They Suck for customer service. For repairs you'll get put on hold when they (the entire repairs department!!!)is at lunch, and they won't tell you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I HAVE NEVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR DEALT WITH A COMPANY THAT WAS MORE DIFFICULT.

I am going out of my way to post this in order to help others.

DO NOT DEAL WITH MSD!!!!

It is a nightmare to simply call.

I have a 6A that failed. Someone mentioned sending it in to have it refurbished. OMGoodness! Do Not. After six calls, untold wait times up to 30 minutes each, I gave them a credit card #.

I was told to send the 6A. The price range, I was told, would be $25--$89. The most expensive charge would be charged if the mother board was fried. NEVER WAS I TOLD THE REPAIRS MIGHT BE MORE, or that they couldn't repair it. Hell, they are MSD!

I sent the box, waited two weeks, and it comes back with a note saying it would cost them too much to repair it. They could not repair it.

I can't call the service department to talk it over. I can't get through. THERE IS NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO CUSTOMER SERVICE DEPARTMENT in El Paso where the repairs are to be made. I had to speak with a woman in Ohio who had no idea what was happening in El Paso.

I have NEVER had such difficulty trying to conduct business with a Company.

MSD=The Peter principle personified. (A company expands to its level of incompetence.) RUN!!!!!

 

MSD = My Spark Disappeared

I have no idea if they are troublesome units, though somebody came up with that for a reason. LOL. There will always be a certain level of defects in certain products, though some more than others, the way they are handled after the sale is important.

 

It's been 20 yrs since I had to send a box back. It came back at no charge(beside shipping). Apparently it must have been just a fuse or broken wire?

Since that time I haven't bought another new one. Lucky me.

Most manufacturing anymore do NOT want to deal with customers. They just make you buy another one. Easier on them.

 

I knew when I saw the title, it wasn't good.

I gave up on MSD several years ago and I TRY to persuade other's to follow suit to this day.

I read your other thread about having problems with your ignition components and wanting to keep it simple.

Sorry this turned out bad.

 

Never dealt with MSD customer service, but I felt the 6A had a high failure rate and really was not much of an upgrade over stock ignitions of the time.

 

I have 2 of the billit distributors in a pair of 351s.

The 5 year old one has 20k miles, and lost it's tfi in the first 3k.

The 2 year old lost tfi at 2k, and the pip at 5k.

I'm done with MSD

 

I use MSD stuff on my 408 drag race engine, have never had an issue. However, I bought a new MSD coil for my 1996 F350 w/ a 7.5 and it failed and left me stranded. Shop it was towed too put a NAPA coil on it in the AM, and handed me my MSD coil and said, "we see a lot of these fail"! So I sent it back to Summit and they refunded my $. I bought a stock Ford used coil from eBay and keep it behind my seat!

 

If you feel a company is defrauding you as a consumer (in this case, not explaining charges or services accurately), you can file a complaint online at http://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov

Of course, you'll be filing a grievance about an organization that is incompetent with an agency of another organization that is incompetent....

 

Hahahaha. Priceless.

 

A blue ribbon commision or fact finding panel should be initiated to get to the bottom of this. Then some kind of watchdog agency - with funding, and plenty of it, is what's needed here. About 50 billion dollars (annually) oughta take care of it.

 

I'm a bit let down by the lack of choice for an ignition system, or one that supplies the power provided by the MSD 6A. I bought the Summit box as a replacement. Of the two they offer I selected the more expensive one. I checked all the stats, the data, for spark, volts, etc., etc., and the one I bought seemed a bit more in all the categories, so I thought I'd have a system comparable to the MSD system that I was used to.

Wrong. I admit I don't know what the crucial stats are to determine performance. But I did compare. What I found was that the Summit box was a large step down from the annalog 6A.

I called Summit. The tech said I needed to upgrade to a CD coil. I paid $57 more for a new coil, 48,000 volts. It made a difference, but the combo was still not equal to the MSD box and old coil. I want to send it in for a refund.

I started looking around and reading about the choices out there. It looks as though the Jacobs system is good, but there are conflicting views online, due to the company having been sold twice.

I thought the Crane 6S box sounded good, but it won't work with magnetic trigger of the DuraSpark2. Dang it.

That leaves the dreaded MSD. Do I want to use them again? I know what I'm getting. I know it will last, or should, for some years. Maybe the CD box is better than the annalog? For $225 I know what I'm getting. I may have to bite the bullet.