Compustar Remote Car Starters

If you read my posts regularly, you know that I don’t focus a whole lot of attention on the brands that we carry.  Our brand is Mobile Edge.  We’ve been around for a long time, learned a lot and I think that we are pretty good at what we do. If you buy from us, you are buying Mobile Edge…   Being a leading mobile electronics store, we are able to choose the brands that we want to deal with.  So it only stands to reason that we are going to partner with the best brands out there.  Yes, I will occasionally write about a specific vendor when they are introducing a new product, etc. but that is usually as far as it goes.

I am going to break with tradition on this post. 3 years ago, Astrostart, our remote starter vendor for over 10 years was bought out by a conglomerate.  They had been a boutique company located in Canada and had great stuff.  After the acquisition, things changed a lot, both with the company and the products.  Short of speaking negatively about the company, I will say that the direction of Astrostart as a company was not consistent with the direction that I wanted to take Mobile Edge.

Late last Summer, I signed on with Compustar, a Firstech Company.  I did extensive research of a handful of other remote car starter vendors.   In the end, Compustar was the clear choice.  I hoped! Sometimes what you see with a new vendor isn’t always what you get.

12 months later, I can emphatically say that we made the right choice.   Hands down, Compustar has exceeded EVERY area that was important to me:

• Quality – In the consumer electronics industry, a 2% failure rate is considered acceptable.  That mean that 2 out of every 100 will fail.  After 12 months, out current failure rate is 3 tenth of 1%!  That meas that 3 out of 1000 will fail!  That is unheard of in this business.
• Compatibility with today’s vehicles – One of the big obstacles with remote car starter installations today is interfacing properly with vehicle’s electronics.  Transponders, Security, Tip-Start, Passlock, CanBus, you name it.  Remote car starters and their installers, have to be smart enough to interface in a seamless way with may technologies.  Compustar does this better than any other. Their Blade technology operates much the same way a computer card does.  The Blade slides int0 the bottom of the starter, the installer hooks it up to a PC and uploads the firmware that is year, make and model specific to the vehicle getting the starter.   Just 2 different “Blade” modules can be programmed to cover 99% of all of the vehicles on the road today.
• Firmware – As new vehicles come out, slight changes can occur.  When installing a remote starter that ties into the data bus of the car, these slight changes can mean that the remote starter will work on a 2009 but not a 2010.  What is incredible about the Blade modules is that we can call a tech, explain our situation and they can get a new set of firmware, sometimes in as little as 30 minutes.  In the past, this would have meant waiting weeks or months for a new module to come out.  Not with the Blade from Compustar.
• Physical range of the remotes – When people buy a remote starter, they have a certain expectation that the remote will work from a distance.  Compustar offer models from 500 feet all the way up to 1 mile!  After countless installations, we have never been let down by the range or had a single customer complaint.
• Convenience Features – With Compustar, we are able to add just about any convenience feature that you would like.  Heated seats, keyless entry, rear defrost, etc.  Compustar handles this with ease.  In many cases, the fine tuning of these features can be done within the programming right on the PC.  No more dip switches to flip or press and hold insanity!
• Customer Satisfaction –  If you have ever bought anything at Mobile Edge, you know that we send out thank you letters and emails.  Part of these communications include a link to fill out an anonymous customer satisfaction survey.  We have gotten several hundred of these surveys back and we have yet to have a single complaint about Compustar. In fact, customers have gone out of their way to compliment the quality of our work and the quality of the Compustar remote car starters.
• Dealing with Compustar – As a company Compustar has been amazing.  Their tech people (yes, even Mobile Edge needs tech support from time to time!) are courteous, and extremely knowledgeable.  The sales managers always have time for us and the regional distributor is first rate.  We did not run into any inventory issues at all lst year.  We got what we needed, when we needed it.  This meant that our customers jobs were always completed when they were supposed to be.
• Installation – After dealing with one brand for 12 years (Astrostart), our installers were apprehensive about going to something new.  I know I would have been.  After installing a few, they quickly realized that the approach to installing Compustar created a lot less room for error.  A year later and I have been told that they will boycott the bay if I ever switch!  They like it that much.

Without exception, I am extremely happy with the decision that we made.  Compustar delivered with everything that they promised me a year ago.  I look forward to a long future with the people at Compustar.

If you are in the market for a new remote starter, please consider a Compustar remote Starter installed at Mobile Edge in Lehighton, PA.  If you do not live in Eastern PA or Western, NJ, Make it a point to find a quality shop that carries Compustar.  You will not be sorry that you did!