Guitar Center woes

Ben Randolph

Power User
Hey forum peeps. Just needed to vent a bit.

Saturday before last, June 1, I placed an order with a GC Gift Card in store for a Friedman 412 cabinet. The employee at the store informed me that the cabinet is in stock for shipping and should probably ship out on Monday, reaching my house around Wednesday or Thursday. On Sunday morning at around 4am I get an email that said a FedEx shipping label has been created, with an scheduled delivery date of Wednesday 6/5. Cool, I think.

By Wednesday, the tracking number shows no update. Wednesday comes and goes with no cabinet delivered. I call GC customer service and Fedex. I've had Fedex tracking numbers not change status, then suddenly find a delivery on my doorstep. So, GC and I agree to wait until Friday. No cabinet is delivered on Friday.

Friday, 6/7 I call Fedex and they tell me that they've never received the shipment. I call GC back and they put a trace on the package. The rep at GC tells me what he thinks happened is that someone printed out a Fedex shipping label, then realized that the cabinet is too large to ship via Fedex, so they were shipping with a freight company that would call me to schedule delivery.

I call GC back today to check on the status of the trace and a rather unhelpful rep informs me that a trace takes 10 business days to complete! After 10 business days, this will be over 3 weeks from when I placed my cabinet order.

Just your opinions, since that cabinet still shows in stock with Guitar Center. Should call back and demand that they ship me a new cabinet and then return the lost cab if and when it shows OR see if I can cancel the order while it's still being traced OR just suck it up and wait, figuring that eventually I'll get a cabinet?

Thanks!
 
just keep calling, as you usually will get a different rep each time (at fedex); some are good; some are not...see if they have a change in status. I'd also ask to speak with the store manager at the GC you ordered in and get him/her involved and see what you get.....they don't want to ever lose a good paying customer and should help on that end....
 
I'm glad there is no GC over here. And that Bax and Thomann are so much more reliable. Especially with Thomann I can't say enough good things about their shipping.
 
I'm glad there is no GC over here. And that Bax and Thomann are so much more reliable. Especially with Thomann I can't say enough good things about their shipping.

On the other hand GC runs local stores so people can check out stuff before buying it. I hate to mail things back and forth, especially instruments.
 
As soon as you said guitar center and fed ex and I knew it would not be a good outcome. Just be persistent Ben. Work your way up the food chain, and sooner or later you will get someone responsible. Guitar center has area reps over the store managers. You might try that.
 
Thanks, guys. Luckily this is not an emergency and I don't need the cab for a recording or gig date. I'd just love to hear my Friedman BE100 with two glorious 412s. Yes, totally a first world problem.

GC is investigating with their shipping dept. I'm sure I'll eventually get a cab. Say what you want about GC, but they generally are not going to take money and not deliver the product. It's just annoying.

Thanks for letting me vent!
 
I'm glad there is no GC over here. And that Bax and Thomann are so much more reliable. Especially with Thomann I can't say enough good things about their shipping.

Thomann lost a package with 2 ENGL amps and 2 412 some 10 years ago. They didn’t even use tracking numbers...
It took me years to order by them again.
Musicstore is not far from me but they seem to sell mostly cheap stuffs now...
And I do not speak of the local GC where you can’t find expensive gear.
 
hmmm ..I call a certain amount of BS on all this.

... If the carrier has lost the package - that is one thing, and ten days is not an unusual amount of time to wait while FedEx hunt down a package. Occasionally, FedEx - especially with heavy packages - will damage or destroy stuff in transit, and they are slow to report that damage - the package sometimes just quits moving, same is true for damaged shipping labels etc..

But that isn't what was clearly stated.

FedEx states that "they've never received the shipment". and ..."The rep at GC tells me what he thinks happened is that someone printed out a Fedex shipping label, then realized that the cabinet is too large to ship via Fedex, so they were shipping with a freight company that would call me to schedule delivery."

Fair enough. If all that was true, and they shipped via freight, there would be a new tracking number associated with the shipment.

... What's that tracking number? ...They have your order, they have a history of fulfillment associated with that order. That would include which carrier they shipped the item with, and a tracking number associated with the package shipped. All of which SHOULD be a keystroke or two away.

Either the original package may be lost or damaged in Transit - or - the item was shipped via Freight, and you need that new tracking number.

Which is it?

...If it was the latter, it should be easy to get the new tracking number - call-up - get it.. Should definitely NOT take ten days... Ten days is a time-frame for carriers to find lost and damaged units. No reasonable business doing even the barest minimum of recording sales and shipments is going to demand that a customer wait ten days to find out HOW a product was shipped, and what the tracking number associated with that shipment would be.

Any-which-way you slice and dice it. To me, due to that conflicting information you were given, this all smacks of half-assery. ...You can't really demand a new shipment, until the recorded shipment has been tracked properly. ...and you don't even have the ability to track the package because you don't really know how it was shipped.. Like I say ..there's and certain BS going on here.

I'd be making calls.. Then, that's just me. ;0)

..Like you say, it'll all come to you in time. ...But aggravating, to be sure.

Best of luck with it!
 
Yeah, I hear you. Point is, Guitar Center screwed up the shipment royally. All I can do now is hound them and wait for them to complete their internal investigation, which hopefully should just be a few days.

But good lord, how the frack do you lose a 100+ pound freaking cabinet?

I don't harbor the hate for GC a lot of folks do. I see them as what they are, a big box retailer that deals in volume. They're okay if you know what to expect going in. You're not going to get super-personalized service from an audio engineer. Just like you won't get hugely personalized service going into Best Buy or Fry's Electronics (electronics warehouse in certain parts of the US). If you know what you're going in for and can pick it out yourself, you're usually fine. Don't expect the guitars to be well setup or the sales drones to not try to sell you a warranty on a set of picks.

Usually I order from Sweetwater. Haven't had issues with them. But, I happened to have a GC gift card burning a hole in my pocket.

Oh well. I'll keep you guys posted. But yeah, they need to let me know where it is. Dollars to donuts it has never reached Fedex's possession...otherwise the Fedex tracking number would've shown movement.
 
Call your credit card company and file a charge back immediately, then they will figure it out.
 
On the other hand GC runs local stores so people can check out stuff before buying it. I hate to mail things back and forth, especially instruments.

I don't buy guitars online, nor do I buy them in stores anymore. I just build them myself. I don't buy amps either, so anything else is fair game for ordering online.

Thomann lost a package with 2 ENGL amps and 2 412 some 10 years ago. They didn’t even use tracking numbers...
It took me years to order by them again.
Musicstore is not far from me but they seem to sell mostly cheap stuffs now...
And I do not speak of the local GC where you can’t find expensive gear.

Obviously a sample of one is not a very good statistic sample but I always got tracking numbers from them. For me they have been the most reliable online vendor I've dealt with. Your mileage obviously varies. And I'm sure it happened as you said it did. No company is 100% on the ball all the time. Occasionally stuff happens and then it sucks when it happens to you.
 
My advice is to call GC and ask about the freight tracking number and shipping status. If they don't give you that info, ask to speak to a supervisor and keep escalating when the last person is not able to give you a straight answer.

Escalation to someone with the actual power to solve the issue is always key with online retailers.
 
I had a similar problem with a big company here in Holland, Bax. They "lost" my guitar. Started to call them daily. I kept being friendly, The dude on the phone is just the one picking up the phone, not the one who screwed things up. They did keep feeding me BS though. At one point I just lost it and just cited all the statements they had made so far and made clear why that simply was either untrue or impossible. (they have 1 callcenter and just a few guys working at that location) Then after my rant the dude said: Wait a minute, I'll check in the back. 2 minutes later he said triumphanticly: "Found it!" It was here all along! That had been there for weeks of course.
I lost it again...All it had taken was one dude getting off his ass and check the desk for stuff that was being sent to customers...
I got 80 euros refund for my trouble (1500 euro guitar)
I still get mad when I think of my frustrations every time I was on the phone, had to wait at least 30 minutes EVERY FRIGGIN' TIME till I got through, and then being told "I will call you back" (and never did, every day, sigh) I'll stop now....
 
Thanks, I'm calling them back today and am going to see if they can just cancel the order or ship me out a new one.

I have a feeling that this wouldn't happen with Sweetwater.

It's a gift card purchase, so unfortunately I can't just let my credit card company handle it.

I'm like you guys. I realize the person on the other end is just manning the phones. I've been on the other end of customer service and have been on the receiving end of unjustified abuse, having to defend company polices that I know in my heart are stupid, resisting the urge to throttle someone, dealing with people who come in just looking for a fight. I have to be pretty pissed off to raise my voice, and even if I do get pissed I'm more likely to just not patronize again versus cause a scene.
 
Ah ! I’ve got a shipment sent from Thomann to UPS 2 days ago. Tracking number shows no mouvement...
I’m not mad because it’s only strings but I’m lucky it did not happen with the guitar I’ve bought 3 weeks ago.
 
I had a similar problem with a big company here in Holland, Bax. They "lost" my guitar. Started to call them daily. I kept being friendly, The dude on the phone is just the one picking up the phone, not the one who screwed things up. They did keep feeding me BS though. At one point I just lost it and just cited all the statements they had made so far and made clear why that simply was either untrue or impossible. (they have 1 callcenter and just a few guys working at that location) Then after my rant the dude said: Wait a minute, I'll check in the back. 2 minutes later he said triumphanticly: "Found it!" It was here all along! That had been there for weeks of course.
I lost it again...All it had taken was one dude getting off his ass and check the desk for stuff that was being sent to customers...
I got 80 euros refund for my trouble (1500 euro guitar)
I still get mad when I think of my frustrations every time I was on the phone, had to wait at least 30 minutes EVERY FRIGGIN' TIME till I got through, and then being told "I will call you back" (and never did, every day, sigh) I'll stop now....

I wonder how much Bax pays these guys. You pay your personnel minimum wage, you get minimum performance.
 
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