EvDiag Pro vs Hardware Care: who should I send my EMM to?
A dead EMM, a boat going nowhere, and two tabs open. Here is the comparison, with the working shown.
This is our side of the comparison and you should read it knowing that. Every figure in the EvDiag Pro column comes from their own published pages. Check it yourself. It takes about ten minutes and you should not take our word for any of it.
What the community says
Start here, because when you cannot drive to a workshop and look at the place, other owners are the only thing you have to go on.
We have 150 reviews at an average of 4.9 out of 5. A good number are from US owners, and several are from people who had already been told by other shops that their module could not be saved. You can read all of them, unedited.
We could not find a comparable public review profile for EvDiag Pro when we looked. That is not a criticism in itself. Plenty of good workshops never collect reviews, and a business can be excellent without a star rating. But if reviews are part of how you judge a repairer, there is simply less to read in one direction than the other.
The other place to look is where this trade actually talks: the E-TEC owners group and the usual boating forums. Search both names. We would rather you did that than took a marketing page at face value, ours included.
The warranty
Once you believe someone can do the work, the next question is what happens if it fails anyway.
Hardware Care
24 months, included in the price.
EvDiag Pro
12 months included, with a second year available for an additional $100.
- —Ours is double the 12 months BRP gave you on a brand-new module, which matters more now that a new module is not something you can buy.
- —If you are comparing repair prices, they are not comparable until you add that $100 on. Otherwise you are comparing one year against two.
Shipping overseas?
Here is the part that stops most American owners, and honestly it should be the part you think hardest about. You are posting the only EMM you own four thousand miles to people you have never met, and if it goes wrong you have a boat on a trailer and no module at all.
So let us take it apart properly, because "it'll be fine" is not an answer.
- It gets lost.
- Everything moves by DHL Express, tracked end to end, on both legs. It is booked on our account, which also means that if something does go wrong in transit, the claim is ours to chase, not yours.
- I have to arrange international shipping.
- You do not. We book the collection. You pack the module and hand it to the driver. No depot queue, no forms for you to fill in.
- Customs will hold it for a month.
- The export paperwork is prepared at our end, and this lane runs every single week. A module travelling from the US to a Netherlands repair workshop is routine traffic, not an unusual shipment that confuses anybody. In the rare case something does snag, we have our account manager on speed dial, and customs hiccups are usually resolved within a few days.
- European VAT on top of everything.
- None. Outside the EU, including the US, there is no European VAT on the repair.
- It will cost a fortune.
- You can see the real number before committing to anything. The calculator quotes a live DHL round-trip rate to your own address, not an estimate we made up.
The ocean is not what costs you the time
Transit is two to three days each way. That is the whole overseas penalty: under a week, round trip, tracked the entire time.
What actually costs a season is the queue at the other end. EvDiag Pro's published terms vary by model. Their pages indicate around 10 business days for some inline G1 modules, 15 to 30 business days for others, and as much as 45 to 60 business days where a component has to be specially ordered.
Read those in calendar time, because business days exclude weekends. The top of that published range is roughly nine to twelve weeks before the module is even despatched.
We measure a different thing and will not pretend otherwise: ours is bench time, not payment-to-despatch. Typically about a week for an E-TEC module and longer for a Ficht, depending entirely on which module you have and what is wrong with it. Which is why we publish an estimator that asks, rather than one number that would be right for some people and wrong for others.
Either way, the three days over the Atlantic is not the thing to worry about.
Experience
Let us be straight about this one, because you will hear otherwise from whoever wants your module.
EvDiag Pro are genuinely experienced. They have been working on Evinrude electronics for years, they know these engines, and they sell the diagnostic tooling that a lot of this trade runs on. Anyone telling you they are amateurs is selling you something.
So are we. EMM repair is not a service line here, it is the entire business. E-TEC and Ficht modules, every day, at component level.
Honestly, both of us will probably get your engine running again. The deciding factors are price and warranty.
The price
So here are both, with the working shown.
Hardware Care
€532 – €596
That is roughly US$570 to US$700, depending on the exchange rate on the day.
EvDiag Pro
US$999 – US$1,450
averaging about US$1,250
Ours is a fixed price: €532 ex VAT for modules under 100 HP, €596 ex VAT over 100 HP. For a US customer the ex-VAT figure is simply the price, because there is no European VAT outside the EU.
EvDiag Pro publish their prices, which is to their credit and makes this easy. Their seven EMM repair and exchange listings ran from US$999 to US$1,450, averaging about US$1,250. We have left their tuning, remaps, EDF file creation, diagnostic kits and parts out of that, because those are different services and lumping them in would not be a fair comparison.
That puts our repair at roughly half.
Three things to be fair about, because a price comparison with the awkward parts left out is not worth reading:
- —Two of those seven listings are rebuild exchange units. You get a different module back rather than your own repaired. That is a different service, and some owners prefer it.
- —Their price includes 12 months of warranty. Ours includes 24. So the gap understates the difference rather than overstating it.
- —Shipping. For an American owner, Florida is a domestic parcel and we are not. Adding round-trip DHL narrows the gap. It does not close it, but you should put your own number in rather than take ours, which is exactly what the calculator is for.
What it actually costs, all in
The reason people ask about hidden costs is that buying across a border usually means a second bill turning up later. So here is the complete list of what you pay.
What you pay
- The repair. One fixed price, agreed before we start. It does not move because the fault turned out to be more work than we expected. That is our problem, not yours.
- Shipping. Quoted live, to your address, before you commit.
- Credit card transaction costs, if you pay by card. A small percentage, and that is genuinely the end of the list.
What you do not pay
- No import tax.
- No European VAT outside the EU.
- No separate diagnosis fee.
There is no fourth item waiting. If a number is going to appear on your card statement, it is on the list above.
Talking to us
This is the last thing standing in the way for most people, and it is not really about geography. It is about being on your own. Six hours of time difference and a workshop you cannot visit adds up to "who do I actually talk to when something goes wrong?"
We work in English all day. Most of our customers are American, so this is normal traffic here, not a special case.
And if you want to speak to a person, we schedule calls. Tell us roughly when suits you and we will call you as soon as we can. Our afternoon is your morning, so before you head out on the water is usually the easiest window for both of us.
Once your module is with us it has a tracking page, so the default is that you can look rather than having to ask.
Still weighing it up? Let us talk first.
If you have read this far you are probably still hesitating, and that is entirely reasonable. You are about to post an expensive piece of hardware across an ocean on the strength of a web page.
Most of that hesitation goes away in a ten-minute conversation. Tell us which engine you have and what it is doing, and we will tell you honestly what we think, including if we think it is not worth repairing. We would rather say that on the phone than after your module has crossed the Atlantic.
Already decided? Get a repair number and a DHL collection booked from your address.
Common questions
- Who is EvDiag Pro?
- EvDiag Pro, also written EvDiagPro, is a Florida-based business trading at evdiagpro.com. They work on Evinrude E-TEC and Ficht electronics: EMM repair and exchange, horsepower remaps, EDF file creation, and they sell EvDiag diagnostic software licences and kits. We are an independent EMM repair workshop in the Netherlands, so we overlap with them on repair and not on the tooling side.
- Is EvDiag Pro a legitimate business?
- Yes. They are a real, experienced business that has worked on Evinrude electronics for years, and we are not going to suggest otherwise just because we compete with them. Where we differ is the published terms: our repair is a fixed €532 to €596 ex VAT against an average of about US$1,250 across their EMM repair listings, and our warranty is 24 months included against their 12.
- Is Hardware Care cheaper than EvDiag Pro?
- Our EMM repair is a fixed €532 ex VAT under 100 HP and €596 ex VAT over 100 HP, which is roughly half the average of EvDiag Pro's published EMM repair listings. Ours also includes a 24-month warranty against their 12. Shipping from the US is an added cost on our side and you can quote it live before committing.
- How long does an Evinrude EMM repair take?
- Our bench time is typically about a week for an E-TEC module and longer for a Ficht, depending on the fault. Transit by DHL Express is two to three days each way. EvDiag Pro publish a payment-to-despatch time that varies by model, from around 10 business days up to 45 to 60 business days where a component must be specially ordered.
- Do I pay import tax or European VAT if I send my EMM from the US?
- No. There is no European VAT on the repair for customers outside the EU, and no import tax. What you pay is the fixed repair price, the shipping quoted before you commit, and card transaction costs if you pay by card.
- What warranty comes with a repaired EMM?
- Every repair we complete carries a 24-month warranty, included in the price. That is double the 12 months BRP gave on a brand-new module.
- Is it safe to ship an EMM from the US to Europe?
- We collect and return by DHL Express, tracked on both legs, booked on our account so a transit claim is ours to chase rather than yours. The export paperwork is prepared at our end and this lane runs weekly. If customs does query a shipment it is usually resolved within a few days.
Cosa dicono i clienti
★★★★★
United Kingdom
Finland
Australia
United Kingdom
South Africa
United States
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Nederland
United States
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