ECU reflash question

I was looking into the Hondata website and they have that ecu reflash that add up to 12hp and 9ft lb on a stock engine and goes for 300$ and dyno chart shown. that sounds like a good deal. running a search on it, it seems that people are happy with this mod as well. my question is that is this mod simply getting 12hp for 300 bucks or is there other tradeoffs involved ? abviously the mpg might go lower but i'm concerned about engine longetivity and realiability, does the tuning has any effect on that ? i'm thinking if that engine can get additional 12hp simply by tuning it then why Honda wouldn't tune it in the beginning and marketed that car at 175hp rather then 160hp, it would sell better, there must be some catch there ?? how does this advancing the ignition and altering the cam timing that Hondata mentions work and what are the tradeoffs ?

I've done alot of reasearch into this and the only downsides i have found is that your gonnna be without a car for a week and you need to use super gas. the only "dangerous" thing about it is that it raises your rev limit to almost 8k... although even with the A3 that should be safe. Im in the middle of making the decision of going with the reflash or KPro. i know im gonna turbo eventually so I'll probably go KPRO from the start just so i dont have to send my ECU to california twice.

bumping this - any impact on mpg? i'm assuming also that you can still run 87 for NON performance use only, as it's probably only making changes with WOT/near WOT - correct me if i'm wrong on that. any way to check knock?

They recommend using Super all the time; you'd probably have to ask Hondata directly if there are any ill effects. I wouldn't do it, though.

I can't say that I noticed any large difference in mpg, though I wasn't looking at it too hard.