guitar center douchebaggery

[Jerseyboy62]

GC and Sam Ash for that matter are like any other retail chain/franchise. I am not sure which the stores are. You have some mgrs and employees who are knowledgeable and ethical and others who are douchebags and warm bodies in a store. The bigger the chain/franchise, the harder it is to control quality of line staff and lower middle management. Especially when store manager is holed up in his office not supervising and training. As many DB's as I see at the two local mega stores in Southern NJ, I do know a guy that works at GC part time for the fun of it, and he is a good dude, and I trust him. He works FT with my buddy as an auditor. I have even seen him play at a local watering hole. I also have had good chat sessions with several of the other guys in my age group there. They are decent guys to talk to but they are salesman and they are FOS. I would'nt buy a set of strings from them unless I saw it unpacked from the box. It's a crap shoot. You have great selection and questionable/risky quality at a big store or you have limited selection and generally decent service from your local Mom and Pop Shop.

[Valtyr]

GC has been mixed.

good - I got a used Zion for $199, aside from needing a setup and a cleanup, it was in great shape.

bad - People abuse the return policy by return a instrument they beat on for 29 days and then GC tries to resell it at full price.

[tulk1]

Your two main factors at ANY GC are: The Manager. The Sales Dude.

 

If the Manager is w-a-s, his sales staff will be, as well. And a really good, decent, near-human sales person can overcome most of a bad manager. Look at the GC guy from CA that posted here. Bet he's worth dealing with!

 

I once complained to the Manager at the GC in Chandler AZ that the GC's in KC were like used car sales. He mentioned it at a GC managers convention. Wrote to tell me he brought it up. Cool! KC GCs are much better now. Well, IMO.

[mcsdude]

It's funny how many people are here take pride in using GC to kill time and just play with their toys and get gear at below cost pricing... then call them morons and deuches. GC is a big operation with a lot of employees so ofcourse some will be better than others. This is the case with any large retailer. As long as they let people like you kill time and come in and thrash their equipment, they are going to risk having some items that get banged up, broken, etc. It's YOU - the same people complaining about it that's breaking it!

The trick to buying from any retailer - large or mom and pop is to do your homework. Know what you need and what you want and just rely on the store to get it off the shelf and ring it up. Do you really think the dudes at home dept know more about lawns than most? You really think the dude at sears knows more about washing clothes? I doubt it.

I'm a good customer of GC - I spend thousands upon thousands with those guys. Sure some transactions have been better than others but those guys have always been fair and more than reasonable with me. Is a mom and pop going to let you take home an eric johnson strat for 2 weeks to borrow while the color you want is ordered? Take amps home to try in a familiar setting with your equipment? When I bought my road king from them they could not find the foot switch (potential deuche-baggery). They loaned me a recto switch and ordered me a road king switch. I needed one asap so i had boogie fed ex me one. GC wrote me a check for the price of the footswitch.

Are they perfect? Of course not - but I think they do a pretty damn good job of exceeding my reasonable expectations of a retailer. Ofcourse I don't go in and break their {censored}, waste hours of their time knowing I'm not going to spend a nickel and I am not offended by the concept that they hope to make a small profit off my purchases.

[leftyDaveZ]

Not all Guitar Center's are bad. I live about 10 mins from the one in Sherman Oaks CA and its where I picked up my 335. The benefit is that a friend of mine used to work in the corporate offices of GC and he introduced me to the guitar department manager who basically, 1) treated me very well and understood my needs both as a player and shopper and 2) gave me a superb deal that I have to see even come close anywhere else, including online. The people at this particular GC, including the on the floor salespeople have always struck me as quite knowledgeable and very friendly. I only deal with one guy for the most part and this might explain why I have had only good experiences there. Fortunately I am also privy to places like Amp Shop which sells more boutique equipment and is also just down the street from GC, Truetone, which is the mecca of guitar stores and Mesa Boogie Hollywood so my choices are plenty when it comes time to go shopping for equipment. They are all stocked with some of the best stuff you can buy and are staffed by the best people you can talk to. My point is that a couple of bad sales people does not mean every store is like that. And you always have a choice, especially with the internet.

 

 

Dude, I got jacked at the Sherman Oaks store. When I got my LP Studio, they had the right handed version for 899 (lower than MF) but were still going to charge me 1200 for the same exact guitar in lefty. To make a long story short, I had to go to the Pasadena store to get the 999 price. It pays to shop around.

[Dave_Mc_2]

i was at GC yesterday. went to play on a gibson sg standard and a fender american deluxe fat strat. i'm asking the guy questions about the fat strat and he proceeds to tell me it's a nitro finish. so right then and there, my questions stop and i just ask for the guitars and to set me up on a marshall half stack. moral of the story, do your research first. then go in and ask questions to see if the d00d is a tool or actually halfway intelligent.

that's what i always do. ask questions which you know the answer to, that's the easiest way to find out if the other info (which you might not know the answer to) you're getting has any chance of being correct.



interesting thread. I've never set foot in GC, but i've been in the UK equivalent (i assume), sound control, several times. Never really had a problem with them, other than the fact they try to sell everything at the list price.

[jconway]

GC in Cherry Hill NJ is in the same plaza as Sam Ash. BOTH stores have douchebags working there. At least in GC there is a chick who is cute that works the register. I did buy my LP special D/C there and got a good deal used. I must say though the setup they did on the guitar sucked. I know they lease out the repair space to Raritain Guitar, but those guys will NEVER touch LP again. My Dag will never cross the threshold of GC or Sam Ash. A young guy in my neighborhood was having some custom work done on his SG at Sam Ash, and the prick in the shop quits and took his SG and a few other guitars with him! It seems the Mgr was letting him bring guitars home to "work on" in his private shop. Douchebaggery at it finest. The kid got his SG replaced with a new one no questions asked.

 

 

I check out the music stores in Cherry Hill regularly. I like the GC but not so much the Sam Ash (it's ok but I like the GC better).

[BarneyGumbel]

Our GC is pretty good. They give my program (www.musicmentorship.org) good deals, and the manager is cool. One time I saw a used Highway I tele for $375, which was a killer deal. I probabaly should have snagged it. They do have good deals like that ocassionally, but their "green tag" sales here haven't been all that great.

[Facejackets]

Seems like Special orders from ANYWHERE, turn out to be a project. I suppose sometimes there's no getting around the wait. But I try MF and all other on-line music stores before going that route. Usually you can find what you need this way. And have it to your home in three-four days. But I've waited mths for Fender to send a special order part. On my first SRV Strat. I needed a Gold Plated Trem arm. The one that came with the guitar was threaded badly. So I looked everywhere for one and couldn't find the Gold. I wound up ordering one from Sam Ash. But took a good MTH to arrive. I also had the original re-threaded at a machine shop. So I wound up with two. But I undrstand what your saying as far as Special Orders.

 

 

Fender is by far the WORST company to order things from. They always take months dude. That has nothing to do with Sam Ash.

[crazyeddie]

Sounds a little like my Memorial Day experience. I went that day to see if they were discounting the used Vox AD60VT they had there for a couple of months......... He came back after five minutes of doing whatever but he said they couldn't sell it for any less as they "had too much into it" already. They'd take a loss.

I think that response is similar to a car sales person going to his manager to get you a better deal. Instead he goes off to get a cup of Joe never seeing the manager while you stand/sit there waiting like an idiot. Perhaps they see too many people kicking the tires and not buying anything. If I get a response like that I'll usually ask to see the manager to try and negotiate the deal. I'll also let them know I've purchased some big ticket items in the past. Having information beyond the value of the merchandise , used or new, helps negotiations. If the manager refuses to see me I let the sales person know I'm going to their competition down the road while flashing a huge wad of cash ( later getting mugged in the parking lot.)

I also know from experience they don't give you {censored} for your trade in ( or cash back) so they really don't have much invested in used product anyway. Besides , the longer it sits there the more it depreciates. On the other hand they can write it off as a loss if they can't get what "they put into it" so they're full of it.

[Brett Valentine]

I personally Love guitar Center. I'm a Professional guitarist and I make my living at it. Guitar Center is the Perfect store for me. I tend to be polite to the sales staff but know why I'm there and what I want. I don't ever try to talk them down on price as I don't need the aggravation and I frankly have the money for what I buy. Though to haggle with them is good for some, I'm turned off by that process and don't like to waste my time waiting around for the yes or no. Their invetory is phenominal and I often buy guitars new that have obvious little problems that I fix myself. The managers appreaciate this and they are very accomodating to customers like me who spend thousands a year. Whole nuther ball game then. . .

 

 

That's been my approach. If I'm going to GC, I already know what I want, usually call first to see if they have what I'm looking for in stock, go in and buy it, maybe chat up the sales person, try out a guitar or two. I don't tend to haggle either, and if the sales person is rushed or has a customer giving them a hard time, I tell them: "go deal with that, I'm not going anywhere," and they appreciate that.

 

That said, the people at Sam Ash seem to have less turnover and people still remember me from a long time ago, so I still go there when I can even though it's farther and I have to pay for parking. . .

 

Brett

[Mr_GoodBomb]

VG? The strat with the Roland?

[jdjonsson]

Guitar Center ultimately owns this forum.

 

...I love Guitar Center... I'm going back again and again.