i am aware of how a boost controller works, but what are the consequences of fitting and using one? what kind of an improvement can be had? and at what damage?

Seems like a pretty cheap and easy way of getting more boost so there must be some downside? I assume degrades the life of your turbo, but is it just on a par with hard acceleration more often or is it really going to knock 50k miles off the life of the car?

If you can find anywhere else i could stick a question mark in the post point it out and ill slap it in