My rant for the day

IceCreamMan

>☹ >☹

Last month at the end of july after an exhaustive amount of research i go to my local music store.i wont say the name out loud but it rhymes with music connection for those interested, i start discussing my requirements and get told that not to worry they will order me one in left handed configuration (after making a call to the importer in cape town)and should take 4 - 6 weeks. Ok great i think , thats client service as it should be on a premium brand whose name i wont mention cept to say it rhymes with Fender and specifically on a guitar that retails at 25k before discount. (and yes i looked at importing myself which would of been cheaper and quicker) but decided to support local as if i dont take to the guitar there is no obligation on my part.

i keep track of the progress, regular emails , regualrly popping into the store (porbably making a pest of myself ) anyway and last week thursday i get told that the guitar is in country and will be at the not mentioned music store on monday afternoon. I pop in there on Saturday and discuss exactly how i want it set up and which string etc to save time when i go in. Unfortunately i was in PE tuesday and wednesday an arrange that the guitar be set up etc and i would curtail my business trip to return thursday to test an play.

So today ,thinking if the guitar is not there they would of at the very least actually have called or mailed me(my flaw) , i get to the store like an excited kid at xmas, after a monumanteal traffic jam along the way ...then wait around the store for 25 minutes as my contact is busy with something else (fair enough i aint an impatient man). The salesman completes his thang comes to me and tells me the guitar aint in stock. WE contact the importers and on the line i get told they are in the process of ups'ing it to me and should be here next week or the week after. to add insult its another 1 hour to my next destination cos of power failures around jhb. (no present for this kid today eh)

Ok , so someeone is clearly busllshitting me here, something i dont like. I was really looking forward to the specific guitar for this specific weekedn as we having a lil sing along type thing...

So , i am mega pissed off , i keep getting told to buy local then get treated like doos along the way.

i am generally a relaxed kinda guy but this really annoyed me , so is it fair for me to be annoyed taking the above in consideration? and what should i do , i am inclined to tell em to stuff the guitar where the sun dont shine , if this is customer service before i even bought the thing imagine the horror after purchase if it has a problem.

Thanks for reading ..i feel better already.

chris77

That sucks. Reckon you're totally justified to be p-o'd.
I was treated badly last weekend in another store and they will not be seeing me again. (The offending youngster didn't even give me my cash discount btw. I had to pay full retail for the privilege of being treated like crap.)

Warren

IceCreamMan wrote >☹ >☹

Last month at the end of july after an exhaustive amount of research i go to my local music store.i wont say the name out loud but it rhymes with music connection for those interested, i start discussing my requirements and get told that not to worry they will order me one in left handed configuration (after making a call to the importer in cape town)and should take 4 - 6 weeks. Ok great i think , thats client service as it should be on a premium brand whose name i wont mention cept to say it rhymes with Fender and specifically on a guitar that retails at 25k before discount. (and yes i looked at importing myself which would of been cheaper and quicker) but decided to support local as if i dont take to the guitar there is no obligation on my part.

i keep track of the progress, regular emails , regualrly popping into the store (porbably making a pest of myself ) anyway and last week thursday i get told that the guitar is in country and will be at the not mentioned music store on monday afternoon. I pop in there on Saturday and discuss exactly how i want it set up and which string etc to save time when i go in. Unfortunately i was in PE tuesday and wednesday an arrange that the guitar be set up etc and i would curtail my business trip to return thursday to test an play.

So today ,thinking if the guitar is not there they would of at the very least actually have called or mailed me(my flaw) , i get to the store like an excited kid at xmas, after a monumanteal traffic jam along the way ...then wait around the store for 25 minutes as my contact is busy with something else (fair enough i aint an impatient man). The salesman completes his thang comes to me and tells me the guitar aint in stock. WE contact the importers and on the line i get told they are in the process of ups'ing it to me and should be here next week or the week after. to add insult its another 1 hour to my next destination cos of power failures around jhb. (no present for this kid today eh)

Ok , so someeone is clearly busllshitting me here, something i dont like. I was really looking forward to the specific guitar for this specific weekedn as we having a lil sing along type thing...

So , i am mega pissed off , i keep getting told to buy local then get treated like doos along the way.

i am generally a relaxed kinda guy but this really annoyed me , so is it fair for me to be annoyed taking the above in consideration? and what should i do , i am inclined to tell em to stuff the guitar where the sun dont shine , if this is customer service before i even bought the thing imagine the horror after purchase if it has a problem.

Thanks for reading ..i feel better already.

I'd be pretty pissed too, but really the main issues are:

1) Someone was wrong about your guitar being there on Monday
2) Nobody called you to let you know (on Monday, never mind Thursday) that the guitar was not actually in stock yet

Number 2 is the big customer service failure for me. Not something to cancel your whole order over, but hopefully you made sufficient noise about it and at the very least got an apology and a commitment to do better going forward.

Zulublues

Hey ICM

Fully justified rant. I guess that you have handled it a lot better than I would have !! This type of poor customer service needs to get to the ears of who ever owns the business. They are the ones that will hurt when we "vote with our feet".

Hope that you get it soon and it is actually better than you anticipate.

AlanRatcliffe

Yeah, I think the sales guy likely got his wires a bit crossed. "In the country" can mean different things (as any importer knows) - might still need to get customs clearance, then still needs to get to the importer. Once it's at the importer, it takes three working days to get from there to the retailer (which fits the Thursday - Monday timeline). So I think somehow the salesperson confused "in the country" with "we have it here and it will be dispatched to you today". He couldn't have suspected anything wrong until it failed to arrive on Monday. Fair enough so far...

But that's where he made his big mistake - he should have immediately chased it up on Tuesday at the latest and contacted you with a revised date. There is no excuse for that. Maybe he didn't check on it and presumed it would come in before you arrived today. He could have been to busy to check, he could have forgotten, but the fault still lies with him.

Personally, I'd be pissed for a while, but let it slide for now (life's too short...). However I would make a point of dealing with another person the next time I needed something. I lets my feet do the talking. But then again, I don't think it's anything you could blame the store, importer or local retail industry for either. Really good salespeople are rare and when I find one, I latch on and don't let go for the duration of their employment (sadly, the really good ones usually move on to bigger and better things).

shaundtsl

Fully justified rant dude!

IceCreamMan wrote should be here next week or the week after.

When I read that part, I felt your pain...

aubs1

Geez, that is so shitty!!! I would stay calm (or try to, while getting the guitar from somewhere else), tell them to call me when it arrives ..... then go into the store when it does, drool all over the thing, tell them what a great guitar it is ....... then tell the salesman to shove it !!!!!! I really would.

Reinhard

On a guitar of that value I would be expecting stellar service. Hope they make things right.

Bob-Dubery

IceCreamMan wrote WE contact the importers and on the line i get told they are in the process of ups'ing it to me and should be here next week or the week after.

That makes no sense to me. If the guitar is in the country and already handed over to UPS then no way should it be taking that long to get to Music Connection.

I think there's two problems here - one at the distributor (haven't got the goods yet) and one at the shop (didn't follow up).

However I wonder if it's not worth having a chat with the guy who runs the shop. Tell him what happened, tell him what was promised and then not delivered, tell him what you would have expected to happen. That gives him the chance to explain what happened and what he's doing about it, to address any problems within his shop so that things can go better in future and to generally try and repair the situation.

IceCreamMan

Thanks all ,,, i do feel better ...to close the loop i did get an apology from the store and they did take steps to remedy the situation.

Unfortuantely the kid at christmas feeling is gone .... the excitement is just not there , so will probably decline their offer. which i know i will kick myself about later ....but thats life. my lovely wife reckons i am mad ...she is probably right.

i think the biggest problem here is the anticipation , after waiting what seemed like forever i woke up this morning feeling great. .

Mods, please feel free to ice this thread ,thanks for chance to rant ..i feel better 8)

Averatu

You're way too patient in my opinion, I would have canceled the order right there. I'v canceled an industrial power tool order and drove across town to the competition when the tools I needed where not there as promised, and the competition had the 'specialized' tools in stock. Having worked in retail and having seen most of the tricks, they're just not trying, too many 'wacky tabackee'/coffee breaks in the upstairs office or too busy arranging the social life on the blackberry. On a high value item like that you check daily, deliver to your door all set up after a fumble like that. I worked with a guy who was all talk and no delivery, and this sounds like one of his moves.

BluJu

I feel your pain man. I have spent untold fortunes at (un)said music shop but I've found that recently (in the past year or so) some of the salesmen/managers have really not been up to scratch.
I feel like I don't get treated well there unless they can sense that I am about to spend untold fortunes. I still go there because they have a good range but if I can get a product from TOMS I got there instead.
They have always treated me great there.
I've stood around and been ignored at (un)said shop to many times so now I just speak to the drum guy if I need something. He's still pretty cool.

All I can say is get a right handed strat and flip it Hendrix style. ?

Averatu

Have you laid your paws on the new axe yet?

IceCreamMan

Averatu wrote Have you laid your paws on the new axe yet?

nope ...decided that any store that stuffs me around like that deserves not my custom ....

prolly regret that but thats the way it is ....