S60 My Experience with MTE Garage (Bartley Biz)

[marcuswee]

Dear All,

My name is Marcus. I would like to share my experience with MTE Garage(Bartley Biz Centre) and my journey in tuning my ride. I hope that my experience can allow any potential Volvo owners’ to evaluate the risk and adjust your expectation accordingly. There are lots of workshop and tuner that are respectable but there are those who are irresponsible as well. Likewise my experience do not necessary mean the same will happen to you. In a nutshell, my car was unsuitable for tuning and it cost a lot of problem to the extent of rendering it unusable before wearnes automotive (agent) solve it for me. There was huge gap between promise expectation and reality. I have attached all receipts and proof.

1. 01 July 2014 -Bought new 2013 Volvo S60 T5, 240hp, 320nm (no Drive E version)

2. 21 July 2014- Recommended by friend to MTE garage. Meet with owner Alex and discuss my expectations for my car. – To increase the drive response via tuning, upon recommendations, I was promised a custom tune with the following hardware upgrade which is necessary to complement the custom tune. I was promised an increase of 60+hp and 100+NM minimum. The verbal guarantee was that the hp will be over 300hp. My stock is 240hp.



The upgrade bought was



a. Ferrita DP/Catback exhaust- $3800

b. AEM methanol Kit- $1350

c. MTE custom Tune- $1350

d. Injen Short Ram (Full kit)- $1350

e. UR front strut bar- $190

f. Customised throttle hose- $160

Total: $8789 with gst

3. Turns out the Injen Air intake is incompatible with the car. The overflow of air cause the ECU to shut down the engine. Ended up with a DIY air filter which means I paid for something I cannot use and no refund was given.


4. Mid November- After waiting for 4 months after full payment, MTE arrange for shark performance from Uk to do a tuning trip in Singapore. Let me be upfront here, the tuning fail in the first round with sluggish performance because MTE accuses us for installing an aftermarket downpipe which affected the tuning. We replace back the original Ferrita DP and the tuning seems to work and we thought the tuning was completed. While the price was inclusive of a Dyno run verbally, none was arranged after a month. I was interested to know if the car exceeded 300hp as promised. Just to add, the tuning was done using the clipboard which open up the ECU and not a flash as per promised


5. 09 Jan 2015- despite repeated request for dyno with MTE, I was ignored. Paid for our own dyno run at monster tune and realised that the HP was a mere 248hp( only +8hp). To be fair the car did become more responsive with higher torque at lower RPM but the problems that ensued was not worth the improvement at all. I did not argue because such over promise by certain workshop is common in the business.



6. Problems: jan15 to may 15- Numerous check engine light, error codes but all resolved by a simple reset of error codes at agent



7. Problems: 3rd July error codes (unable to reset successfully)



a. Reduced engine performance

b. DSTC service

c. Check Engine

d. Multi Indicators light up

e. Engine choking


8. Problems: 4 July- Car cannot start. Volvo replace fuel pressure. Collected car


9. Problems: 6th July – Car cannot start. All indicators light up again and return to agent, replace fuel injection pump



10. Problems: 11th August – Car cannot start. All indicators out again, choking engine, went back to Volvo, Volvo manage to reset code and diagnostic read “software incompatible with car”



11. Problems 15th August- Car cannot start. All indicators out again. Reloaded original ECU program



12. Problems 17th August Car stalled on road twice. Volvo mechanic while testing stalled again on the road. Volvo installed original air intake and did reset for the car.



13. 25th August- collected car, total spent $1592 over a few visit to Volvo. Whole fiasco including amount paid to MTE is around $10,701.00 and I bought only headaches




To summarize, I was unlucky enough to be convinced that my car was tune ready and I spent $10k to bring myself a host of problems. I would like to share this experience with anybody who are thinking of tuning their Volvo. I will now be evaluating my recourse for this matter.

Thank You

[byootox]

Oh jeez !! thats just over £4900 quid !!! how on earth was it that expensive ??
I'm curious though I see your in Singapore, I've been there and I'm curious where you would get the road to give the car a good blast anyway lol.