Originally Posted by akates02

I want to start off by first saying that I really didn't want to have to air APR's dirty laundry. I gave them numerous chances to rectify this situation before posting it on the forums, but they refused to do the right thing. I love the APR tune I have, I've just lost all respect for the company based upon their terrible business practices of lying to and deceiving the customer.

I also apologize for the length of this post. I want to completely full and open on what happened, so I figured I'd post the ENTIRE story, not just the outcome.

Just to give a bit of background, I purchased the APR Stage I V1 tune back in July. I did the install myself as I was going to be out of town for a few weeks, so it was a perfect time to send in my ECU without having any downtime. I followed the instructions on how to remove the ECU that APR had posted on their website. The process was very simple (especially with a DSG) and went off without a hitch. When I returned from travel the ECU was back in my possession and within a few minutes the car was back up and running with the APR tune. Everything was running smoothly and I was a happy APR customer!

Fast forward to early January when Arin originally mentioned that V2 would be out any day (I believe he posted that it'd be out the following Monday). I was traveling out of the country again in mid January, so this seemed to be perfect timing to send the ECU back in for the update. When the Monday release never materialized I figured no big deal and I could want another few days. By midweek the following week, APR began looking for beta customers for the V2 tune. This was frustrating as they went from an apparent final release to beta testing, but after talking with Arin through PM it looked like the beta testing was nearing completion and that if I wanted to be a beta tester, it was in all likelyhood the final release. I figured I had nothing to lose as I'd be gone anyways, so I again removed the ECU to send it in to APR.

Returning from my travel, I again had the ECU waiting for me ready to be installed with the newly flashed V2. I re-installed the ECU, fired up the car, and nothing. This was on a Sunday night with work the following morning. I posted frantically on Audizine to see if anyone had encountered this type of issue, what my VCDS codes were (no communication to ECU), and to ask if maybe there was some kind of easy fix for a fluky problem. I was later instructed by APR to remove this post, which I willingly did. I also e-mailed and called APR that evening but they were obviously closed.

Having to skip work on Monday since I had no car, I got in touch with APR over the phone. They figured something probably went wrong with the flashing and said I needed to send my ECU back in. This was an immediate issue as I had already missed one day of work, and now I would be without a car until a minimum of Wednesday, which was three full work days. I told APR about this issue and they said that they'd cover a rental car up to $40/day which seemed very fair to me. I sent the ECU in and was hoping I'd get the good news Tuesday stating that the ECU flash had been redone and the ECU was on it's way back to me. Instead, they stated that they couldn't figure out what was wrong with the ECU, and had to send it out to an ECU specialist to be evaluated and repaired. I was kind of surprised as I thought APR were the ECU experts, but I figured they were doing everything possible to fix the situation.

By Thursday afternoon I was getting very worried as I hadn't heard anything back, when I got a call from APR. The ECU was damaged beyond repair, and they would have to replace it with a new one. Evidently due to following their online directions for the ECU removal, which didn't include the disconnecting of the battery, a voltage surge had fried my ECU. From our discussion, I found that this wasn't the first time this had happened, and they had meant to update the instructions. It also doesn't happen every time the battery is still plugged in, it's still an extremely fluky event, hence why it didn't happen during the first ECU pull in July. At least at this point, APR was taking responsibility for their mistake.

At this point we knew we'd be working well into the following week on this issue, but APR assured me that they square up with me on the cost of being out of my car as well as the repairs once the ECU was back up and running. They told me that a new ECU would be in my hands on Friday, and all I had to do was take it in to Audi to have them reprogram it, then I could send it back to APR for reflashing of V2. They made it sound like this was no big deal, but obviously my car couldn't drive, so I had no way to get it to the Audi dealership, and I was also wondering what I was supposed to tell Audi? Was I supposed to tell them I accidentally fried my ECU, but I've somehow sourced a brand new one and I just need them to reprogram it? I figured that would throw up every flag in the book. I also knew there would be a significant labor cost associated with reprogramming the ECU, which I shouldn't be liable for as APR had accepted responsibility for frying the ECU.

After another round of discussions with APR, they agreed to contact a local shop in my area, New German Performance, who would act on my behalf and tell Audi that they somehow fried the ECU but had supplied a replacement. It sounded a whole lot more normal coming from a shop, I was happy with this arrangement. They were great to deal with as they arranged the service appoint for the following Tuesday, had the car towed from my house, and covered the bill on getting it fixed (which came to about $350). I'm sure they just billed APR directly for this towing and labor, but it made it easier for me as I didn't have to eat the cost up front. When I went to pick up the car on Wednesday, I noticed that the service sheet mentioned that the key had to reprogrammed to the new ECU. APR had failed to tell either myself or NGP about this, so now I was down to one working key and Audi advised me it would take over an hour of labor to recode my 2nd key. I figured I'd just talk to APR and they'd cover this as well since it was their original mistake that had caused the frying of the ECU, as well as their fault on the key for not notifying either myself or NGP.

I got the car home Wednesday evening and immediately removed the ECU (after pulling the battery this time) and had it boxed up and back to APR. With them receiving it on Thursday, I should have it back in my hands by Friday and I'd be good to go, with only the reimbursement for the time out of my car and the key recoding needing to be sorted out. It was on this Wednesday that APR started to backtrack on their promises. They first told me that lo and behold, the instructions had included the battery pull information, so technically everything was my fault, and I should be happy that they covered what they had, but from that point forward I'd be covering everything. This included the 13 days out of my car (at $40/day this was over $500) as well as the key recoding which would run $150 or so, purely due to their laziness of not notifying either myself or NGP of the need to supply both keys. Their direct quote was: "If APR isn’t providing adequate documentation for safe ECU removal than it’s on us. But the instructions weren’t wrong."

I knew for a fact that when I had looked at the instructions the first time I did my install, it mentioned nothing of a battery pull so I pulled a cached image of the page from several months earlier that didn't include any information on a battery pull. I showed this to APR and asked them when the change had been made and they responded that it was done in Dec, long after I pulled the instructions to do my install in July. They then countered that I should have checked the instructions again prior to my Jan ECU pull, so technically it was still my fault. Again to directly quote them: "How is it our fault you didn't check for updated instructions?" I found this ridiculous as the instructions had essentially 3 steps, remove the washer fluid reservoir, remove the 3 torx screws in the ECU box, and remove the ECU. This wasn't exactly something I needed to reconfirm before doing it a 2nd time. If they had made such an important change to the installation language (due to other fried ECUs), they should have notified all existing customers of the change so that when they updated the software, which can only be done through a pull, they wouldn't risk this happening.

Once again their story changed and their latest stance became: "Ultimately we provide instructions as a helpful resource, but are not required to do so." So now even though they fully claimed responsibility due to the mistaken language, "If APR isn’t providing adequate documentation for safe ECU removal than it’s on us", they now wouldn't cover it because instructions are only a helpful resource and I should have known better. Only then did they really get to the heart of the issue by directly stating: "Your claimed financial loss is a “large tab for secondary transportation” and a potential key reprogram. APR’s financial losses are in the thousands of dollars for new ECU, dealership labor time and tow costs".

Money, it all came down to money. They figured that they'd paid enough already and it was time to cut their losses and leave the customer holding the bag. I pleaded with them that this was a terrible business practice, and questioned whether spoiling their tremendous reputation was really worth just a few hundred dollars. Evidently the answer was yes. I even offered other ways for them to cut their costs on reimbursing me, by offering to take a Stage II Pulley system instead of the $520 in cash reimbursement, as I know the cost to them was far far lower than $520, but that offer was ignored. It would have made perfect sense as I wasn't planning on doing the pulley upgrade, so it's not really lost revenue, it's just the variable cost of the hardware to them, probably under $100, but to no avail.

Now we're at a stalemate. They refuse to live up to their promised obligations and I'm left covering the cost of being of out my car for 2 full weeks and the cost to recode my 2nd key due to the ECU reprogramming. They think this issue is closed from their end, but I'm not willing to just give up. I'm considering filing a claim in small claims court for the owed amount, but I wanted to see if I could get any suggestions from the forum.

I only hope this goes to warn potential customers that may be deciding between the APR, GIAC, and Revo tunes. While APR has bashed Revo's business practices in the past while pumping up their stellar reputation, all is not as it seems. APR is very willing to resort to the lowest of the low and stiff their own customers.

Originally Posted by primetime

Arin, thanks for the clarification... Sounds like you guys already have gone above and beyond... Always good to hear both sides of the story...

OP, In case you are new to modding cars... **** happens and most vendors won't do squat to help... APR is the best I have dealt with in 25 years of car modding in addition to Alternative Auto(Mustang tuner)... They made you whole by replacing the ecu and covering the associated costs... Just move on and learn from it...

Originally Posted by akates02

I told APR several times over that I was extremely appreciative of them covering the replacement. My only issue was them promising to cover the 13 days out of my car which they then backed off of. You're right though, **** happens and I think I've learned from it. It's obvious that APR and I will never come to an agreement on what's "fair" in this case. I just wanted others to know the full story so that they could draw their own conclusions.

Now I'm going to go back to enjoying my APR Stage I tuned S4!