- Report: #1101630
Complaint Review: Total Car Diagnostics - Byron Bay Australia
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Author Not Confirmed
Why?
Total Car Diagnostics
PO Box 1315 Byron Bay, NSW 2481 Australia, Australia
Phone:
(+61) 02 8006 7884
Web:
www.totalcardiagnostics.com/toad
Categories:
Business Rating:
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TOAD ---- TOTAL OBD & ECU Auto Diagnostics --- Total Car Diagnostics Software Piracy and Copyright Infringement Byron Bay (Internet) Australia
This company advertises to be the Rightful owner and Copyright holder of the Diagnostic software aimed at both OBD-1 and OBD-2 vehicles. On their website and on their ebay/amazon stores they claim that there software applications are named TOAD. In fact the entire set of software contained in their compilation is not owned by them nor endorsed to be resold by the actual developers of the software. Two of the software that is in violation of copyright is ScanMaster ELM and TunerPRO RT, TunerPro RT is made available for free online to users, but is not to be sold by third parties for profit. It is not open source software. On the other hand ScanMaster ELM is not a free software, and TOAD / Total Car Diagnostics passes it off as their own. They provide the purchaser of TOAD software with a serial number / key that is created by well known methods of 'keygenerators'
The material on the website's knowledgebase also contains copied contents directly from the TunerPro RT website, however the original work by Mark Mansur (owner and developer of Tuner Pro RT) is not ever mentioned nor cited anywhere on the website.
This is obviously a bogus company that is trying to get rich off the work of other people. I myself am a software developer and people like this guy running Total Car Diagnostics is stealing from the guys hard at work making software available to people. The real sad thing is that most of the copyrighted material would be free to the end user purchasing 'TOAD' yet they are paying this fraudulent company $97+ for the following:
- A fake ELM327 OBD-II USB Interface - in which can be purchased for around $10 on ebay or amazon (and it is not even a true ELM327 device it is actually a clone developed in china based off a Prolific PL2303 chipset)
- A complete set of copyrighted software - none of which TOAD has rights to
- A Complete set of copyrighted documentation - stolen directly from the developers of the software that is also copyrighted
Intellectual Property is being stolen by this company that is making false claims, a class action lawsuit should be made in order to regain the lost profits for both the misinformed customers who have purchased the product from TOAD and those developers who have worked hard to create the software that is being copyrighted and sold by TOAD.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Steel
Westchester,New York,
United States
WARNING - THIS COMPANY IS DISHONEST AND WILL STEAL YOUR MONEY.
#2Consumer Comment
Tue, March 13, 2018
WARNING - THIS COMPANY IS DISHONEST AND WILL STEAL YOUR MONEY.
I purchased a diagnostic cable from them, it was a fake product that didn't work, and the software they sent me to use with it was a pirated version of Rosstech VCDS. They said they would refund after I send it back. I spent $36 to ship it to Australia and they still will not refund.
They are thieves, and they lie on their website, and pretend they have a multi national presence. Then you are forced so spend excessive money to ship it back. You will be lucky if you ever get a refund. I highly recommend you do NOT fall prey to their scams.
