Online pedal purchase woes

Frankel84

So last year, I bought a Strymon Cloudburst on day of release, "in stock and delivered tomorrow," from a major UK retailer with a penchant for YouTube. Money taken and confirmation email received. Then nothing.

Wading through the syrup of their "help" centre, it finally transpired they didn't actually have stock and my order would be for the next shipment in a couple of months. No ta, followed by my constant nagging for a refund.

Benefit of the doubt, these things happen.

Couple of days ago I received an email from the aforementioned establishment, saying they had a new drop of Wampler Germanium Tumnuses (Tumni?), "in stock and delivered tomorrow". Money taken and confirmation email received. Then nothing.

Can you see a pattern yet?

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome, then I must be in the bag with the frogs!

Turns out the money was taken but the order failed to download to the system. Tumnus long since sold out.

WTF? It's 2024. How can a major online retailer that ploughs so much into digital marketing have an e-commerce back-end so entirely unfit for purpose?

And while I appreciate this is a very first world problem, it has left me miffed enough for this rant.

I never bothered with the Cloudburst in the end and in all likelihood I'll never get a Germanium Tumnus.

Lesson learnt. 

Wazmeister

I think we have all experienced this...

You should name and shame. Then we can avoid them.

I only buy in stock now. But lots do it.

koss59

I bought a pedal from FX planet the other day which said free next day delivery ( I wanted it for a gig that weekend ) after payment was taken there was an automated thing saying they were on holiday and it wasn’t going to be sent until April 5th or something. That’s like 3 weeks!

If you have an automated message after purchase set up surely the homepage could have a message saying that before you spend your money.

They did refund straight away.

chrisj1602

Sorry this happened to you, it would wind me up.

You should name and shame though!

StuartMac290

My money's on Andertons. This is the main reason I'd never buy from them, this policy of advertising things as in stock, and then keeping your cash until they actually get stock in. It's an absolute nonsense.

That, and I find their entire schtick painfully cringe-worthy.

Kultschar

Haha they were the first that came to mind also.   Heard a fair few stories of people getting obvious B-Stock also

Hope OP resolves soon.  I am having a right headache with Musicstore.com.  Damaged MIDI keyboard - sent pics and they keep fobbing me off

Revolutions

Good news: I had a germanium Tumnus & it sounds identical to the Friedman Golden Eagle. Go buy Tim’s pedal for less than half price 

Frankel84

To be fair I got the refund the same day, as I knew (from my bitter previous experience) that the customer service guy would have to lean on the admin team to make it happen.

He said he wanted to look into it further as it might be a problem caused by having multiple accounts. I'm not aware if I do have multiple accounts (can't think why I would) and even then it doesn't explain why the system happily took my money and emailed me an order number/confirmation.

I think the reality is their website probably doesn't run real time stock, so they might have to go through this nonsense every time there's a limited edition or hyped new release.

I did suggest that since the owner has two real Klons which he won't stop banging on about, he could probably let me have his Wampler, but haven't yet had a response to that...   

mgaw

Wazmeister said:

I think we have all experienced this...

You should name and shame. Then we can avoid them.

I only buy in stock now. But lots do it.

Maybe a wild guess at “Andert’”

Kent747

I was in the potential said shop a couple weeks back and liked a guitar very much but it clearly had been played quite a bit. Didn’t care for the price so passed. 

Then saw it was £100 cheaper online than in store. Rather odd. Didn’t expect that. 

Didn’t buy. 

JMP220478

Currently in returns process with online retail arm of a chain of stores - purchased as new , upmarket boss delay , received an opened item with scratches on base of pedal .  
I know nothing about trades description or indeed if it’s still a thing but surely ex demo / customer return cannot be sold as new legally ?

Frankel84

@JMP220478 A customer return should be mint/as new/in undamaged original packaging, in which case a retailer is allowed to sell as new stock.

Unfortunately, a minority of punters take the piss and heavily 'trial' an item before returning under distance selling regs.

It's the retailer's responsibility to check the condition of returned items, but in this shiny new world of e-commerce, where people buy knickers from M&S to wear for a week before returning them, few retailers have the resources. So stuff goes straight back into stock and resold. Back in the day, the best retailers sold all returns as B stock, just in case, but that just isn't financially viable anymore.

You clearly received the pedal equivalent of heavily soiled grundies!

Fortunately you're covered under the same distance selling regs, so a refund will definitely happen... eventually.

Good luck!

Musicman20

StuartMac290 said:

My money's on Andertons. This is the main reason I'd never buy from them, this policy of advertising things as in stock, and then keeping your cash until they actually get stock in. It's an absolute nonsense.

That, and I find their entire schtick painfully cringe-worthy.

Yeah for such a big store, taking huge payments in full upfront seems to be of no benefit to the customer at all! 

Wazmeister

I don't think it was Andertons... 

Who was it then OP ?

Frankel84

Yep, t'was Andertons.

But they're far from alone. I didn't mention in my first post that DV247 took my money last December for the first drop of Germanium Tumnus, when they didn't have stock. No apology and they blamed Wampler!

So that's three strikes and out with this online pedal purchase malarkey.

I've come to terms with the fact that my life will remain Germanium Tumnus free. And I should just make better use of what I've already got. A lesson for life there. 

HT986M2

Revolutions said:

Good news: I had a germanium Tumnus & it sounds identical to the Friedman Golden Eagle. Go buy Tim’s pedal for less than half price 

Did you mean to say Fredric rather than Friedman?

Voxsupertwin

I’ve used GuitarGuitar 6 times so far with 100% satisfaction. Always arrived on time and were in stock .

mind you there’s always a chance they could have a problem.

online buying is addictive because you can identify just about anything that you might want, see the prices new and used and hopefully get it delivered straight to your home .

access to actual shops is difficult for a lot of people and also the choice though good at the shop can’t compete with the net …..

Revolutions

HT986M2 said:

Revolutions said:

Good news: I had a germanium Tumnus & it sounds identical to the Friedman Golden Eagle. Go buy Tim’s pedal for less than half price 

Did you mean to say Fredric rather than Friedman?

Oops! Well done for spotting the deliberate mistake 

Wazmeister

Frankel84 said:

Yep, t'was Andertons.

But they're far from alone. I didn't mention in my first post that DV247 took my money last December for the first drop of Germanium Tumnus, when they didn't have stock. No apology and they blamed Wampler!

So that's three strikes and out with this online pedal purchase malarkey.

I've come to terms with the fact that my life will remain Germanium Tumnus free. And I should just make better use of what I've already got. A lesson for life there. 

Don’t worry about the Germanium… it’s a nice pedal but no real difference from the standard model. The Andertons video shows this too…

I had one and sold it on Reverb for a nice little profit