westan01

Hi, pls share the seller's name so we don't get trap....

retrofit

Its Bimmer-tech.net.

I read a lot of threads, reviews and comments......most of them seems to be positive.
Long story short, here are the results:


The System will work, but I will have to tag it as "faulty" because you will get a "CAN" Bus error and that will cause the i-drive system to show" General Electrical Failure, do not drive the car and get it checked by your BMW deanship....etc" error message.
Your Screen will blink and you will lose your Audio from time to time.

The Seller will ask you to put the old system back (M-ASK / CCC) and check the car and fix any errors with your dealership (that is another $125 if you were lucky).

If you put your old System back, the "CAN" Bus error will go away.

You put the new CIC System again, the error comes back.

Finally, BMW Service center pointed to the "PnP" harness and their reply was " the immunization was lost between two main Modules" referring to the DME and the CIC.

The E60 is smart enough to detect the "hack" and report that as the "General Electrical Error" I mentioned above.

Why? Because the CIC originally requires an OEM Activation, that is $1500 to be added to your $2400 retrofit kit cost.( of course the Seller will be more than happy to sell that to you).

The Seller did reject BMW feedback and claimed there is an issue with the car wiring and / or one of the modules and it’s really hard to identify the issue since it could be "Anything".


The PnP Harness is poorly made and it wasn't connecting properly, the Seller send me another harness ( just the wires without the black box).....same quality.

It seems like (and the Seller acknowledged that) most buyers did gave up on this and pay the OEM Activation and with paying that extra $1500, the "CAN" Bus error never go away in some cases.

The sellers did that more than once and build up a strong excuse to convince the buyers that the CIC kit is tested and fine and the problem is in your car.
the Seller will claim that the M_ASK/ CCC & CIC can work with one channel/ Line but the "PnP" harness method requires two channels / lines to work and if you have one bad channel / line, the CIC will not work properly, well....if that is true why would sell this "PnP" harness to your customers if there might be a real problem with using it?
At least warn them, or advise them to check their cars to make sure the "CAN" Error doesn't exist before they pay, right?

So, if you decided to go that route expect to pay $3900 and get a faulty system at the end.

I have a case opened with the seller on PayPal hopefully I can get some of my money back and get someone else to complete the project.
With all that been said, I will not mentioned the rude attitude and ignoring your emails.
I wish you a better luck than mine.

iyaayas12

Get with patryk on here, he is the navi retrofit go-ru he can probably point you in the right direction. I have read nothing but good things about him

retrofit

I really appreciate your help & Advice iyaayas12,

unfortunately, Bimmer-tech.net=Patryk=MEN=Jerzy Matysiak.

All those are the same person/ seller or whatever.....

Patrys

Dear forum members,

BimmerTech has been the leading supplier of OEM multimedia retrofits for the last few years and we have done hundreds of CIC retrofits for people around the world including many members of this forum.
We have always done our best to keep our customers happy and you could find a lot of reviews that confirm my words.

The point of this post is to explain to you what happened between us and the customer because what I just read above is not true.
I do not want to argue with the customer and I will not be replying to any other posts in this thread no matter what will be posted.
I just believe that anyone who reads this thread will be able to understand that there are people in this world that cannot be satisfied no matter how hard we try and even if there is no reason to blame us for something they will still do it.
Also this is the first PayPal claim (there was one more but the customer made a mistake and closed it) we received since we started this business a few years ago, which should also give you a good idea how hard we try to make sure our customers are satisfied.

Let's get to the point:

After we fixed all outstanding issues with the customer (SOS error, etc.) we found out that there were CAN bus errors stored in the car and I informed the customer about it. He did not know about it before.
By the way, fixing the SOS error and similar issues is a normal process of coding the CIC. If the customer had told us about these errors during the first coding session he would have had them fixed the same day, but he did not.

So when we found out about the CAN bus errors I also mentioned to the customer that his car might act strange (like screen flickering can occur or some errors can show on the dash) and suggested that the CAN bus errors should be fixed.
I also told him that most probably this was not caused by our retrofit, but to make sure he would need to remove the CIC and let us check the car again.
The reason why we think this is not caused by our retrofit is simply from our experience and knowledge:
1.Over hundreds of CIC retrofits and years of experience we have never seen CAN bus errors caused by our retrofits (we test them before shipping too)
2.CAN bus errors might be invisible to the car owner but when the CIC with the PnP activation module is installed they can become visible. Why?
Because the CAN bus consists of two lines and if one of the lines is broken car modules can sometimes deal with that, so there will be an error stored in the car but not visible on the dash. If a diagnostic computer is connected to the car and error is found then the car should be fixed no matter if the error is visible on the dash or not. Also sooner or later something can fail in the car because there is a physical error in the car.
The PnP activation module requires both CAN lines to be working fine. If one of them is not working correctly the problems might start, but the reason of these issues is the CAN bus failure in the car.
3.Even though we thought this was not caused by our retrofit we still wanted to help the customer trouble shoot the problem. We did not tell him to fix it and then come back to us.

The customer did not want to remove the CIC and let us check the CAN bus errors. At this point I realized that no matter what I do the customer will never be satisfied so I asked the customer to return the whole retrofit to us for the full refund. Guess what? The customer refused!

It's the first time in my life I have to deal with somebody like this customer and I really do not understand why he is doing this.

And let me tell you how it all started with PayPal:
On the 1st of October I was traveling the whole day from Poland to the Middle East and obviously was not able to check my emails.
On the 2nd of October I read the email he sent the day before (on the 1st) and I replied to him.
The same day he contacted PayPal and told them BimmerTech was not replying to his emails!
I could not believe what I saw in an email I received from PayPal that day.

The customer also mentioned about the BMW feedback that the PnP module is the cause of the problem. BMW would need to remove the PnP module from the car and check for errors in the car to say if the PnP module was the cause or not, so they would need to do what we wanted to do with the customer, but he refused.
Obviously they did not remove the PnP module and I have no idea where the customer received this "BMW feedback", but no technician who has any experience with BMW electronics could say so.

At this point the customer does not want to return the parts to get the full refund, does want to let us prove that the CAN bus error is not caused by our parts, but he wants money from us through PayPal while keeping the $2000+ parts.

I still cannot believe this is happening...

retrofit

Hi westan01,

The Seller just posted a detailed miss-leading post, here are the Facts:

1-This nightmare happened to more than one buyer, unfortunately they didn't pay with PayPal so there is no really a way to get them their money back.
Even with buyers with “positive” post / experience, they might never knew that they have the CAN error as it will appear later and / or might not appear but it’s still in the log.

2-You can get this kit from ebay for less than $1500 and pay for the coding later (which happened to another buyer and Bimmer-tech did the coding themselves).

3-The Seller broke the deal terms more than once and was trying to get away with it, here is why:

i- The seller advised the kit will match my Car Specifications and it didn't.

ii- You will lose your Climate control ( the right passenger knob will not work anymore).

iii- The Climate control itself from the CIC interface will not work properly, you can change from hot to cold and visa verse but nothing else.

iiii-You will lose the spark plugs and the micro-filter information and notifications under the vehicle information tab, you have to go to BMW Service center to get that checked from now on.

iv-The CIC trim will not match your original trim, you have the "paint it" and the seller will pay for aonly a part of that cost.

4-The Seller will leave the coding job unfinished and come back with excuses like: I was on trip, I was sick, I was on another trip, and I was on vacation.......seriously? This is how you do business.

Nicely, I asked the seller to setup his email account to send "out-of-office" auto reply so I would know and wait, he just came back with multiple rude replies and will ask you to return the kit, of-course if you did that you will end up paying more to cover the shipping back cost to outside the USA and buy the parts got damaged from the upgrade, in few words you will lose no matter what.

Now, With all that been said, I am OK, let us just get the job done.

I asked the seller to get me some warranty and I will accept the kit as faulty and code it somewhere else, or may be pay for the OEM activation hopefully to get it to work properly.

The Seller reject my request and only offer 2 months warranty on the CIC unit, the on-board monitor and any used part, that time we were already one month and a half from the sale date and the unit is faulty already.
Means he offered me 1 week warranty on $2,445 kit, and again its faulty already and there is no real fix till this moment.

At that point I decided to stop being the "nice guy" and start acting,
The Seller advised to take the kit off then put the M-ASK again and get the car checked:
1- The M-ASK kit was in the car, no errors and that is checked by BMW Authorized Service center.
2- The CIC kit back in the car, the CAN error appears again, screen flickers and you lose sound and get the "General Electrical Error Message" asking you to stop driving the car and get the car checked by BMW.

BMW feedback was " the immunization was lost between two main Modules" referring to the DME and the CIC.

More facts with dates to prove how the seller was trying to get away with it:

-I Sent payment to seller on 8/31/2012 13:31 MDT ( to pay for the kit).

-The Seller advised the kit will reach me in 10 days and that never happened.

-Sent an email asking about tracking number, the kit arrived after 4 days ( reason : the seller was on a trip and got sick ).
That is 14 days total….no problem.
-I asked the Seller Bimmer-tech guy (1) to code the car since the kit is not working after installation, he asked me to contact another person ( Bimmer-tech Guy (2)) to do the coding as a future contact point.
- I Contacted Bimmer-tech guy (2)*, coding was done and the kit is still faulty.
-I Contacted Bimmer-tech guy (2)* on Friday, Sep 28 2012, Saturday Sep 29 & Monday, Oct 01 2012
-No Respond.
-I Sent an email to Bimmer-tech guy* (1) on Oct 1, 2012.
-No respond.

-Claim was filed on Oct 2, 2012 ( because PayPal offer you 45 days to open a case, otherwise you lose your rights and we were at the last few days on that period and I gave the seller 4-5 days to reply but he was trying to let the 45 days period to pass).

-Claim was escalated to PayPal on Oct 8, 2012.

And to be fair, I didn't ask for full refund, I asked the seller to keep the most part of the payment to cover the hardware cost and some profit leaving me with what I can use to get the job done the right way which might include buying the "High" Climate control unit and may be OEM Activation.

For the record, this is my first PayPal case.

I know my post might not help me to get my money back, but I am sure it will help others to avoid falling in similar trap.

retrofit

Hi westan01,

The Seller just posted a detailed miss-leading post, here are the Facts:

1-This nightmare happened to more than one buyer, unfortunately they didn't pay with PayPal so there is no really a way to get them their money back.
Even with buyers with “positive” post / experience, they might never knew that they have the CAN error as it will appear later and / or might not appear but it’s still in the log.

2-You can get this kit from ebay for less than $1500 and pay for the coding later (which happened to another buyer and Bimmer-tech did the coding themselves).

3-The Seller broke the deal terms more than once and was trying to get away with it, here is why:

i- The seller advised the kit will match my Car Specifications and it didn't.

ii- You will lose your Climate control ( the right passenger knob will not work anymore).

iii- The Climate control itself from the CIC interface will not work properly, you can change from hot to cold and visa verse but nothing else.

iiii-You will lose the spark plugs and the micro-filter information and notifications under the vehicle information tab, you have to go to BMW Service center to get that checked from now on.

iv-The CIC trim will not match your original trim, you have the "paint it" and the seller will pay for aonly a part of that cost.

4-The Seller will leave the coding job unfinished and come back with excuses like: I was on trip, I was sick, I was on another trip, and I was on vacation.......seriously? This is how you do business.

Nicely, I asked the seller to setup his email account to send "out-of-office" auto reply so I would know and wait, he just came back with multiple rude replies and will ask you to return the kit, of-course if you did that you will end up paying more to cover the shipping back cost to outside the USA and buy the parts got damaged from the upgrade, in few words you will lose no matter what.

Now, With all that been said, I am OK, let us just get the job done.

I asked the seller to get me some warranty and I will accept the kit as faulty and code it somewhere else, or may be pay for the OEM activation hopefully to get it to work properly.

The Seller reject my request and only offer 2 months warranty on the CIC unit, the on-board monitor and any used part, that time we were already one month and a half from the sale date and the unit is faulty already.
Means he offered me 1 week warranty on $2,445 kit, and again its faulty already and there is no real fix till this moment.

At that point I decided to stop being the "nice guy" and start acting,
The Seller advised to take the kit off then put the M-ASK again and get the car checked:
1- The M-ASK kit was in the car, no errors and that is checked by BMW Authorized Service center.
2- The CIC kit back in the car, the CAN error appears again, screen flickers and you lose sound and get the "General Electrical Error Message" asking you to stop driving the car and get the car checked by BMW.

BMW feedback was " the immunization was lost between two main Modules" referring to the DME and the CIC.

More facts with dates to prove how the seller was trying to get away with it ( the seller never respond until I started PayPal Claim):

-I Sent payment to seller on 8/31/2012 13:31 MDT ( to pay for the kit).

-The Seller advised the kit will reach me in 10 days and that never happened.

-Sent an email asking about tracking number, the kit arrived after 4 days ( reason : the seller was on a trip and got sick ).
That is 14 days total….no problem.
-I asked the Seller Bimmer-tech guy (1) to code the car since the kit is not working after installation, he asked me to contact another person ( Bimmer-tech Guy (2)) to do the coding as a future contact point.
- I Contacted Bimmer-tech guy (2)*, coding was done and the kit is still faulty.
-I Contacted Bimmer-tech guy (2)* on Friday, Sep 28 2012, Saturday Sep 29 & Monday, Oct 01 2012
-No Respond.
-I Sent an email to Bimmer-tech guy* (1) on Oct 1, 2012.
-No respond.

-Claim was filed on Oct 2, 2012 ( because PayPal offer you 45 days to open a case, otherwise you lose your rights and we were at the last few days on that period and I gave the seller 4-5 days to reply but he was trying to let the 45 days period to pass).

-Claim was escalated to PayPal on Oct 8, 2012.

And to be fair, I didn't ask for full refund, I asked the seller to keep the most part of the payment to cover the hardware cost and some profit leaving me with what I can use to get the job done the right way which might include buying the "High" Climate control unit and may be OEM Activation.

For the record, this is my first PayPal case.

I know my post might not help me to get my money back, but I am sure it will help others to avoid falling in similar trap.

bimmerretrofit

Dear all,

My name is Kate from Bimmer Retrofit Company.

First of all, I would like to state that Bimmer Retrofit or myself are NOT affiliated with Bimmer Tech or Patrys (Patryk) in any way whatsoever. In fact, Bimmer Retrofit is a direct competitor of Bimmer Tech. I just joined the forum and I came across this thread, and I felt that I could not just walk away without giving our engineer’s opinion about the conflict that arose between “retrofit” and “Patrys”.

Below is quotation from one of our engineers:

“In the past we have had similar situations when a customer had a problem with the CAN bus in his vehicle, and the equipment he purchased from us was not functioning as it should. This is absolutely correct that the CAN bus (at least the one which is being discussed in this thread – low speed 100 k/bit one) has two operation modes – NORMAL mode, when the information passes via two wires (twisted pair) or PROTECTED mode, when for example one of the wires is broken or shorted, and the information is sent via a single line.

This is intentionally made by the German engineers to keep the vehicle’s functionality even when the vehicle’s wiring is damaged.

The reason why error message comes on to the display after CAN module is connected is because CAN module is designed to work with NORMAL mode of the CAN bus only (i.e. when information passes via two wires).

The problem that I see is that unless you visit BMW dealer’s diagnostics center, you will not know if your CAN bus operates in NORMAL or PROTECTED mode.

What I would personally suggest is to visit BMW dealer and ask for a standard diagnostic prior to the CIC kit installation and coding. This, will first of all protect your investments, save you time and nerves and, secondly, and most importantly – will let you to have a properly functioning vehicle.”

Some people, including Bimmer Tech, may find it strange that Bimmer Retrofit defends its competitor in public. We are not - all we are doing is giving our Company’s engineer’s INDEPENDENT expert opinion on the technical issues discussed herein. There is nothing more frustrating than a customer who threatens to do a chargeback on the credit card or a claim via PayPal based on the information that someone, not familiar with this technology, told him/her, or based on what he/she read on multiple forums, where people write technical information, which has nothing to do with the reality. This is not fair and we would like to encourage everyone to do proper research before jumping to wrong conclusions or posting misleading reviews/information on the forums.

For questions about this particular comment, please do not hesitate to PM me or send me an email to eivanova@bimmerretrofit.com

Thanks,

Kate.

retrofit

Your engineer suggested to do what Bimmer-tech asked me to do and what I have already did.
Put the M-ASK, No CAN Error detected By BMW Service center.
Put the PnP Module, CAN Error comes back.

If you have a resolution, I will be more than happy to pay you for it.
If you have any similar posts that I can read, please feel free to send them to me.

Otherwise, please be fair when you post.


For the PayPal case,
Haven't I wait enough for this "Plug-n-Play" project to complete?
Haven't I contacted the Seller more than once and they never replied till I had that case opened?

Please read what I wrote above carefully this time with all the dates I included.

If you hate PayPal, because its providing people like us with a safe environment, don't use it.

I have nothing personal against you / bimmer-tech, this is just business, but when you get paid, people expect you to get the job done and at least to Acknowledge their emails.

My Time and other buyers time is valuable, so please respect that.

Now, with all that been said, I still welcome any logical resolution,

Another Suggestion I got from a vendor is to get the new "High" Climate Control and re-code the car after installing it.

OR, Use the OEM Activation this time instead of the PnP Module.


Thank you for your time and for posting on my thread.