Any vendor I have dealt with has always gone out of their way to be fair with me.
Here is one scenario I can think of and how it would have gone if I had bought the stuff from a China shop.
Buying MAFTPro from China,
I buy it on the cheap, never talk to anyone, dont see a forum for it, and maybe get enough connectors to get it installed. I then have to contact someone that can burn chips and possibly mess that up but hey, it was cheap right? When I go to sell it, I can barely give it away because its electrical, it could be fried, nobody wants to take that chance.
Buying MAFTPro from Full Throttle,
I speak to Mike directly at the GS Nationals. He offers an intro price on the unit since its new to the market. He throws in a custom burned chip for free. He realizes they do not have any units left in stock so he ships it one to me for free from his shop. He also gives me a t-shirt, granted its free advertising but its a gift as well. All this for what I would say was a very fair price.
I go to install it, I am the first GN in Minnesota to have this thing installed. We run into some issues, I call Mike, he walks us through the install to verify everything over the phone. Turns out it was a pinched connection but he stayed on the phone till we figured it out. Full Throttle also has a forum for tech support of their stuff which Mike is on pretty much every day. As I learn I pass on my knowledge to his forum for the DSM and Supra guys which also use this unit. If I had any questions, like getting it to talk to my laptop, Mike and his staff were there with an answer.
I get a smoking deal on a FAST system so I go to sell my MAFTPro and LC-1 wideband. I got a lot of lowball offers on a basically new set up so I held on to it. I paid a fair price for it from a vendor, no sense in letting someone get it all for $100.
I take all the stuff to the Nats and put it up for sale. Within ten minutes I have an interested buyer that has some reservations about the unit being used and all. We walk over to Full Throttles tent to talk to Mike. Mike offers this guy a full warranty on my USED parts and offers to burn him a custom chip if he buys my stuff.
That right there is a stand up vendor. They may have their issues between them but its business and if all went perfectly they wouldnt exist as only one would last. They stand behind the customer and even the next customer that buys the stuff used. Same goes for Cal Hartline, I have passed people his way for buying FAST related stuff and he checks out my tune, I dont demand anything, I think its just fair if I know of a vendor selling a part someone needs, I pass on the information. I cant express how much I appreciate Cal taking the time to look at my gct file and help a FAST newb not blow his car up.
Anyone that has a problem with our vendors should just sell their car to someone who can appreciate it and buy a Honda.
