Another one bites the dust

richardhomer

Just on this issue of trying stuff out in a shop - then buying on line - generally I think it’s wrong. I want to support bricks and mortar shops.

That said, I took my son to a large retailer a couple of weeks before Christmas to try out some pedals. When he’d decided what he wanted, we went to the counter and were told it was out of stock and that they ‘might be able to get one before Christmas’ - on the proviso that I left a deposit. This was a Boss pedal - not a Klon!

I stood in the car park and completed a purchase via Amazon before getting in my car. Even without Prime membership, it was delivered three days later.

To survive, retailers probably need to be a bit better than this.... 

guitarcookie1

I’ve bought a few things from Gamlins over the years but usually found that the staff would rather stare at their computer rather than help, and their pricing was often “optimistic”. 

Not as bad a Cranes used to be though where RRP = street price..

Never go into GM Music as they’d always pounce on you as soon as you went in rather than leave you look around. 

PMT seem ok but they never price anything, always have to ask. 

Sadly it is just easier to buy online. 

RichardMarc

As a guitarist I would never, ever buy an instrument online, even from a reputable retailer, because you just don't know what you're going to get. Even if you try a guitar out in store and buy exactly the same model online it's going to feel and sound different to the one you played earlier (less so with electrics than acoustics, but there's still a noticeable difference). Playing, and buying, guitar is such an intimate experience, it's a part of you, an extension to your body, so you need to feel comfortable with it and you just can't get that guarantee without playing the exact instrument.

I can echo the frustrations of those complaining about lead times on pedals and stuff in stores, but having worked in music retail it's equally frustrating on the other end of it! We'd have people coming in with the 'oh but I can get it on Amazon and have it the next day,, why does it take you a week?'. Amazon have massive warehouses all over the country with 100s of these things in them! If we wanted to put in an order from the supplier we'd have to create an order, get it authorised by the finance department, they send it off to the supplier, the supplier takes a couple of days to process it, then another couple of days to send it to us - some of the suppliers would be based in Holland as their European base so they'd have to ship it rather than just sticking it in a van, which takes even longer!. Add to that they're all closed over the weekend so even if we ordered on a Friday it wouldn't be processed by them until Tuesday... And also, as a shop it doesn't make sense to order one thing from a supplier - you want a Boss DD7 and we order it, we'd have to pay £30 delivery as a standard charge on every order from the supplier, which would be the whole profit margin, if not more for just one pedal. Of course we're not going to do that, we'd wait until we had enough things to order that would justify paying the delivery, which would be the same whether we ordered 1 pedal or 200. That's just the way it is with physical stores, unfortunately. Most of them, especially the independents, can't afford to just have 10/15/20 of each pedal, or 5 of a guitar just sitting out in the stock room.