been a reason why Al just started pulling on things in your engine bay. Maybe Al didn't like the way it looked and really did not want to tune it. But when he broke the DV and the plastic clips, he should have replace them then and there no questions ask.

Post like this are very imformative. Tuners are in demand but they also need to be in competition with each other and customer service should high on their list.

Tr_EVO_r

Badevo,

I agree, if more people expressed their experiences honestly it would protect more evom members. I wish I had read this months ago as I had a similiar service experience with Al at Dynoflash. He did not break anything on my car, but was slow in responding over the course of a month. Al was also 45 minutes late for my appointment. He never even apologized for being late. He seemed to show no appreciation form my business, I felt like an inconvenience to him. Any questions I had seem to put him on the defense, or as if don't bother me with questions.

If you read into other complaints about him you'll notice a trend of "I'm here to tune your car the best that I can, NOT buddy up with people" and/or "it was a long day, I've been traveling, yada yada" He'll apologize but always with a "but"

That's fine, but you need to be on time and respect other peoples time. You also need to have common business courtesy. He has none of that in my one experience with him.

I am now very hesitant about giving him my business in the future.

PVD04

iTrader: (23)

Actually, assuming everything posted is true, he would have done a disservice to all of us by not posting it. Now people know not to let Al tune their car if they have large injectors, stock airbox, or stock DV. Basically, if you want Al to tune your car at some point talk to him about your mod choices so he doesn't break your car when he tries to tune it.

-Paul

anjapower

iTrader: (18)

I'd like to say that what you've posted is incorrect but it is pretty much spot on. I've seen Al on 3 different occassions and everything you said seemed like deja vu. He didn't break anything on my friends or my car, but the general behavior is EXACTLY like what I saw.

forbidden color

man, i hope not, slender is something far from what it is.



I think the problem starts when people give Al business and he takes in your money then make his car go fast by having other people tune his car, install things on his car with the money you give him.

Then he gets a big head about it and start to act in a very condescending way towards other Evo owners, which are the customers that got him to where he is now.

What do you get in return? You don't get customer service, you can't talk to Al like a normal human being, you get stuck with his attitude and sometimes a blown engine that Al wont claim responsibility for.

It's always the people who does not appreciate how they became the way they became who goes out of business the earliest.

There are much more qualified tuners out there than Al and I would rather pay a bit more money to get a complete support on the product/flash I buy and professionalism than pay little less and have to deal with his attitude and problems ahead.

I think this is what comes down to. His got cheap flash and he is basically saying to people, you get what you pay for.

Sean Ivey, Jestr Tuning, Doug at TopSpeed, Proven, AMS, and hand full of DSM tuners could tune and give you more of a service and satisfaction of care of your car than Al could in his lifetime I think.

Dynoflash -

I think if you argue about this point, you obviously haven't met Al or heard horror stories across the nation about his tuning and his attitude.