Customer service

[Hollywood_X]

Dear customer service,

I am writing this to whoever is responsible for keeping the customers happy because as of now there are a few that are not. Don’t get me wrong most of us love the product and will keep it as long as possible but that window is narrowing daily. Quite a few in just the past couple of weeks have already started selling off their units and are moving on to other tuning methods. This can be contributed to many factors;

• Lack of tuners using Cobb ProTune
• Lack of tuning training for novices
• Lack of tuning abilities in ATR
• Serial locking the ATR software
• Software tends to be buggy and crash
• No progression

I will elaborate a little on all of these just to make my point clear.

For one there is a lack of tuners for your platform because of the cost of the ProTune software and the fact that now you have serial locked ATR. This has caused many of the tuners to just have their customers switch to the competition. I know you probably did this intending to have tuners by your software but truly you now have those same tuners telling people to sell their AP. You can browse the forums; there are an increasing number of them being sold everyday at far less of a price then what they paid for them. Take in consideration that for everyone of these being sold second hand it’s a lost sale for a new one and with the amount of these on hand right now for sale used I myself wonder when the price of the new will drop.

As far as helping the novices out that would probably be a good idea on your part since it seems like the reason people are going to these tuners are for little issues that they could fix themselves except they are un aware of what to do. That and since you have locked the software down it’s more difficult to have the community help each other. I personally think it would be beneficial for Cobb to teach people how to use their software for tuning. In your help file you give a good walk through on how to tune for and intake and scale for injectors but there is so much more that could help these guys. Because once they go to the Freeware forums to learn, well they just switch for ease of learning. Again this isn’t just a “what if”, this is happening. Along with this you have kind of left the foreign markets hanging with this issue. When you put the product out you said you would have support for the different international markets yet you basically just give them the stock map to work off of with no tuning help. Then to add to it issue when people try to help them again the different platforms are locked out from each other. It is also the same issue between models, the MR and GSR crowd can’t email maps back and forth to help each other out.

Now on to the “buggy” software, and since I use both platforms I can assure you that ATR crashes much more than the other. Since I am not a software engineer I have no idea why, or what sets it off but it does. It has been a lot better since the new release yet still has issues when logging or multi tasking. It also doesn’t matter if your using anyone of the wide ranges of Windows OS systems they all seem to take a dive at one point or another. Along with this several of the functions have never worked (live tuning, cursor tracing, live tracing, etc.). It would be nice to be able to use these functions at some point or at least have an idea if they are being worked on to use.

This brings me on to tuning abilities and progression; since it’s been nearly a year since the release of the AP for the Evo X and we are just at the point of getting everything that was promised on the box working will we see any progression on abilities or is what we have all we are getting? Because for me when I bought my AP last year just after the release I called the Cobb office and asked the question “How is this better than the alternative?” the reply I got was “Unlike our competition we have full times engineers working daily to ensure that our product has superior capabilities, and we also offer customer service for our product.” So far I have yet to see the “Superior capabilities” but I will say the customer service has been good for me and others at times. There also have been times where the service has lacked and been a bit snobbish for issues and concerns. That aside it would be nice to see some improvements with the software; items such as the ability to toggle more DTC’s in the advanced engine parameters section. Improvements with the performance function to where we can open it in ATR and have comparison graphs for dynos, 0-60, and ¼ mile times. Little items like this can make up for a lot of frustration we have gone through the last year waiting for the bugs to be sorted out.

Personally as a customer what has kept me from switching thus far has been the ease of use and the portability of the AP. However if I don’t see any resolve with the items above myself and the others will probably be making the switch over to the other platform soon. When I wrote this I had several windows open from different forums so I could cut and paste the links to sales and the reasons why people were moving on but I figure if Cobb wants to be serious about keeping their customers and having repeat business they can do their own searches and see what I am talking about. Just as I have been told by a Cobb employee in the past “There is a search button, you find it.”

[Hollywood_X]

In the spirit of going above and beyond here are links to 2 of the sites this is posted on so you can see some of what your customers are saying.

http://www.evoxforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20788

http://forums.evolutionm.net/evo-x-e...d-respond.html

[Travis@COBB]

At COBB Tuning we make every effort to ensure that our products and customer service are of the highest quality. All of our software, maps and tuning products undergo hundreds of hours of R&D and testing to endeavor to offer the best possible end-user tuning experience possible. This means that while other free tuning platforms can release new features and tables more quickly, COBB Tuning works diligently to bring our users the features that they want in the most timely manner that thorough R&D and testing allows.

COBB Tuning recognizes that this development does not always move at the pace that some enthusiasts would desire. Of course, as an EVO X enthusiast, you want your car to be the top priority in the development process. However, limited resources dictate how quickly these features can be designed, tested and implemented. We always listen to our customers and users and will continue to implement your feedback into future development of the AccessPORT and AccessTUNER tuning tools.

COBB Tuning is a company of enthusiasts. We use our own products every weekend on the drag strip, racetrack and autocross course. We understand that having your car perform to its peak potential is a top priority. In this spirit we will continue to constantly improve and develop our products so that we can bring you the best tuning platform available.

COBB Tuning is gladly willing to answer your technical questions, or quickly resolve any issues you may have with our product. Our forums are available for the open exchange of tuning questions and ideas and users are welcome to call us during business hours for answers to any technical questions you may have.

Your satisfaction is our top priority. We hope that if you have an AccessPORT you continue to rely on it for unparalleled tuning capability and on COBB Tuning for our top-notch customer service. If you are looking for a tuning solution for your EVO or any other supported vehicle, we hope that you strongly consider an AccessPORT.

You can reach COBB Tuning at 801-713-0035 or at tech@cobbtuning.com. You can reach COBB Tuning Surgeline in Portland, Oregon at 503-670-9500 or at sales@surgelinetuning.com or our COBB Tuning Plano location at 214 291-3020 plano@cobbtuning.com.