You got Susman’d – Ep #1

Background:

Working as a test and evaluation engineer has prepared me to look past salesmanship bullshit to find the truth in things.

Past posts have covered a lot of ground concerning the dishonest conduct of Equilibrium Tuning owner Ed Susman. (See the references at the bottom of this post for some of these.)

Occasionally I find examples of the damage Ed Susman’s false statements cause for consumers.

In this post, I draw attention to a couple of consumers who had the misfortune of believing Ed Susman’s bullshit, and got “Susman’d“

Susman’d – Falling victim to the bullshit spread by Ed Susman of Equilibrium Tuning.

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Consumer #1:

During a discussion about the air conditioning system’s effect on the cooling efficiency of FMICs and stock mount ICs (SMIC), I provided a link to a comparison I had made using a FMIC and then SMIC with the air conditioner operating.

In response to this information being referenced, Todd Johnson proclaimed:

…we do not go by Jeff Jones workbench tests anymore.

Todd Johnson

He did not provide any detail as to why he believes the “workbench” (I believe Todd is referring to the PTS Flow Bench) doesn’t provide accurate information. Nor did Todd explain how a flow bench test had anything to do with a temperature comparison of intercoolers on the GTI.

To understand the source of Todd’s error one needs to look no further than Ed Susman to find false claims being made about the PTS flow bench:

As mentioned in the post refuting this claim, Ed Susman was contacted to substantiate this claim and failed to address the defamatory statement or respond at all.

Todd then goes on to repeat another of Ed Susman’s defamatory claims:

Dude has been proven to be a fraud over and over again.

Todd Johnson

Todd got Susman’d again, falling for another of Ed Susman’s false statements:

This comment by Ed Susman was previously refuted, where Ed also failed to respond when challenged.

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As with Ed Susman, I offered Todd the opportunity to back up what he claiming, but Todd was only repeating the defamatory statements Ed Susman had been telling people and Todd disappeared.

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In this example, it would be easy to blame Todd for not thinking critically and realize that there isn’t any evidence to support what he’s claiming. That would miss the fact that Ed Susman makes an effort to have people believe what he says, but routinely fails to back up his words.

That Todd’s trust is being misplaced in a prolific bullshitter is something a large number of people seem to share, and Ed takes advantage of that to great effect.

Consumer #2

The next example features our victim of Ed Susman having a false assumption about why I posted test results of a Blaze Performance intake.

He’s mad because some professional tuners disagreed with him over his bench test findings…

Chris Vogl – Victim of Ed Susman Bullshit

This is one of the best examples of just how effective Ed Susman is as a bullshitter. Ed had first claimed my testing did not agree with “real world” data, a false claim Chris believed.

Chris didn’t stick around long enough to read Ed’s response when he was questioned about his claim. When pressed by a critically thinking consumer, Ed reverses himself and states that:

…he didn’t disagree with anything. He didn’t like some wording on the product page.

Ed Susman – Owner of Equilibrium Tuning Inc.

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… again, his intake testing didn’t show anything bad about the intake.

Ed Susman – Owner of Equilibrium Tuning Inc.

Just like that Ed’s claim that the experiment “doesn’t agree with real world data” becomes “he didn’t disagree with anything” and “his intake testing didn’t show anything bad about the intake.”

This second consumer shows another example of the dangers of naively taking Ed Susman at his word and coming away believing false statements which are then repeated to other consumers.

Chris, you got Susman’d.

Conclusions:

While Todd and Chris have been misled by the things Ed Susman said, the tragedy is exacerbated when Chris and Todd repeat Ed Susman’s false claims to other consumers.

Ed Susman’s false claims spread and negatively affect a growing number of consumers and ethical businesses, causing real harm when people come to doubt the validity of the information that would help them make better-informed decisions about the parts they purchase.

With an increasing number of consumers being misled into disregarding helpful information, Ed Susman, a car parts salesman, has likely caused more damage to VW enthusiast consumers than any other person doing business in the Volkswagen and Audi aftermarket.

References:

• Equilibrium Tuning unsubstantiated claims about product performance
• Equilibrium Tuning misleading claims for independent product testing
• Ed Susman’s false statements about the flow bench that I use
• Ed Susman’s false statements about my consideration of data
• Ed Susman’s false statements about the testing I’ve done being flawed
• Ed Susman’s false statements about the testing that I perform being limited
• Ed Susman’s false statements about me being a hack
• Ed Susman’s false statements about questions I emailed to the business containing “demands”
• Ed Susman’s false statements to another consumer who commented on my review
• Ed Susman’s statements about professionalism being optional
• Ed Susman’s false statements to a performance shop employee who questioned Ed’s claims
• Ed Susman makes threats to suppress a consumer review
• Ed Susman bullshits a consumer on social media
• Equilibrium Tuning unsubstantiated claim about tune reliability being OEM-like.
• Ed Susman’s false statements to consumers about a tune reliability post.
• Equilibrium Tuning false advertising of independent testing.