My experience with Fabspeed
 

I didn't think I'd be annoyed enough to write a review about a vendor here, but here I am. I probably should've brought this up to them directly, but I believe that if someone is dealing with super cars, they should know how to treat customers right, the first time.

Coming from the BMW crowd, BoostAddict and even someone doing a paid advertisement on Fabspeed...I thought, "They had some cool videos in the past and got me while I was young. Let's give them a try."

Anyway, here's what I purchased:

Bypass Pipes
Fabspeed tune

The purchasing process was regular. Nothing spectacular. Parts arrived, it sat in my home, and now Spring is here I am deciding to mod.

The pipes had terrible fitment. The angle was way off. I didn't bother complaining, but I wouldn't recommend their parts. Better off going to Soul. Luckily, there is a TIG welder available at my disposal; we did some adjustments and piped it up.

The tune process was normal, but I wanted to talk to the tuner. This is not possible--I was told the tuner is not a people person and cannot be reached. This made me feel extremely uneasy, whatever. In my 10 years of tuning, I've never been shielded away from a tuner. A clear lack of transparency.

I didn't want to post this until now, but now that the ECU is en route in UPS' hands, I thought I'd share. They didn't overnight ship this back to me, I thought this is a courteous gesture. What the hell is this all about? I don't even think an excuse is possible for this other than they're just cheap. It's not mistake to say that this is an oversight considering you're dealing with super cars all day.

In short, the pipes had poor fitment. The tuning process is questionable at best, and the lack of transparency doesn't make me feel easy. Based on the feedback on the Fabspeed tune on here, I'm most likely going to be going with a Cobb Tune if this doesn't work out. It just doesn't make me feel comfortable at all.

I do not recommend giving your money to these guys if you're looking for either a tune or any pipes. Or maybe, everyone already knew this.

Your fault for going with a ghetto tune. I'm not backing fabspeed in any way or form but you sound like shill for Soul.

This thread has potential.

Ooooh this is good! Rockets Warriors on big screen, drama here in the small screen!

I’m with you man. Hope the Rockets push this to game 7, they can take them down. Oh, yeah, this thread, let’s see what happens.

I didn't even know Fabspeed had a tune. Where are you located? I am sure there are others in your area with tuner experience that can help you find something else.

Anyway, I would bring this up to them and see what reponse you get and update this thread. I have Soul cats on my car but I think it is fair to give them a chance, and many use their headers no matter what anyone says.

I agree with Bob. Talk to them. They seem to be very active on these forums and seem helpful. That’s the extent of what I know about them. They probably would’ve shipped you new pipes and I’m not sure about the tune. Seems like a canned tune from possibly some third party.

I have Fabspeed cat-delete pipes and although they won’t be winning any TIG-welding awards anytime soon, they get the job done perfectly.

As for getting a tune tune from them... You must be out of your mind.

I have to ask, what kind of research did you do in order to decide to go with a Fabspeed tune?

lol no KD and scoreless curry 1st half still lost, they couldnt have asked for a better chance, what a choke

I had an issue with Fabspeed in the past.
They stepped up and gave me a discount on a tip that fell off.
Can't comment on the tune but i m very happy that James Harden and Chris Paul lost.
They will always be losers;)

Doesn't Fabspeed just repackage the GIAC tune? That's what I recall them doing when it was released. In any case, the post doesn't come across very well. If it were me, I would have reached out to the vendor to see if they could remedy the issue first before calling them out. Just my opinion, which is worth the paper it was written on...

What am I reading here....:roflmao:

Unbelievable. No excuses. Terrible loss

I'll second this one. The headers on my 986 cracked at multiple welds after about 2 years of use. I had them repaired by a local race car shop who as a great welder and engineering student.He showed me where the original welds looked good on the outside, but had lack of penetration through the weld area. I am guessing they MIG rather than TIG there welds.

I sent a complaint with photos to Fabspeed, and they responded that if I had sent the headers back to them, they would have repaired them. Fair enough, but I think I'd still rather have the excellent local TIG welder's work.

I still like the complete Fabspeed system, but just know you may have some crap welds.

I talked to them three times when I had a similar issue... They told me the same thing in different ways: "You are out of luck, but for an additional $1000 we can send you something else that may fix your issue".

Once they get your money you will be on your own.

That’s bad customer service, the least to say. Surprised they haven’t popped in here about this.

Phil, hook this guy up please.

First question Why buy a tune from a shop not known for software tuning especially if you already done some Cobb research?
Second question if the quality of the work is as many pointed out with sub par welds why would anyone buy or keep the stuff? Is it cheap? No.
Last question who buys thousands of dollars worth of stuff, doesn't check it out and then when not happy posts a negative thread here?

You drive on roads you pay for... I bet you complain when they are not good enough, especially PA roads. That's called expectation; sometimes they are met, sometimes they are not.

I had to take my Porsche back three times to finally resolve an issue. You'd think that someone "dealing with supercars" could do better. But rather than blow-up on a post, we kept a civil dialog going and resolved the issue. I don't know if it will help your case at this point but step one is ALWAYS have a one-on-one BEFORE going public. :cheers:

It's a bit weird that Fabspeed keeps getting lit up online - they shouldn't be THAT bad one would hope - these new accounts w only posts to bash a vendor are really sketchy too.

If you're in the PA, NJ area, you have quite a few really solid tuners you could've gone to, Aim Performance being one for example - going to an exhaust shop to get a tune doesn't make much sense

Soul
 

Soul!

Great customer service and great products.

I bought a used set of Fabspeed sport headers - they looked like they had held up well & bolted right in with minimal fuss (except for that :icon501: bolt on each side next to the middle header - on valve cover side)
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...849710b11.jpeg
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlis...67c3f15ae.jpeg
I’ve been happy with results...

Gskv,



Phil here – I completely understand your frustrations but I really do wish you had mentioned any issue with the pipe we would absolutely help you out. I left a voicemail for you, if we could talk about this whenever you get a chance I would really appreciate the opportunity to try and make this right.

I can’t comment on what went wrong in your fitment issue without seeing it but we know mistakes do happen and that’s why we take our customer service so seriously. I would love if we can talk about your exhaust problems. When we shipped your ECU back we chose the fastest option as you live out of country, we could not overnight it there.

We also want to be completely transparent, that’s something we pride ourselves on, however it is just the structure of our company that our tuners don’t deal directly with customers. We have made customer service a top priority and we have had more success specifically training certain roles to handle customer interactions. If there’s any information you want or want communicated that’s not a problem at all and I’m happy to provide that for you.

Issues are often talked about the loudest, but if we had issues at a high rate it would be evident in our online ratings and we wouldn’t be successful for over 25+ years. We are actually just about to roll out a huge warranty update that will make it clearer than ever how much we stand behind our products.

If anybody has any other questions don’t hesitate to reach out.


Phil

For tuning - I can't recommend FVD enough. Cobb has better hardware for sure with the access port but FVD software can't be beat and the ability to update so easily with additional mods is worth it's weight and then some IMO.

I always find it best to try and work it out with the party you have the issue with instead of having a trial in an open forum.

I had a problem with a part I received from a well respected vendor of carbon parts. I had ordered several pieces with no issues and then had an issue with a very expensive part. They were not quick coming up with a resolution and instead tried to blame the shipping company. I went back and forth and voiced my displeasure clearly. They decided to take the chance I might get over it. I did, I'll never buy another piece from them.

Try to find the thread where I came on here and bashed them. You won't find it because I did not post it and call them out. Not everyone's experience with a vendor is the same. I'm sure many people had great experiences with the vendor I'm talking about as I did till that problem. I won't anymore because I voted with my $'s. I just don't know what gets accomplished by posting like this other than the vendor getting defensive.

And I have never bought a thing from Fabspeed so I don't have either a positive or negative opinion. I do have a Cobb tune and Europipe exhaust that I did a lot of research on before pulling the trigger.

interesting stuff. good response by phil @ fabspeed tho, i've known other business owners to take a completely diff approach to being called out in a public forum.

I’m glad Fabspeed jumped in to comment on this. I really like seeing the vendors active on forums. Shows an involvement and passion, like the users here.

Have you considered picking up the tab for the modifications that the OP had to do in order to make it fit? That would be taking customer service seriously.

Why? Overnight shipping service is available in Canada.

How can you say your business is transparent, when on the same sentence you are pretty much telling the customer "yeah you are right, the tuner cannot talk to you because he is not trained to talk to you". Then why offer a half-ass service? If you have made customer service a top priority, then you would have someone trained to deal with tuning issues; a product you offer. Every product shall have full person-to-person customer support.

Your solution is "talk to me and I will talk to the tuner". How is that transparent?

most companies have folks not trained to be customer facing, for various reasons. if the message is being conveyed well why does it matter? when my amazon order ships/delivers late i don't expect to be able to speak with the logistics mgr directly in charge of the whse that was supposed to ship my order, or the driver who was supposed to deliver.

Fabspeed has always been ACES to deal with for me, and I've dealt with them A LOT. They are local to me so they know if they had something that wasn't perfect, I'd be right there the next day getting it corrected. Fortunately, that's never happened as they've always done a great job. They ALWAYS back their stuff, especially now...so I know you'll get taken care of now that Phil is on it.

You ever have a car remote tuned before?

This is not directed at Fabspeed.... but I loath when vendors offer to "make things right" with anything other than quantifying the problem and writing a check. Most of the time it's some crap discount on the next order or a promise similar... How abut earn business by doing the right thing by someone that has already given you their money?

The second is to Fabspeed and all other tuners.... I do understand the concept of the tuners time but there is a way to handle this. For starters, at a minimum take notes via the people that are customer facing and have them find out the info. Collect the questions and publish them with the answers. In the future you have a cheat sheet and a place to point customers to. Easy peasy.

i have their down pipes and mufflers on my 958 S and their super sport exhaust on my 991. i installed it myself and everything fit. i havent had any problems yet on the 2 systems that ive bought.

This... I'm sure most questions can be answered with a FAQ section.

My dealer won't do business with them and I won't either. They jump into one of these threads making it appear that they will make good on their products but then they fail to come through. They promised to replace the exhaust tips I bought from them when they tarnished but when I sent them back all they did was polish them and they tarnished again shortly after I put them on my car.

We would not consider picking up the tab for the modifications since he did not reach out to us first and moved forward trying to modify our pipes with his own intention. If GSKV did reach out to us first we would have been more than helpful with resolving his issue that our bypass pipes were causing. We want to make every customer happy. If there was a legitimate issue that when a third party shop encountered while installing our product that was a fabrication error we would compensate for the additional labor associated for our inconvenience.

Through UPS worldwide express shipping next day is an option to Canada but does not always guarantee on-time delivery due to possible delays in customs or other delays that are out of our control. We shipped in the fastest method available to us.

Our tuner is very busy throughout the day developing tunes, dyno testing and is not always available to handle tuning customer service requests directly. We have our Sales Team and Customer service department readily available to always relay any questions to and from our tuner for our customer needs.


Thanks for the love Sechsgang, we appreciate your business and if you ever need anything in the future don't be afraid to reach out. We like to think of customers like family and want to continue the relationship after every sale.

That is an awesome combo and probably sounds killer. If you need any other parts for your vehicles let me know would love to help out!

We are currently updating a lot of our company documents including our FAQ, Lifetime warranty, and our tune sheet requirements. We want to make everything in our business crystal clear for our customers so the buying process runs smoothly and after sales management is handled professionally.

Jerry991, we are sorry to hear about this incident again. If you could reach back out to us so we can get more details on your situation and look into a resolution. We look forward to speaking with you.

Although I would agree that taking an issue directly back with a vendor is the best way possible to resolve an issue, I also appreciate a feedback on experience even if issue had been resolved (it still was an issue, wasn't it). Having a system which allows the feedback and gives a vendor their opportunity to reply helps others to make an opinion on whether or not to give their business to a vendor.

So this thread has been useful.

And I am sorry to say, but IMO, unfortunately, Phil's responses themselves show that they are not 100 transparent. On the shipping I'd be way happier if the answer would've been along the lines of "yes, we decided to ship cheaper carrier because we weren't sure if the money we paid would've helped the ECU to be delivered overnight" or whatever.. On the tuner, I doubt it was impossible to have him helping out supporting customer's tune based on his work schedule availability. Then it is something else. And this is not helping to prove transparency.

Again, to me it is good to know when evaluating whom to give my business to.

Still don't think this type of open trial is useful when evaluating a vendor.
Do your work up front and buy from vendors who have the expertise on the product your spending your $'s on.

If you trust it's not useful, just ignore it :)
And, yes, I completely agree with you on your second statement.

Thanks for the responses. Follow up question based on your statement "we want to make every customer happy"; do you think you did everything in your power to make the OP happy?

OP is like :corn:

Been invisible since the 1st post. But I think Guards Red is his legal consul.

I inferred from these forums and others that most of their exhaust parts were ready to ship. I ordered some side deletes, and couldn't figure out (2) days later why they didn't ship. I called, only to find out that they make them to order. Looking back, I can't even figure out why I thought they were in stock. (that's my mistake - my bad) The Fabspeed team (especially Sean) moved some production stuff around to expedite my order, so that I could have it in time for Smokies. They did not have to do that, and I honestly didn't push for it - they just did it. I can't speak to anyone else's experience, but mine was good. I would use them again for future needs. Welds are 9+ on a 10 scale - and I can speak on this. Its not art, it goes under your car - kinda like the guy who asked why we need a forged carbon diffuser from Capristo on the bottom of our cars... (other thread)

Phil - respectfully; and I do support your products... But this response is the type of antagonizing that people really get annoyed by. What additional details are you looking for exactly? Tarnish > product returned > Polished > tarnished again. Either offer to replace them with something different that's not going to tarnish[again], refund the amount of the tips or just don't respond and own that Fabspeed doesn't care. There really isn't a 4th option. If you do care then take initiative and do something proactively. Most of us have jobs and constantly following up should be Fabspeed's and not the consumers'.

LMAO. Truer words were never spoken.

Fourth option is offer a discount for another product. All kidding aside, your comments are true.

When you have to tell your customers that you’ll take care of them on the next purchase that pretty much means you don’t care about your customers and that customer isn’t buying your product again. Ever.

Absolutely correct. Your previous post did make me laugh, even when it is 100% correct. Glad someone said it.

I do agree with this. I had a vendor that wanted to compensate me for a defective part on the next purchase. I'll never buy another thing from them. If you can't make it good when it happens then don't expect anything in the future. Terrible retail strategy.

That would've never worked with me either. I respect your position of not sharing this type of bad experience publicly too. To me it's a personal choice and there is no right or wrongs.