REVO are worth ££££ over Quantum for example. You get what you pay for.
REVO/APR/Racingline are 3 big names in the UK which offer "off the shelf" tuning, which means their tunes have been tried and tested on many cars on rolling roads, real roads and race tracks. I know this because I have done testing with REVO/APR and I live 2 minutes away from Racingline HQ (formely know as Volkswagen Racing).
Then there are also some tried and tested "Custom" tuners for the MQB platform such as MRC, Unicorn Developments, R-Tech there files will be done live on the rolling road.
Quantum for example have a "massive" database of files for every brand car, the files will be bought from abroad and sold onto their dealers, Quantum probably charge a dealer about £50-100 for a file which they then sell you for £300-400. They flash generic files which quite often haven't been tested properly. You get in the car and it feels faster and your happy! you tell all your friends. Without logging it etc youll never be none the wiser. The file might actually be ok but in the past I've read a lot of dodgyness from Quantum or people using that name atleast.
For example, I recently purchased a
MK1 Leon FR+ 1.9TDI PD150 as a daily car, when I purchased it, it had a "Stage 1" map on it from a local remap "specialist", I looked them up and emailed them some questions about the file. They couldn't really answer the questions to be honest. I then took the file off my car and looked at it in a map editor. OEM turbo on the PD150 is capable of making max 1.7bar boost but they were requesting it to make 1.9-2.0 bar boost. I then emailed them again asked them why it was requesting that much boost and then said it wasn't even though I screenshoted them the data. Turns out like 99% of man in a van remap "specialists" they basically buy discs off ebay with remaps on them, then flash them to cars. Joe Bloggs comes a long in his diesel mondeo with 120bhp, leaves with 150bhp, car feels fast, hes happy, tells everybody man in a van "knows what hes talking about"
In the end I spent around 4 hours live tuning my PD150 with a diesel specialist, logging the files and tweaking them, car is a hell of a lot faster now and a lot less smokey.
The amount of times, in my 12+ years on SCN now that I've seen people go to local companies and have issues, then come on here asking for advise, Sedox Performance was one company that springs to mind, UK dealer up north was selling Sedox files but they weren't even genuine Sedox files, The USA HQ confirmed the UK company was selling ebay remaps under their name.
Seeing as your only really needing a Stage 1 file, I would stick with a good tried and tested off the shelf file, REVO or Racingline would be where I put my money. As a long term APR customer it pains me to say this but dont bother with APR. They have stopped selling Stage 2 files now due to some US lawsuit so you wont be able to upgrade from 1 to 2 with them.