(yet another) Awful experience with DV247.

Dan_Halen

I remember the Cambridge store closing and a couple of mates losing their jobs.

From a quick Google - Digital Village went bust a few years ago and they got bought out. They had a number of stores all close with the staff being made redundant. The company was trading almost immediately afterwards under a slightly different name (DV247) having been bought out by a German retailer.

I think now, if you buy from them online, you're buying it from Cologne. Similar thing to Thomann but without Thomann's great prices. The Romford store is presumably to keep some sort of UK face/presence or to convince UK buyers they're buying from a UK shop - look 'we're a London megastore!'.

crunchman

Dan_Halen said:

I remember the Cambridge store closing and a couple of mates losing their jobs.

From a quick Google - Digital Village went bust a few years ago and they got bought out. They had a number of stores all close with the staff being made redundant. The company was trading almost immediately afterwards under a slightly different name (DV247) having been bought out by a German retailer.

I think now, if you buy from them online, you're buying it from Cologne. Similar thing to Thomann but without Thomann's great prices. The Romford store is presumably to keep some sort of UK face/presence or to convince UK buyers they're buying from a UK shop - look 'we're a London megastore!'.

They had a "prepacked" administration.  They closed on Saturday evening.  Staff at all the stores except the Romford one turned up to work on Monday morning to find themselves locked out.  Suppliers that were owed money never got it.  Meanwhile the existing management carried on in their jobs under the new owners. 

http://theeccentricblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013_05_01_archive.html

That talks about unpaid bills to suppliers of £3 million, plus staff not given their redundancy pay.

 I have refused to buy anything from them since.  Even if the service was tip-top, and their prices were really good, I still wouldn't buy from them.  Given the original point of this thread, the level of service is another reason to avoid them like the plague.

usedtobe

Used them once before they went bust. Bad experience. Swore not to use them again. Knowing a bit more about the shenanigans, now, I’d never use them!

Voxman

We'll I've only had great experience and service from DV247 both before and after their changes.  

JerkMoans

Oooh.  This is exciting.  As luck would have it I'm at work in sunny Romford tomorrow. 

Assuming I get let out early for good behaviour, I might toddle up the road and do a compare and contrast of these two Titans of E. London musical hardware.

hotpickups

Stuckfast said:

crunchman said:

Haven't bought anything from them since their dodgy administration.  The way they treated their creditors and staff was appalling.

This.

Actually I have bought one thing from them, because I couldn't find it anywhere else. It was a stereo bar for holding microphones, and it came in a cardboard box that would have happily held an 88-note keyboard. Ridiculous.

I experienced the same. In fact I had to phone up and complain to them about their totally un green way of sending stuff. I bought some templeaudio plates for my board which a Jiffy bag would've suffice except they sent it in a shoe box sized package with paper stuffed in the for protection. So over the top but their service is fine though tbh 

johnl

Just an addendum to say my funds were finally freed. Having learnt my lesson I've just placed another order with a different German retailer who have the Katana 50 for £163. Look out for a new thread later in the week....

impmann

crunchman said:

Dan_Halen said:

I remember the Cambridge store closing and a couple of mates losing their jobs.

From a quick Google - Digital Village went bust a few years ago and they got bought out. They had a number of stores all close with the staff being made redundant. The company was trading almost immediately afterwards under a slightly different name (DV247) having been bought out by a German retailer.

I think now, if you buy from them online, you're buying it from Cologne. Similar thing to Thomann but without Thomann's great prices. The Romford store is presumably to keep some sort of UK face/presence or to convince UK buyers they're buying from a UK shop - look 'we're a London megastore!'.

They had a "prepacked" administration.  They closed on Saturday evening.  Staff at all the stores except the Romford one turned up to work on Monday morning to find themselves locked out.  Suppliers that were owed money never got it.  Meanwhile the existing management carried on in their jobs under the new owners. 

http://theeccentricblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013_05_01_archive.html

That talks about unpaid bills to suppliers of £3 million, plus staff not given their redundancy pay.

 I have refused to buy anything from them since.  Even if the service was tip-top, and their prices were really good, I still wouldn't buy from them.  Given the original point of this thread, the level of service is another reason to avoid them like the plague.

Yep - can confirm that. I worked for a company that was owed money... we never got it back from them (insurance pay out, so we weren't out of pocket in the end). However, the worst bit were those that had ordered things from the website that hadn't been fulfilled - either through waiting for stock (often because their trade accounts with suppliers were on stop due to non-payment) or happened during the period of Sat eve to Monday... as these were uninsured creditors, they were entitled to *NONE* of their money back. Unless you'd bought on a credit card, you were at the mercy of what the new owners were prepared to do. So they issued a statement saying that they would fulfill all the orders... sounds good, huh? Well....

They then approached the same companies that they had just knocked for multiple thousands of pounds for new contracts to fulfill these orders. Unsurprisingly, most of them said "piss off" - there were sound business reasons for doing so, as insurance for the new venture's accounts was not available (due to the nature of the way they did this, plus they were now effectively a German-based company - despite having a registered address in the UK... slightly iffy). So then they turned around to the customers and said that they couldn't supply UK market items to fulfill the orders *because of the manufacturers* and to take it up with them... cnuts. So our CS team had to fend off genuinely fed up people who were out of pocket, who had been told a half truth. Despite none of these customers having bought FROM US, we tried to find ways to help them - otherwise our brand reputation would have suffered. It cost *us* money to rectify their bad business.

They then had the cheek to say that they were an authorised supplier of our products on the website. To explain, Musicstore Professional in Germany had an account - so what they were doing was ordering product to their German stores, and then fulfilling the UK website orders from Germany. Bear in mind, these were EU voltage/pin models - not a massive problem on the solid state stuff, but the valve amps suffered from bias that was too hot as a result, leading to premature valve problems. Also we had customers contacting us for replacement power supplies/cables - as DV were telling them to do so as they knew we wouldn't supply them to their company (and certainly not for free). You can imagine the arguments - it was a shit customer experience.
If there was a warranty issue, the customer would suffer terrible delays whilst the unit was shipped to their UK distribution centre in Romford, then onwards to Germany and then onwards to our authorised repair centre in Germany and back again... we heard tales of months waiting. And guess who got the blame and then the customers phoning up furious about the delays, having been told half truths. It ended up costing us money to pay for their inept customer service and black market selling - after all, our brand image would suffer terribly by association so we'd try to help out as much as we could. However, some things were totally out of our hands, yet we'd get the blame...

So what do I think of them and their business practices? Most of it is unprintable. But I wouldn't buy *ANYTHING* from them.

CaptainBb

I've used the DV247 Romford Store a few times lately and I agree with what everyone here says.  However, once I manage to find the guitar guy, I usually get good service thereafter.

Don't like PMT at all ! Had a really bad warranty experience with a faulty Taylor many years ago that they tried to weezel out of.  Looked in the Romford store a few weeks ago but hated the fact I needed to have a staff member unlock each guitar from the rack, so I could try them (Hell, they even had to unlock the front door to let me in!).  I walked. 

impmann

CaptainBb said:

I've used the DV247 Romford Store a few times lately and I agree with what everyone here says.  However, once I manage to find the guitar guy, I usually get good service thereafter.

Don't like PMT at all ! Had a really bad warranty experience with a faulty Taylor many years ago that they tried to weezel out of.  Looked in the Romford store a few weeks ago but hated the fact I needed to have a staff member unlock each guitar from the rack, so I could try them (Hell, they even had to unlock the front door to let me in!).  I walked. 

I'm no massive fan of PMT, but in view of some of the recent thefts from other stores I'm not surprised about the security measures.

musicman100

Get your money back n buy a used one.
I'e just bought a as new katana 100 for 175 from gumtree local 

skunkwerx

Specially that new romford branch! Free parking out front and straight onto the Eastern Ave all the way to the border... of Essex atleast.. lols. 

Then again I wonder if their insurance recommends it or gives them discounts for a locked front door and stock thats locked up?  

TeleMaster

Am currently in the throes of dealing with this absolutely disorganised company. I’ve never known anything like it. I didn’t know it was shipping from Germany because the website fails to mention it. 

They don’t seem to know if the guitar I’ve bought has shipped or not. One person has told me it’s shipped, another has told me it hasn’t, then another told me it has. They don’t seem to be able to give me a tracking number so I still have no idea where it is. 

The customer service agents are nice enough and try to be helpful, but when I ask for something to be done, like can you provide me with the tracking by the end of the day, to which they say yes, I get nothing. It doesn’t help that for large parts of the day the phones just do a fail tone so it can be hard to contact them. 

I’ve looked at some reviews and there a load of people saying they haven’t received their orders. 

It’s a bit of a worry. 

simonhpieman

Hands down the worst in-store experience I'e ever had. Was in there about 3 years ago to buy some lighting stuff. Walked past their guitar department where the teenage member of staff was effing and jeffing as he stood around with 2 other staff boasting about how drunk he'd got recently before standing around in their PA department looking bored for 10 full minutes without being approached once. I needed some lighting gear for work and was ready and in fact actually needed for that weekend to spend some good money but I walked out of there in digust in the end and had a mare getting it delivered from someone else in time.

I sent them an email compaint (or online review, I forget which) but I won't use them again, poxy bunch.

shaunm

It’s a shame to hear reviews like that. I can only speak for myself and say that I’ve bought a few guitars amps and pedals and all have been easy transactions

Voxman

I'm confused 're how you paid them. Surely you had to have authorised a payment from your bank account ie paid by debit card, in which case your bank makes the payment on your instruction.  DV247 can't simply request a payment from your bank account.... unless you've set up a direct debit arrangement?  If you have, you're protected and the direct debit payment can be recalled.  I'm unclear what you mean 're the amount being on hold. If it's not physically been paid, simply stop the payment with your bank...you control your bank account, not DV247.  And if youve paid by bank debit card then I dont understand how it can be on hold?  Something doesnt sound right. Have you spoken with your bank? 

Alex2678

Voxman said:

I'm confused 're how you paid them. Surely you had to have authorised a payment from your bank account ie paid by debit card, in which case your bank makes the payment on your instruction.  DV247 can't simply request a payment from your bank account.... unless you've set up a direct debit arrangement?  If you have, you're protected and the direct debit payment can be recalled.  I'm unclear what you mean 're the amount being on hold. If it's not physically been paid, simply stop the payment with your bank...you control your bank account, not DV247.  And if youve paid by bank debit card then I dont understand how it can be on hold?  Something doesnt sound right. Have you spoken with your bank? 

I don’t know the technical side of why it happens but shops can inadvertently request payment on a debit card more than once, and in terms of it being ‘on hold’ when you use a debit card the payment is authorised and ring fenced for the transaction before it’s actually taken, resulting in a difference between your balance and available balance. I don’t think duplicate transactions are that difficult to rectify but I don’t think you can simply stop transactions from your debit card no questions asked otherwise we could all do it on our way out of asda. I once tried to stop a debit card transaction and they said if I had authorised it, i.e.  unless it was fraud, I had to get the company to refund it. I’d imagine in this case the bank would say that it’s been authorised three times but will only actually be taken once, unless the transaction has actually completed three times in which case shut me up

TeleMaster

Okay after being told the guitar has shipped, not shipped, has shipped, it appears it did NOT ship on the Thursday but on Friday evening. I have the tracking now. 

It’s very strange that they don’t seem to know what is going on with their stock. You’d think they’d want to know. Very disorganised. 

Now I have to hope the guitar gets to me in perfect condition and I don’t have to deal with any returns. God forbid. 

markslade07

TeleMaster said:

Okay after being told the guitar has shipped, not shipped, has shipped, it appears it did NOT ship on the Thursday but on Friday evening. I have the tracking now. 

It’s very strange that they don’t seem to know what is going on with their stock. You’d think they’d want to know. Very disorganised. 

Now I have to hope the guitar gets to me in perfect condition and I don’t have to deal with any returns. God forbid. 

I had exactly the same thing with an amp....never did show up...had to get the CC company to do a chargeback in the end as DV247 had no clue what was going on. Painful.

Hope yours now turns up fine!

chotu495

I recently bought an item from them (£150) got the “order recieved” email, then it all went dark.

After a few days, i emailed asking if they had an eta or tracking number for delivery. Got a reply with a tracking number.

I watch the tracking for a couple of days and then it shows as delivered. It hadn’t been delivered to me.

Another email from me re the false-delivery. Item then arrives four days later.

I then get an email from a manager apologising, and telling me he’ll send another one out.

Emailed the manager back to let him kmow i’ve already got the item, so don’t send another.

Item was delivered in a Musicstore.de box, despite being ordered on .co.uk website (i’m aware they are a European business with a UK storefront).

All just seems a bit like hard work, and not sure i’d personally trust them with something valuable.