AEM's Other Side

4Jenna

Founding Member
Sep 12, 2001
4,326
6
69
AZ
After fighting with timing errors for ever, and being promised the world from AEM of how great the EPM/COP setup would benefit my car I am no longer running any AEM products on my car. The story is very unfortunate.

I bought everything to do the COP swap on AEM's advice to fix the timing error issue with their box on Ford TFI equip'd cars. EPM, Coils, Pins, Connectors, Shielded wire..etc.

When said and done after getting all this wired up with limited technical support, days between returned emails, no returned calls I only had 6 coils firing. The 2 in question were wired in a pair to coil 3. After AEM pointing the finger at me for a week (many long 3am nights checking and triple checking everything), and having me try many different things they troubleshot it to the box. Those coils were only recieving 1v, and need 5v to fire. The signal coming out of the box was only 1v as well. They had me cut the harness I had just built to verify this (few inches up from EMS) since it was my wiring and not the box.
They had me pull the motherboard out to check jumpers and inspect board. Myself, the tuner, and the owner of a professional wire shop (where car was) throughly inspected board, everything looked great.

Send it in they said...75$ inspection fee. We will email you once the box arrives and 5-7 business days to fix it. 250$ worst case.

I agree and send it in.

Tracking shows it being at AEM for 3 days and no email from them confirming so I call. No your box is not here....

days go by no email or call

Call back, yes the box is here, we will look at it soon and email you. I bring up the box has been there 6 business days and you guys just now know it's there...I am trying to make a race this weekend can we get this done?

"You should have told us that from the first day"

The next day the wireshop calls AEM for me as I am at work, they tell him my board is bad and want 500$. I call to confirm on lunch and am informed that is not true, there are no records of my box'es issue in their system and to call back tommorow.

Call back the next day

Board is completely fried, and it's 639$ to fix it.

I ask how did it go from 250$, to 500$, and one day later 639$?

We did you a favor of rushing this since you have a race, and are also giving you "racer discount" as this is normally over 1000$ to fix. You will get basically a new EMS but the case is the same. All internals new.

OK whats my warrenty?

AEM warrentys no electronics they repair.

How did the box fry, it was not burnt when we looked at it before I shipped?

The tech said..."Well I guess it got struck by lighting during shipping"

My mouth dropped.

I asked how much do I have to spend to make your product work? My car ran fine before this except for the timing errrors. With a fried board it wouldn't run.

tech replies "Would you like me to return your EMS since it ran fine before?"

Mouth drops yet again.

I basically begged them to work with me, since i am 99% done with the swap. They would not budge and kept asking

"What should we do, we cant fix it for free"

I never wanted it for free, I agreed to 250$ and maybe even 500$....but 639$ is insane.

They blamed user error, but could not pin point the issue with my box. Only coil 3 was bad, and it turned into buying a new EMS with no warrenty.

I asked for a 90 day warrenty...NO

60 day? NO

30 day? NO

start up warrenty? NO

Why would I continue to run your products I ask? I run your EMS, wideband, EPM, and planned to run their injector driver if this is the tech support and service you provide?

I asked for pics yesterday and they sent them. The board is BROWN, there is no way 3 expereinced guys who throughly looked over the board missed this. I


They offered to send my burnt box back, but i have to pay the 75$ inspection fee reguardless.

I am shocked.

I am eating a AEM EMS here. I'll be removing all AEM parts from my car and going with a company that stands behinde their product, repairs, and doesnt have rude un-professional techs that never return emails, or calls.

I am just sick over this

I can pay them to fix it and try to sell it (no warrenty)

Or move on and not give them one cent of my money after the way they have treated me.

Just my experience, be careful guys.

-Chris
 
Chris, Im very sorry to hear this. I was telling Paul (Killercanary) the other day that I have seen soo many guys posting up with problems with AEM's that maybe he should think twice about going to the c.o.p. setup.

There are countless threads out there with guys trying to figure this out and seems not many do get it figured out.

Good luck in whatever direction you go. :nice:

Robert
 
i can't believe all the problems you're having. Did you take pictures of the board before you sent it in to them? do you have any photographic evidence? I can't believe they have no record of all the problems you've been having. You'd think they would record all that stuff so they know what they already told you to do.

Seems like they want to just sell the box and walk away from it.
 
I just checked my thread on the AEM forums, it was the same exact post as here.


IT IS GONE THEY DELETED IT!!!!



About to re-post and link everyone to it


:jaw:
 
I just checked my thread on the AEM forums, it was the same exact post as here.


IT IS GONE THEY DELETED IT!!!!



About to re-post and link everyone to it


:jaw:

Due to this thread AEM just lost a future customer.. I'll spend the extra money and buy a FAST standalone after reading this..

I had planned on an AEM in the near future...
 
Well looks like another company I won't be doing business with in the future. What is going on with customer service these days?

I was looking into standalone system for my fox project, I guess I can cross AEM off my list of possibilities.
 
Wow, that really blows. My AEM wideband is junk, but I haven't had any problems with the EMS or EPM (yet). The WB came with the used EMS so I'm not really out anything on it...

Too late now and I'm sure you already did this, but you needed to check JPC3 on the motherboard. It should have been jumpered the same as JPC1, 2, and 4. If that checked out ok then it was more than likely a defective board. Although most of the problems I've seen related to this are just a a bad chip on the board that they can fix without replacing the entire board...I spent a lot of time researching this problem when my Coil 2 wasn't working. Didn't find any solutions other than "check jumpers" and "send in EMS for repair". Luckily mine was a jumper problem, otherwise I'd probably be in the same boat you are.
 
:jaw: I am utterly speechless as to them having such crappy customer service! How the hell does a company expect to continue to grow if they treat their customers like this.

Sorry for your misfortune man....they definitely lost any possible customer in me.:nonono:
 
Wow, that really blows. My AEM wideband is junk, but I haven't had any problems with the EMS or EPM (yet). The WB came with the used EMS so I'm not really out anything on it...

Too late now and I'm sure you already did this, but you needed to check JPC3 on the motherboard. It should have been jumpered the same as JPC1, 2, and 4. If that checked out ok then it was more than likely a defective board. Although most of the problems I've seen related to this are just a a bad chip on the board that they can fix without replacing the entire board...I spent a lot of time researching this problem when my Coil 2 wasn't working. Didn't find any solutions other than "check jumpers" and "send in EMS for repair". Luckily mine was a jumper problem, otherwise I'd probably be in the same boat you are.



Checked JPC3 weeks ago when the problem first happened (all my jummpers were on and good), I read and re-read your thread on corral 100x. IT was very hepful by the way, especially since AEM provides no instructions for their product.

-Chris
 
Where are they located? Maybe you should just 'show up' there oneday. I regret to say that I do run their wideband, and have yet to find fault; but this crap is the nightmares I hear people dealing with when working with a scummy greedy homegrown sort of company ran by some pompous ******* and not an actual corperation that is trying to better themselves.

The fact that threads are getting deleted is just sad. Shows they are clearly in the wrong and have no spine to stand behind their BS product. Why not just fix it and have a HAPPY customer who will share his experience of a company that stood behind thier product and I don't know....actually DRIVE sales rather than loose them? EMS systems are not cheap. Why have people spreading bad things to say? Fix it for your own in-house cost of maybe $200 or not sell 2-3 $2000 systems. Hmm...tough call there.

Idiots.