Yeah, fuck that. People spend hundreds of hours on the forum helping others for free, then someone like that comes along and wants to charge. Pro tip: there are no "secrets to making Tor fast". All info about Tor can found for free. A lot of the advice in "making Tor fast" decreases your safety, like the suggestion to increase entry guards to 8. The best solution is to refresh your list of relays and get a new identity (build a new circuit). If you're still having trouble connecting, the problem is most likely with the SR server and there's nothing you can do about that on your end.