tsuehpsyde

tl;dir - iPd only saves your tune file for 30 days, apparently. I was never told this. Save it in 20 different places to save yourself a lot of headache. Why they don't archive them, or tell you about this time limit, I don't know.

Story:

I just want to give anyone a heads up that (like me) has purchased a stage 1 (or any stage really) tune from iPd.

I bought my tune about a year and a half ago. I don't recall if it was a group buy, or if it was just a price drop, but at the price it was ($900 instead of $1200) I went ahead and jumped on it; mostly due to my good relationship with Lucky here on the forums. I recently had to reinstall my laptop. No biggie, I'll just re-install the software.

I go to use the CD included with the hardware, and realize it's the tool used to capture your current ECU. Oops. Oh yeah, Lucky had sent me a zip file. I scour my emails for about a half hour, trying to find the combination to unlock where I had gotten the file. After some searching, I finally found an email that was a notification of a PM reply from here with a URL.

Click the URL, nothing. Crap.

I know I saved the file at some point, but I cannot track it down. I scoured my fileserver, where I save all of my important stuff, nowhere to be found. Not in my Dropbox either. Well shit. So I reach out to iPd for the first time since Lucky left.

First, I fill out the "Contact Us" form. It says "message sent!", but I get no email notification or anything else that confirms to me the email in fact went through. I figured I'd get something in the morning, but nothing. I waited until about 3:30PM my time (CST) and call up iPd. I get ahold of Ron, who instantly sounded really pissed off for no discernable reason.

I would like to preface this with the following: I work in Customer Service myself. I really, really try to not be a jackass when I talk to people on the phone, even if I'm mad or upset.

That said, every response was short, the rep sounded annoyed, and acted like I was bothering him. Think of that angry parts guy in the dark and dirty parts store behind the counter.

After a few minutes of this, I simply told him that after spending nearly a grand on this thing (and a few hundred dollars on other various parts), I really don't think what I'm asking about is all that unreasonable, and I really don't know where the attitude is coming from. From here, his attitude got notably better, but basically said "Well see if we can get it, but if not, you'll have to pay to get another one made.".

What. In. The. Fuck.

First, when Lucky gave me the URL, I was not told I only had 30 days to save the file. Ever. This was never made clear to me. In fact, outside of the forum, iPd never officially GAVE me a file. Yes, common sense says to save the file, and I'm fairly certain I did, but stuff happens and I cannot track it down. On top of that, I already HAVE the tune. It's SITTING in my CAR. They can easily take the ECU map if I were to re-read it, but I would be without my "return to stock" option.

All said, I only need the software to clear the error codes on my car. Problem is, that's all bundled with the "tune" as well. So at this time, I have $900 in hardware sitting here that's more or less worthless, and I'm at the mercy of a crabby service rep. Considering how much I truly loved working with iPd in the past, this really bothers me. I've lost a lot of confidence in one phone call. I mean, had I bought one of the other commodity tuners, I surely wouldn't have lost any functionality on account of a URL going away. It would all be stuffed into the hardware.

I hope my vibe with Ron is just one guy having an off day; but a few Google searches about iPd from other forums have shown customer service to be down. This really, really bothers me. I hope I can get this worked out, but for everyone else, for God's sake, save your tune file, because iPd for some unknown reason, does not archive these for their customers. Without that zip file, your hardware is worthless. I would think at $900/crack (previous $1200), they would save an archive of zip files for their users as a convenience. I guess not.

So we'll see what happens.