My Experience With Sam Ash

Followup: As of 31 August, it turns out that Ash has never credited me for my return they admit receiving nor done anything else.

They have apparently just decided to keep my $300 and call it a day.

Howard Abrahams, who said he took care of this about three weeks ago, didn't and now won't talk to me about it.

Other flunky says I have to talk to Howard because he can't understand the mess that shows up on his computer.

Customer Service is in an apparently permanent state of unavailablility: "Your call is being handled by Audix...CUSTOMER SERVICE...is not available..."

I'm gearing up for war mode.

Stay tuned...this is going to get very interesting.
 
Wow! What great customer service! Screw that man, I'll do my part of telling whoever possible about Sam Ash's shitty treatment of customers. What a joke.

Maybe I should give them a break, they're too busy making money to deal with customers. What a bunch of scam artists.
 
Yeah, too busy riinging up charges on credit cards and collecting 23%, or whatever percent interest, to trump up their quarterly earnings report. Call Ronald Ash, or whatever his name is! Call your credit card bank and contest the charge!
 
Ok here's my samash saga, still in the works.

i wanted a midi controller.....one of those evolution ones. I talked to a saleman and he said "yes!" they have one left. Is it new I asked? "yes of course it is" (Actually his name was michael at samash.com. They had it for like $40 more than someone else so they said they would match the price ($105) Their policy is anything small over $100 is free shipping. He told me since he's matching a price he can't do that. After talking about it for about 1 1/2 minutes he said "i have to make some more sales and don't have time to talk with you so I'll give you the free shipping"
Kinda rude, but Great.

It shows up, boxed wrinkled and smashed up....the box INSIDE the big cardboard box, so it's not from shipping. I open it and the keyboard is filthy...the keys we're all greasy from playing, plastic bags opened....adaptor missing. I call them up and they say oh.....wow.....Wait a few weeks until we get some more and we'll change it out.

Called back, discontinued. Ok return it then. "We'll call you back with the rma info in a few minutes" Discussed shipping and they said they'd handle it.

4 days later they leave a message saying here's your rma, you're responsible for shipping.

Oh HELL NO I said when I called them back. After complaining they said ok we'll send you shipping label. So I wait.

almost 2 weeks pass....No shipping label.

Called them back....Where's my label??? Oh I'm not sure (probably was that computer virus right???) I'll send another one.

That was 1 1/2 weeks ago....You guessed it, still no shipping label.

BTW the reason I'm telling this story is not just because I wanted to share my bad samash story but because I'm wondering if gabat can fix it. Yeah I could email him privately but I think this helps out a bit.

I just posted on a diff board about zzounds. I have spent about 3 grand in the last 3 months (a little at the time totalling more than several orders) and they have always been very curteous and professional and have really taken care of me. They cross-shipped the broken joe meek vc6q (rip) and sent me a label for the return within 2 days.
 
Well there you go. More fuel for the fire that Sam Ash has terrible customer service. I can only hope that most of you will remember this and choose NOT to use this self-serving bullshit organization. Don't let the bastards win...there are far too many GOOD companies out there to deal with the Sam Ash's in the world.

By the way, I'm still waiting for my catalog (7 years and counting).
 
I've NEVER had a prob with Sammy's,but I don't order ANYTHING
thru the mail! Sammy's is approx 4 blocks from my job and if you wanted anything in particular, you can send me the money and I'll pick it up and send it to you personally!
 
Actually I have a samash about 5 minutes from here. I rarely waste my time there anymore though. Their selection isn't very good, the salesman (some of them) are more pushy the used car salesman.

I wish they were nice and had a good selection. It would make things much easier on me.
 
For the record, SamAsh.Com and the Sam Ash music stores are entirely different business entities with different prices, policies and soforth.

The relationship is exactly the same as Musician's Friend and Guitar Center - different subsidiaries of the same corporation.
 
So they're just insulating themselves further from their customers.

"No, we'd love to help you out, but that's the .COM version of Sam Ash, we have little to do with them."

That's an excuse.

I said it before...Sam Ash has no problem severe enough to crimp their ability to CHARGE you for the merchandise, so why is there a problem in the customer service section? I'll tell you: because you don't mean much to them, only your money means anything to them.

I don't care if Sammy himself comes here and tells you different. He'd be coming here to cover his ass. A company with good customer service works without having to ask the owner of the company to fix problems.
 
Waaaah!

I don't want you to make a profit when selling me this guitar. However, I want you to kiss my ass in the process. :p :p :p :D :D :D
 
Where did that come from? How is delivering the shit I ordered from you and that you promised you'd deliver to me whining or ass kissing? If you think it is, then you're a total and complete sucker.
 
I was merely joking a bit (see the :)'s?).

Point being:

It is very difficult to reconcile three aspects of a company:

1. Price
2. Quality
3. Service

Usually if two of these are high, the third suffers. In fact, quality and service are often closely related. Thus, you get what you pay for. It is difficult for a company to turn a profit (and thus stay in business) without sacrificing one (but there are management aspects that also come into play). Some people complaining here (not necessarily you, CMiller), want the best of all worlds. Again, you get what you pay for. Therefore, my statement above.
 
I have rarely seen an adage as universally untrue in as many different ways as "You get what you pay for," and I have been around a while.

Granted, customer service is where costs are frequently cut, but I have never been able to predict when customer service will be competent by the amount of money spent.

Competent service is not just a matter of style, either, but whether the problem actually gets resolved. Places that are high-priced are usually just as bad, but have more finesse about manipulating you into "feeling good about the experience" while getting the same bad service. Getting objectively good service usually amounts to getting two or three or more outfits on board that are beyond anyone else's control, such as shippers, outside vendors and soforth.

Bongolation's Law of Commerce #44: "Bad service is cumulative." Especially on the front end.

Even if Ash didn't have an utter phobia of timely customer contact and accurate communication, they couldn't have prevented the screw-ups by FMIC that started this mess snowballing in the first place.

That they did the very worst possible thing every step of the way _after_ that is where the problem was, and I think I can make a firm case for their inept handling of my problems being more expensive than if they had done it right, in terms of man-hours and wasted effort.

I also think that at least 3/4 of my problems are directly and indirectly due to their policy of doing inside sales on commission.

If you don't see why, we can talk about that, too.
 
# So they're just insulating themselves further from their
# customers.

# "No, we'd love to help you out, but that's the .COM version of
# Sam Ash, we have little to do with them."

# That's an excuse.

No, that's an innacurate statement. SamAsh.Com and the Sam Ash Music Stores are _different companies_.

They don't have _anything_ to do with each other. They're just owned by the same corporation.

That watertight separation is how come you don't pay sales tax on SamAsh.Com orders even though there may be Sam Ash Music Stores in your state.

Going to your local Sam Ash store with a SamAsh.Com beef is exactly like expecting your local Guitar Center to make good on a Musician's Friend screwup.

It's utterly not their problem. They're really more competitors than anything else.
 
bongolation said:
Competent service is not just a matter of style, either, but whether the problem actually gets resolved. Places that are high-priced are usually just as bad, but have more finesse about manipulating you into "feeling good about the experience" while getting the same bad service.
Click to expand...

Ya know. That actually is an aspect that I take into account. Problems sometimes do arise in a transaction. Granted, (according to some posters) a company should be efficient enough to prevent ANY problems from occurring in the first place. However, if there is a fuck up, they can at least kiss my ass in the process of fixing it. Hell, that's a big part of customer service. Customer service comes into play when there is a fuck up. If they are efficient about fixing it, don't make me jump through 5,000,000 hoops to get it fixed, keep me informed, apologize, and are friendly in the process, among other things, I'll be happy. Hell. I'll pay extra for a little less stress in my life.
 
Also...

There are some shit-ass places that charge a lot and treat you like shit. They seem to think they are doing you a favor in selling you their product.

There are also places that give you a good product and kiss your ass in the process. These places recognize the value of repeat customers.

Be that as it may, I must note that I have found that the "get what you pay for" adage is more applicable to manufacturers than retail stores. Yet it can hold true for retail. For example, a warehouse outlet as opposed to a full service shop.
 
So here's the continuation of my saga. I finally called "gabat" as there was no response on the board.

He was pretty cool to me and explained the growth and reorganization. Whatever...I just want my shipping label and refund.

It turns out they never processed anything to send it...it hadn't been authorized and there was no intent to authorize it. Luckily he did take care of it, and so once again I'm now waiting for a shipping label? Maybe it will show up with Cmillers catalog! :)

Here's my take on it:

I doubt I'll buy anything from them but if they are the only ones with something in stock or have it the cheapest, I'd probably go back....I'll just remember to keep gabats extension just in case they screw up again.
 
bongolation said:


That watertight separation is how come you don't pay sales tax on SamAsh.Com orders even though there may be Sam Ash Music Stores in your state.
Click to expand...

No. The reason you don't pay sales tax online is because there is no sales tax on interstate commerce, and trying to enforce sales tax collection on internet sales, even when the customer is local to the operation, is too costly to administer. Unfortunately this may change, because state legislatures are well aware of the billions of dollars of tax revenue lost and they are looking into ways to tap this market.

Cy
 
Cyrokk said:


No. The reason you don't pay sales tax online is because there is no sales tax on interstate commerce, and trying to enforce sales tax collection on internet sales, even when the customer is local to the operation, is too costly to administer. Unfortunately this may change, because state legislatures are well aware of the billions of dollars of tax revenue lost and they are looking into ways to tap this market.

Cy
Click to expand...

actually thats what bongolation was saying. If samash and samash.com were the same company, then even if you're ordering something from out of state, because samash has a store down the street, you'd pay tax.

But yeah it will really suck if internet purchases become taxed. That one of the main reasons why I like to order online.
 
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