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Gforce Chips Scam?
By Sean | April 11, 2011
I can’t tell if this company is a total scam or if they singled me out for bad treatment. What I can talk about is my experience with them and hope to warn anyone who tries to do business with them to be careful or just avoid them altogether.
1. I ordered the chip and it actually took longer than the two weeks they promised to have it ready.
2. Then another two weeks shipping by US mail from Southern to Northern California.
3. They claim the chip takes minutes to install and that anyone can do it. I say baloney. I had to disassemble the intake manifold just to get to the sensor I had to connect the wires to. The instructions did not look anything like my vehicle — even though they claim the reason it takes so long to get the product ready is due to having to “custom make it” for my vehicle. The instructions I got were not even remotely close to being customized to my vehicle.
4. I emailed tech support for help and he wrote back making a sarcastic comment. Not wanting to engage his combativeness I wrote back addressing the tech issue and simply said “regarding your other comment — what are you talking about”. He wrote back indicating that he was upset about how many complaints he gets about the company but can do nothing about so he unloaded on me. We got along OK after that.
5. After installing the chip I looked forward to seeing a change in performance and gas mileage — something they advertise. I did not get the slightest change in gas mileage or performance even though they advertise about 20 percent or more. The tech support guy thought the unit may be defective.
6. I called back on the telephone line to discuss my options. I mentioned that the original sales guy assured me that if I bought the unit and was unhappy and returned it within two weeks of receiving it I’d be credited back the price of the unit plus the postage to return it.
7. I returned the chip and got a refund.
8. As a conciliatory gesture — Gforce chips sent out another chip free of charge for me to install and test. Thanks guys that was appreciated.
9. I installed and tested it. I’m sure it was installed correctly and was certainly installed exactly to their second tier support guidance.
10. Still no difference in performance or mileage economy.
11. I recently did a web search on Gforce chips and found a lot of evidence from people that tested them and got no results. However almost all the sites were selling something so the reviews were possibly biased.
12. The result in inconclusive but I can say the chip did not work for me. However Gforce chips did give me a refund and a free chip to try and if it worked for me — that I’d have to pay for it.
Bottom line. Can anyone give me a reliable and unbiased source to check with that has independently tested these performance chips?
Thanks,
Sean
Topics: Good Products | 14 Comments »
May 2nd, 2011 at 6:31 pm
sean, i bought 3 chips from these guys. no difference in performance or mileage. same story as you,calls to tech dept. blah blah blah, today, i took one of them apart, and found out why they don’t work, they are fake, the chip in the middle of the circuit board is doing nothing, the traces and solder joints on the board is all fake. the red and black wire go into the housing, solder to the board and the rest is all fake. it cannot do anything for your vehicle. i’ve called them. we’ll see if i get a refund.
May 7th, 2011 at 10:35 pm
Thanks for the update. I was tempted to take one apart too but I didn’t have just the right size Phillips and was not sure if the size I was using would show damage to the screws — which were in REALLY tight. I should have gotten the right size screwdriver and taken it apart and that probably would have saved me a ton of time.
What I don’t understand if if they are selling crap why haven’t they been outed by the FTC or attorney general?
Regardless I appreciate your posting and letting me know.
If you don’t mind me asking — how did you determine the circuit board and chip are fake? Did you test the circuits? If so what did you test for?
Some people have indicated that there is some resistance in the circuit which, when put in parallel with the air intake monitor — fools the intake monitor. However if it did that there would only be a performance increase or mileage improvement under certain climatic conditions.
July 19th, 2011 at 5:57 pm
I put one in my 2011 tundra and had an immediate (within 100miles ) increase in MPG. That didnt last longer than a month though and my MPG is up less than 1 MPG.
July 21st, 2011 at 6:11 pm
Oh Oh, I just received my gforce chip yesterday, after waiting two months, but I can’t blame that on the company, we had a mail strike here in Canada. I have read the directions and am a bit confused so I am going to let a mechanic install it. Sounds like it may not work up my to expectations! I got the website of a Cadillac forum website, thinking it must be legit. Will update after I install…
July 22nd, 2011 at 3:33 am
Please let me know how it works out for you. I did a lot more research on the product after posting this and found that there is only one chip in the little box with two wires attached. Apparently the chip is being used as a resistor — at best — if it does anything at all. We have noticed no difference after driving a couple thousand miles on it. As far as I can tell there is little reason why it should work but if it does it is more accidental than anything. Apparently there are instances when that resistor will lean the engine out — but if it does work it’s nothing sophisticated and certainly not as cool as the explanation on their sales site.
August 3rd, 2011 at 9:51 pm
I HATE GETTING RIPED OF I,M A GOV REP. that checks this stuff.I,m About to put 1 of there chips in a 2010 Dodge Dakota 4.7 V8 Bighorn,Will tell yopu about it.HATE CROOKS. TK G.A.Bielik
September 2nd, 2011 at 6:10 am
Hey George, Sorry I took so long approving your comment. It slipped through the cracks.
Please let us know what results you got.
September 11th, 2011 at 1:33 am
i installed the gforce chip on my 2005 cadillac cts and after 1 month still havent seen any changes in oerformance or fuel. This is a rip off and like others i hate being scammed. Calling gforce now to get refund.
October 12th, 2011 at 11:26 pm
Hi
Thank you for your reviews.
I was considering buying one of these chips, thinking it probably was more legit than the 5-15 $ chips that you can buy from ebay (that most of the times seems to only be a resistance). Now I’m sure, I won’t. Thank you.
December 24th, 2011 at 9:38 pm
Thanks for the reviews. was going to buy one for my 2000 tundra v8. after reading this I’m just going to spend the money on a programer. Thanks
January 31st, 2012 at 1:03 am
I have a GS430 2004 and made the mistake of hooking up this GFORCE performance chip I got for christmas.
I asked them to send me a wire digram to make sure I connected the wire clips to the right two wires. They did so I did what they instructed. The moment I started the car I could tell it was running rough… I got the check engine light and VSC lights on also so I turned off the car and disconnected the chip.
I took the car into the shop and it ended up being the mother board after all. The G-Force chip fried it and it cost $1000 to get repaired… I did everything as they told me and my mechanic verified that I did tap into the two wires they tell you to… so just a warning this could happen to you also.
Another heads up to anyone considering that piece of junk GFORCE CHIP. They promise a full 100% refund if your not satisfied, but what you don’t know is that buried in the small fine print in the long terms and conditions ( if you were to bother reading them) They let you know that they charge a 25% restocking fee! So you pay 69.00 + shipping = $74.95. Then you have to pay to ship it back ($5.95 ) so your $80+ into this mess. This is after the damage to my car so add $990.00 to fix it. So now I’m at $1,070.90 and all they refunded me was $51.75 when I was expecting the $69.00 back. They just keep bending you over and filling their pockets at every turn. No wonder they offer 100% money back guarantee. They make $17.25 off every return as well.
WARNING, WARNING, WARNING — DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THESE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!
February 7th, 2012 at 7:24 pm
I purchased GForce chip thinking it would maybe it would increase mpg at least halve their advertised 4-7mpg. Today, I started to install the chip on my F150 and decided the installation process was BS and this chip is Junk. Damn, I wish I had read the above comments before ordering. Guess a “sucker” is born everyday. Anyone considering GForce Chip….don’t. By-the-way, GForce’ technical website “techsupport@gforcechips.com cannot be found….it don’t exist.
February 19th, 2012 at 11:59 pm
Greg thanks for that story. I was promised a full refund (including freight) if I was dissatisfied. I got the full refund but the freight was never refunded.
I think there is extremely good logic to the fact that automobile manufacturers are given government legislated incentives for higher fuel economy. I think it is reasonable to conclude that optimization schemes are not likely to be as good as advertised — if at all.
Also consider that Mythbusters tested a whole bunch of these and found little to no benefits from most of these devices. Often finding negative instead of improved results.
February 20th, 2012 at 12:08 am
Frank thanks for your post. I had a hard time finding honest reviews when I was searching for feedback about his company. They must have lots of people (most likely affiliates) promoting for them doing all these glowing reviews because I could hardly find anything negative about them online and mostly found glowing reports.
It wasn’t until I visited the forums and blogs like mine (nobody paying to get them ranked on page 1) that I began to find real people with real stories.
Hopefully your comments and feedback are helping many others looking for honest experiences.
When I did find negative press about them I confronted GForce about it and they said it was from competitors.
If you are reading this and considering GEforce I can assure you that I am an owner of their product and that I have no affiliation with any of the other bogus products out there. The only product I’ve purchase is GEforces and it did not work. I’m not surprised to find others who have similar stories.