Slackmaster2K
Gone
...went a little something like this:
****NOTE****
The following is an account of the events from MY point of view only. I have asked a Sam Ash representative to read and respond to this post.
************
I decide to order a DeArmond Pilot Pro bass guitar for $199, because Sam Ash has supposedly purchased their entire remaining stock and is selling them off at outrageously low prices. In fact, I can get the bass at a whopping 70% off!
I place my order and begin the painful wait. A week passes. I email Sam Ash about the order status, because unlike even small operations, they have no way to track orders from their website. I receive no response to this email. A few days later I finally decide to call.
Call 1:
"Your bass just came in and should ship today or tomorrow."
Call 2:
"Your bass just came in and should ship today"
Call 3:
"Your bass just came in, and should ship any time."
Call 4:
"You're right sir, there seems to be a problem. I don't know why your bass hasn't shipped yet. It's in inventory, the order just seems to be stuck"
Ok, obviously there is a problem on there end, and I can understand why each representative thought the bass was going to ship "that day" or "the next day." I'm not going to raise a fuss, and in fact I'm very polite about the whole deal.
After another few days the bass finally ships, yay!
I receive the bass, and immediately realize that something is up. The treble knob is stuck, and it feels internal. I give it a few turns and it comes free. Ok, whew. I go to plug the bass in, and discover that the blend knob doesn't work. I take a look inside, and notice that a wire has come loose. No problem, I just reattach it. I start to play the bass and after about an hour, the blend knob starts to stick, just as the treble knob had. I try to turn it free and "snap", something inside the knob breaks, and there is no longer any resistance in the knob. Not good. I have a feeling that the same thing will happen with the treble knob, as it was sticking too.
So I decide to return the sucker. After all, I paid for a new bass and a new bass should be in perfect working order, no? I call Sam Ash and arrange the refund and order another guitar. This is when I come across the most bizzare policy I've ever had to deal with.
"Somebody will call you with the RMA information."
WHAT? It's ok for a store to have its own proprietary policies, but they shouldn't assume that it's the customer's first time ordering from an online vendor! Nobody else in the world does this to my knowledge, and you won't find a customer in the world who is comfortable with it.
I wait for 2 business days and my phone never rings. I finally call and sure enough, the return is in progress, and a UPS guy is just just going to show up at my door at some point in the future. Um...no way. It may not be true of all musicians, but many of us do work during the day. I'm not going to leave it on my porch either. So I arrange to have the return tags mailed to me, which Sam Ash agrees to. No appology for not calling me with the return information, and I read a post from a member of this BBS that Sam Ash not calling with return information is not uncommon.
Ok, so while I'm waiting for the return tags, my replacement bass shows up, and it's a real peach. There's a nasty buzz coming from somewhere in the body, and I trace it to the battery rattling around. No problem I think, and I just pop the battery out for the time being. But wait, there's still a very subtle rattle coming from inside the bass. Sounds very much like it's coming from the neck joint someplace, but I can't quite narrow it down. Oh, and I should mention that the blend knob was screwed up as well, and lacked the resistance of the other 4 knobs. Enough of this. Obviosly DeArmond basses are low quality, but I still contest that the basses I received were defective and I should have every right to demand my money back.
I call up to start the RMA process, and again I get the "we'll call you" crap. Several days go by and they never call, so I call them. This time, the RMA wasn't even in progress and a lady had to generate one for me. Now I know what you're thinking, if she could generate one right there on the spot, what's with the "we'll call you" garbage? Your guess is as good as mine.
Anyhow, I tell the lady that she'll have to mail me the return tags because I'm not going to wait around for UPS, and she says, "I'm sorry, but our policy is that the customer is responsible for paying return shipping, even if the item is defective." I ask her if the policy has recently changed, because I was able to arrange for the first bass to go back on Sam Ash's UPS account. She says that a manager must have arranged that for me, and that it is against their policy.
There doesn't seem to be anything else I can do, and the lady is very unreceptive, and a complete displeasure to speak with. So I yield.
I go online to figure out what the shipping charges are going to be. UPS: $50. FedEx Ground: $30. USPS: $106.
So, it ends up costing me $30 to receive two defective bass guitars from Sam Ash.
It doesn't upset me that I have to pay 30 dollars as much as it upsets me that I'm dealing with yet another company that is not customer oriented, but bottom-line oriented. With the volume that Sam Ash does, it would have cost them much less to pay the return shipping on the defective bass. Instead, they opt to make me pay it, a guy who ordered two items with good intent and received them both in poor working order.
So, in reality, they've saved themselves 30 bucks tops, and in the process lost a customer for good. To prove that I would have been a good customer, I've emailed them with the receipt for a pair of 20/20 monitors that I just purchased from 8thstreet.com for 10 dollars more than I would have paid at Sam Ash. Within the next 6-12 months I will also be purchasing a mixer, a power amp, and probably a pair of C1000's. I will not even consider ordering from Sam Ash after this one seemingly minor incident, because I don't believe that they actually care.
I am also going to recount my experiences to every single person I come across who is thinking of ordering from Sam Ash. I'm not going to be dishonest or slanderous, but I feel that everyone should know that Sam Ash's "45 day no risk policy" isn't "no risk" at all. They say that every dissatisfied customer tells at least 10 other people about their experience...a common statistic that larger corporations are always forgetting about.
Slackmaster 2000
****NOTE****
The following is an account of the events from MY point of view only. I have asked a Sam Ash representative to read and respond to this post.
************
I decide to order a DeArmond Pilot Pro bass guitar for $199, because Sam Ash has supposedly purchased their entire remaining stock and is selling them off at outrageously low prices. In fact, I can get the bass at a whopping 70% off!
I place my order and begin the painful wait. A week passes. I email Sam Ash about the order status, because unlike even small operations, they have no way to track orders from their website. I receive no response to this email. A few days later I finally decide to call.
Call 1:
"Your bass just came in and should ship today or tomorrow."
Call 2:
"Your bass just came in and should ship today"
Call 3:
"Your bass just came in, and should ship any time."
Call 4:
"You're right sir, there seems to be a problem. I don't know why your bass hasn't shipped yet. It's in inventory, the order just seems to be stuck"
Ok, obviously there is a problem on there end, and I can understand why each representative thought the bass was going to ship "that day" or "the next day." I'm not going to raise a fuss, and in fact I'm very polite about the whole deal.
After another few days the bass finally ships, yay!
I receive the bass, and immediately realize that something is up. The treble knob is stuck, and it feels internal. I give it a few turns and it comes free. Ok, whew. I go to plug the bass in, and discover that the blend knob doesn't work. I take a look inside, and notice that a wire has come loose. No problem, I just reattach it. I start to play the bass and after about an hour, the blend knob starts to stick, just as the treble knob had. I try to turn it free and "snap", something inside the knob breaks, and there is no longer any resistance in the knob. Not good. I have a feeling that the same thing will happen with the treble knob, as it was sticking too.
So I decide to return the sucker. After all, I paid for a new bass and a new bass should be in perfect working order, no? I call Sam Ash and arrange the refund and order another guitar. This is when I come across the most bizzare policy I've ever had to deal with.
"Somebody will call you with the RMA information."
WHAT? It's ok for a store to have its own proprietary policies, but they shouldn't assume that it's the customer's first time ordering from an online vendor! Nobody else in the world does this to my knowledge, and you won't find a customer in the world who is comfortable with it.
I wait for 2 business days and my phone never rings. I finally call and sure enough, the return is in progress, and a UPS guy is just just going to show up at my door at some point in the future. Um...no way. It may not be true of all musicians, but many of us do work during the day. I'm not going to leave it on my porch either. So I arrange to have the return tags mailed to me, which Sam Ash agrees to. No appology for not calling me with the return information, and I read a post from a member of this BBS that Sam Ash not calling with return information is not uncommon.
Ok, so while I'm waiting for the return tags, my replacement bass shows up, and it's a real peach. There's a nasty buzz coming from somewhere in the body, and I trace it to the battery rattling around. No problem I think, and I just pop the battery out for the time being. But wait, there's still a very subtle rattle coming from inside the bass. Sounds very much like it's coming from the neck joint someplace, but I can't quite narrow it down. Oh, and I should mention that the blend knob was screwed up as well, and lacked the resistance of the other 4 knobs. Enough of this. Obviosly DeArmond basses are low quality, but I still contest that the basses I received were defective and I should have every right to demand my money back.
I call up to start the RMA process, and again I get the "we'll call you" crap. Several days go by and they never call, so I call them. This time, the RMA wasn't even in progress and a lady had to generate one for me. Now I know what you're thinking, if she could generate one right there on the spot, what's with the "we'll call you" garbage? Your guess is as good as mine.
Anyhow, I tell the lady that she'll have to mail me the return tags because I'm not going to wait around for UPS, and she says, "I'm sorry, but our policy is that the customer is responsible for paying return shipping, even if the item is defective." I ask her if the policy has recently changed, because I was able to arrange for the first bass to go back on Sam Ash's UPS account. She says that a manager must have arranged that for me, and that it is against their policy.
There doesn't seem to be anything else I can do, and the lady is very unreceptive, and a complete displeasure to speak with. So I yield.
I go online to figure out what the shipping charges are going to be. UPS: $50. FedEx Ground: $30. USPS: $106.
So, it ends up costing me $30 to receive two defective bass guitars from Sam Ash.
It doesn't upset me that I have to pay 30 dollars as much as it upsets me that I'm dealing with yet another company that is not customer oriented, but bottom-line oriented. With the volume that Sam Ash does, it would have cost them much less to pay the return shipping on the defective bass. Instead, they opt to make me pay it, a guy who ordered two items with good intent and received them both in poor working order.
So, in reality, they've saved themselves 30 bucks tops, and in the process lost a customer for good. To prove that I would have been a good customer, I've emailed them with the receipt for a pair of 20/20 monitors that I just purchased from 8thstreet.com for 10 dollars more than I would have paid at Sam Ash. Within the next 6-12 months I will also be purchasing a mixer, a power amp, and probably a pair of C1000's. I will not even consider ordering from Sam Ash after this one seemingly minor incident, because I don't believe that they actually care.
I am also going to recount my experiences to every single person I come across who is thinking of ordering from Sam Ash. I'm not going to be dishonest or slanderous, but I feel that everyone should know that Sam Ash's "45 day no risk policy" isn't "no risk" at all. They say that every dissatisfied customer tells at least 10 other people about their experience...a common statistic that larger corporations are always forgetting about.
Slackmaster 2000
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