ST800 questions and opinion
ST800 questions and opinion
(also posted this on My350Z forum)
Greetings folks,
I have a ST800 installed in my G35MT coupe. I've had it for probably 9 months now. Here's what I think.
PROS:
IMHO, the best part about the ST800 is that in the dead of winter (if you've set a remote start reservation...AND...as long as it's not been more than 48 hours), it will reliably remote start the car. It's really nice to be able to go out to a warm, mostly defrosted car...as funny as that sounds today, in the middle of May.
MORE PROS:
I can't think of any...but I'll come back to PROS if any occur to me.
CONS:
1. Support - Support from DOWON-TEC (Sean in Arizona and Jeremy in Korea(?)) is non-existent. I read that Sean quit...and I have first-hand experience with Jeremy promising support, but never following through on his promises.
Don't get me wrong, these are not bad people...in fact Sean by many accounts has bent over backwards to help LOTS of people out with installs. On the other hand, Jeremy made repeated promises to answer my questions and to provide additional hardware, but he NEVER delivered...and he offered one excuse after another as to why he didn't deliver...and kept promising he'd deliver. In the end, he didn't deliver anything. No answers. No product. Nothing.
My sense is that DOWON-TEC/Auto-Innovatio are simply not set up to meet the demands of global productization...especially given the DIY market that they want to do business in. They appear to devote zero resources to addressing the torrent of questions that each and every DIY buyer will inevitably have when installing one of their remote start products.
They want the revenue that the products can generate via places like eBay and Amazon, but they're not willing or able to allocate resources to meet the support demand. I can only speculate as to why... (not enough sales revenue to offset the costs of supporting it, not enough local expertise, language barrier, other?). Bottom line...they're not a legitimate global business...but they're happy to take your money.
2. Documentation - On a scale of one to ten, with ten being "outstanding," the ST800 user manual is a solid "double zero." The installation manual is actually not terrible...but the user manual is simply atrocious. It is riddled with extremely poor English and full-out erroneous (or at best misleading) statements. Jeremy (and Sean) repeatedly promised that they were in the process of re-writing it, but it never materialized.
Taken together (the horrendously-written manuals and the no-real-support SOP) create a particularly problematic challenge for the DIY installer, the end user...and even for the professional installer.
My installer, a professional, had some questions due entirely to the fact that the install manual made no sense in some sections. In the end, he figured it out. Unfortunately, the extra time it took for him to decode the sometimes confusing and sometimes nonsensical information in both the install manual and user manual COST ME AN ARM AND A LEG.
MORE CONS:
3. Flaky Product? - Despite numerous requests for clarifications e-mailed to DOWON-Tec...and despite their repeated promises to get back to me, I'm still perplexed as to why, sometimes, my ST800...
A. ...shuts down the engine fully as soon as I press the button...while other times, the engine will only shut down after I hold the button in for five full seconds. There does not seem to be any rhyme or reason...but if I had to guess, I think it has something to do with the state of the e-brake...and/or maybe with the e-brake in combination with the state of the foot brake...but couldn't tell you what that combination is. It sure would be nice if the manual actually explained it, no?
B. ...starts the engine only after I hold the button in for five full seconds (with the e-brake on or off), but won't start at all at other times unless I cycle the e-brake or tap the foot brake or curse loudly...or some combination of the above.
C. ...remote starts via the remote fob from many, many yards away, but often won't unlock until I pump the door handle once...or stand right next to the car and think about how to say "I'm a sucker" in three languages.
I've tried re-orienting the pointy antenna, pointing it left/right at the top of the inside of the windshield; and I've tried moving it to the left side of the window, next to the column, pointing up/down...but nothing seems to help...and I've even replaced the battery in the remote, but that made no difference at all.
I fully admit that these three flaky behaviors could actually be "operator error," but again, I point to the incredibly bad support and the even-worse documentation as the root cause, assuming that it's not flaky product.
EVEN MORE CONS:
4. Valet-no-more - Forget about valet parking. It confuses the hell out of car wash guys, too. So much so that I've even created a laminated cheat sheet for valets to refer to when they attempt to start or stop the engine. I'll attach it to this posting...AND WOULD BE HAPPY TO EDIT IT and re-post it, if you can tell me what's not accurate about it.
5. Forfeit a chipped key - You'll have to buy an expensive chipped key and bury it in the bypass box. Mine cost $80 at ACE...because I didn't want to forfeit my factory key for this purpose. Oh, and you'll also have to buy a non-chipped key and cut the shank off to put it in your factory ignition.
6. Wiring diagram - The wiring diagram is a separate document that ships with the ST800. While for the most part, the diagram is very clear and probably the single most helpful document that ships with the unit, it doesn't exactly say that you MUST wrap the key sensor bypass antenna TIGHTLY AND AT LEAST THREE TIMES around your ignition cylinder.
On the contrary, in fact, it plainly shows the antenna wire wrapped only twice...and there's no mention of the three-loop requirement in the install manual or in the crazy-bad user manual...but if you don't wrap the antenna wire tightly and at least three times around, you'll wonder why your remote start reservations work sometimes, but not other times.
7. One fob - The unit ships with only one keyfob. If you lose it, you'll have to use the window keypad until your new one arrives. But if you're like me, you won't remember your password for the keypad, so you'll be hosed.
---------
Having said all that, both Nhat (jeffersontruong on eBay) and Sean (before he quit, assuming he actually did) both really did help me out with the install and the early issues -- which in retrospect were due almost entirely to the bad looping of the antenna wire...and which may have been avoided, had the install documentation been higher quality.
So for now, I'm stuck with it....but I'm seriously thinking of yanking the ST800 out, given the flaky behavior. It'd be nice to get answers to some of my still outstanding questions (as per a, b, and c above)...and better yet, it'd be great to have a well-written English language user manual.
PM me if you have any interest in working on a page-by-page re-write of the manual. Perhaps a group of us could post an English-readable version to a wiki, for the benefit of other ST800 users...and get Jeremy to pay us to host it.
Finally, kudos to sssmasss for his many postings on this forum, many of which were invaluable to me and to my installer.
Oh...and one more thing....I have a E7-B for sale. It was installed...but never used...and then uninstalled. My installer could not figure out how to get one particular aspect of it to work...so after LITERALLY TWO WEEKS of my car being in his shop, he uninstalled it and installed the ST800. So, if you're interested, PM me, and I'll send you pictures of exactly what my installed and un-installed E7-B looks like...and we can make a deal, if you're interested.
Greetings folks,
I have a ST800 installed in my G35MT coupe. I've had it for probably 9 months now. Here's what I think.
PROS:
IMHO, the best part about the ST800 is that in the dead of winter (if you've set a remote start reservation...AND...as long as it's not been more than 48 hours), it will reliably remote start the car. It's really nice to be able to go out to a warm, mostly defrosted car...as funny as that sounds today, in the middle of May.
MORE PROS:
I can't think of any...but I'll come back to PROS if any occur to me.
CONS:
1. Support - Support from DOWON-TEC (Sean in Arizona and Jeremy in Korea(?)) is non-existent. I read that Sean quit...and I have first-hand experience with Jeremy promising support, but never following through on his promises.
Don't get me wrong, these are not bad people...in fact Sean by many accounts has bent over backwards to help LOTS of people out with installs. On the other hand, Jeremy made repeated promises to answer my questions and to provide additional hardware, but he NEVER delivered...and he offered one excuse after another as to why he didn't deliver...and kept promising he'd deliver. In the end, he didn't deliver anything. No answers. No product. Nothing.
My sense is that DOWON-TEC/Auto-Innovatio are simply not set up to meet the demands of global productization...especially given the DIY market that they want to do business in. They appear to devote zero resources to addressing the torrent of questions that each and every DIY buyer will inevitably have when installing one of their remote start products.
They want the revenue that the products can generate via places like eBay and Amazon, but they're not willing or able to allocate resources to meet the support demand. I can only speculate as to why... (not enough sales revenue to offset the costs of supporting it, not enough local expertise, language barrier, other?). Bottom line...they're not a legitimate global business...but they're happy to take your money.
Taken together (the horrendously-written manuals and the no-real-support SOP) create a particularly problematic challenge for the DIY installer, the end user...and even for the professional installer.
My installer, a professional, had some questions due entirely to the fact that the install manual made no sense in some sections. In the end, he figured it out. Unfortunately, the extra time it took for him to decode the sometimes confusing and sometimes nonsensical information in both the install manual and user manual COST ME AN ARM AND A LEG.
MORE CONS:
3. Flaky Product? - Despite numerous requests for clarifications e-mailed to DOWON-Tec...and despite their repeated promises to get back to me, I'm still perplexed as to why, sometimes, my ST800...
A. ...shuts down the engine fully as soon as I press the button...while other times, the engine will only shut down after I hold the button in for five full seconds. There does not seem to be any rhyme or reason...but if I had to guess, I think it has something to do with the state of the e-brake...and/or maybe with the e-brake in combination with the state of the foot brake...but couldn't tell you what that combination is. It sure would be nice if the manual actually explained it, no?
B. ...starts the engine only after I hold the button in for five full seconds (with the e-brake on or off), but won't start at all at other times unless I cycle the e-brake or tap the foot brake or curse loudly...or some combination of the above.
C. ...remote starts via the remote fob from many, many yards away, but often won't unlock until I pump the door handle once...or stand right next to the car and think about how to say "I'm a sucker" in three languages.
I've tried re-orienting the pointy antenna, pointing it left/right at the top of the inside of the windshield; and I've tried moving it to the left side of the window, next to the column, pointing up/down...but nothing seems to help...and I've even replaced the battery in the remote, but that made no difference at all.
I fully admit that these three flaky behaviors could actually be "operator error," but again, I point to the incredibly bad support and the even-worse documentation as the root cause, assuming that it's not flaky product.
EVEN MORE CONS:
4. Valet-no-more - Forget about valet parking. It confuses the hell out of car wash guys, too. So much so that I've even created a laminated cheat sheet for valets to refer to when they attempt to start or stop the engine. I'll attach it to this posting...AND WOULD BE HAPPY TO EDIT IT and re-post it, if you can tell me what's not accurate about it.
5. Forfeit a chipped key - You'll have to buy an expensive chipped key and bury it in the bypass box. Mine cost $80 at ACE...because I didn't want to forfeit my factory key for this purpose. Oh, and you'll also have to buy a non-chipped key and cut the shank off to put it in your factory ignition.
6. Wiring diagram - The wiring diagram is a separate document that ships with the ST800. While for the most part, the diagram is very clear and probably the single most helpful document that ships with the unit, it doesn't exactly say that you MUST wrap the key sensor bypass antenna TIGHTLY AND AT LEAST THREE TIMES around your ignition cylinder.
On the contrary, in fact, it plainly shows the antenna wire wrapped only twice...and there's no mention of the three-loop requirement in the install manual or in the crazy-bad user manual...but if you don't wrap the antenna wire tightly and at least three times around, you'll wonder why your remote start reservations work sometimes, but not other times.
7. One fob - The unit ships with only one keyfob. If you lose it, you'll have to use the window keypad until your new one arrives. But if you're like me, you won't remember your password for the keypad, so you'll be hosed.
---------
Having said all that, both Nhat (jeffersontruong on eBay) and Sean (before he quit, assuming he actually did) both really did help me out with the install and the early issues -- which in retrospect were due almost entirely to the bad looping of the antenna wire...and which may have been avoided, had the install documentation been higher quality.
So for now, I'm stuck with it....but I'm seriously thinking of yanking the ST800 out, given the flaky behavior. It'd be nice to get answers to some of my still outstanding questions (as per a, b, and c above)...and better yet, it'd be great to have a well-written English language user manual.
PM me if you have any interest in working on a page-by-page re-write of the manual. Perhaps a group of us could post an English-readable version to a wiki, for the benefit of other ST800 users...and get Jeremy to pay us to host it.
Finally, kudos to sssmasss for his many postings on this forum, many of which were invaluable to me and to my installer.
Oh...and one more thing....I have a E7-B for sale. It was installed...but never used...and then uninstalled. My installer could not figure out how to get one particular aspect of it to work...so after LITERALLY TWO WEEKS of my car being in his shop, he uninstalled it and installed the ST800. So, if you're interested, PM me, and I'll send you pictures of exactly what my installed and un-installed E7-B looks like...and we can make a deal, if you're interested.
Last edited by rruotolo; May 13, 2012 at 07:45 PM.
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BUYERS BEWARE: Auto Innovatio / DW-Tech scammed me
Hi Everyone
I have been meaning to get this out to the public, but have just been very busy with other priorities. Firstly, I am a professional installer and run a small shop in Vancouver, BC, Canada. I came across the ST800 when a customer purchased it on eBay and brought it to me to install. The install was tricky as it was not something we did on a daily basis (eg. cutting keys for bypassing ignition lock). However, we did figure it out in the end and I was highly impressed with the product. I contacted Auto Innovatio around Feb 2012 and requested to become a dealer... and so began my horrendous experience with this so-called "company".
The Story
The date was Feb 2, 2012... I was very excited to receive a response email from Jeremy Yong after sending a request to become a dealer through Auto Innovatio's website. Thanks to today's technology, all evidences are available for your viewing
Jeremy Yong states he is from DW-Tech in this email:
Funny thing, Jeremy stated he was from DW-Tech in the 2nd email.
After this, they no longer respond to my emails. The purpose of this post is to inform potential customers and to expose the nature of Auto Innovatio's business. I took a risk sending wire payment to a personal bank account. I did so because I decided to trust this company due to the amount of support and positive feedback found on this and other forums. I have learned from other sources that Jeremy infact actually worked for DW-Tech in Korea. The amount of lies and BS that he makes up when it comes to after-sales service is just over the top. Funny thing is, after ignoring all my emails.. I used an alternative email account with different name to request a quote.. and he responded to that immediately.
Conclusion
I hope this post will be helpful for anyone looking into buying the ST800 from them. Apparently, I am not the only victim. It would be great if anyone else who has had similar experiences would come out and share their story. I don't know how they are still in business, but apparently they are. Their USA guy Sean has already resigned long ago, don't count on any support from him. The eBay seller Nathan is still operating but he can't offer any resolutions either to my case. Beware of Auto Innovatio as they are still taking orders through their website. I was told Jeremy has recently quit as well. If you have any questions feel free to shoot me a pm.
I have been meaning to get this out to the public, but have just been very busy with other priorities. Firstly, I am a professional installer and run a small shop in Vancouver, BC, Canada. I came across the ST800 when a customer purchased it on eBay and brought it to me to install. The install was tricky as it was not something we did on a daily basis (eg. cutting keys for bypassing ignition lock). However, we did figure it out in the end and I was highly impressed with the product. I contacted Auto Innovatio around Feb 2012 and requested to become a dealer... and so began my horrendous experience with this so-called "company".
The Story
The date was Feb 2, 2012... I was very excited to receive a response email from Jeremy Yong after sending a request to become a dealer through Auto Innovatio's website. Thanks to today's technology, all evidences are available for your viewing
Jeremy Yong states he is from DW-Tech in this email:
Funny thing, Jeremy stated he was from DW-Tech in the 2nd email.
After this, they no longer respond to my emails. The purpose of this post is to inform potential customers and to expose the nature of Auto Innovatio's business. I took a risk sending wire payment to a personal bank account. I did so because I decided to trust this company due to the amount of support and positive feedback found on this and other forums. I have learned from other sources that Jeremy infact actually worked for DW-Tech in Korea. The amount of lies and BS that he makes up when it comes to after-sales service is just over the top. Funny thing is, after ignoring all my emails.. I used an alternative email account with different name to request a quote.. and he responded to that immediately.
Conclusion
I hope this post will be helpful for anyone looking into buying the ST800 from them. Apparently, I am not the only victim. It would be great if anyone else who has had similar experiences would come out and share their story. I don't know how they are still in business, but apparently they are. Their USA guy Sean has already resigned long ago, don't count on any support from him. The eBay seller Nathan is still operating but he can't offer any resolutions either to my case. Beware of Auto Innovatio as they are still taking orders through their website. I was told Jeremy has recently quit as well. If you have any questions feel free to shoot me a pm.
I would love to have this product installed on my car but the reason I won't buy it is because of the horror stories I hear about this company. The range on my stock alarm sucks, there have been times when I have left the car unlocked because I hit the lock button on the keyfob and it was out of range. Haven't decided what system to get yet.
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