Friends of Musicians aren't very friendly

MadAsAHatter

MadAsAHatter

Well-known member
Musician's Friend is really getting on my nerves. First they harass the crap out of me with numerous phone calls, texts and emails trying to push a sale. Pretending to be all nice, I'm they're best friend, they can get me the hook up on anything I want at a great discount. "Hey sales person thanks, but what I want isn't in stock so there's nothing to assist me with for now. I'll contact you when I want to buy something, you don't need to call me 3 times a day." Guess who called several times a day over the next week. It took a bit, but they finally stopped calling.

About 3 weeks later an open box happens to pop up for what I want. Great! I have a coupon for open box stuff too, but it won't take it on the website... it's one of those call us to use it ones. Fine, I'll call the sales dude.
Get him on the line... "Hey Mr. sales guy I want to get this and apply the coupon."
He comes back with, yeah it's an open box item it's already discounted.
But the coupon says for open box and the item isn't on the list of exclusions...... what's the problem?
I'm sorry I can't discount it any further, if I did we'd lose money on it.
Okay, whatever, i don't feel like going back and forth on this... I have a bunch of points that will literally post in less than 12 hours, would you be able to apply them to this purchase.
I can't do that sir, you might try to rip us off if we let you use the points now.
Really!? So there's nothing you can do? You're not able to work with me at all?
Sorry, I can't give you a discount and you'll rip us off if you get to use your points now.
It's not like I was trying to haggle down a $20,000 Gibson down to 200 bucks. I just wanted to use my coupons and points. Well thanks for nothing, you've been no help at all.

THEN after all that, guess who I have a voice mail from the following day wanting to hook me up with some great deals... WTF!!! Screw you musician's friend, shitty little sales dude, and the horse y'all rode in on. Keep your damn points, I'll enjoy my bag of candy from Sweetwater.
 
I couldn't even get them to price-match. They said they can't on sale items. IT WASN'T ON SALE DIPSHIT, IT WAS THEIR REGULAR PRICE! Same shit, they harassed me for a week, then jam it up my ass when I want something. Then I get another rep call me, and I explain why I won't do business with them. They apologize deeply, but never do shit to make things right, they just assign a NEW dipshit to call and harass me. The other thing they did to me was bait and switch. Offer a stupid low price on an item out of stock, then jack the price up when it comes in and try to charge you double. Hate those fuckers, and their shitty business practices.
 
How exactly would using the points you've earned be "ripping them off" anyway??
 
MadAsAHatter said:
No, I didn't


His claim is that I could still return the items the points came from. So if I used the points before the return period ended then returned said items I would have gotten free points. He said that would be ripping them off.
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The sale reps also can't override the sytem. You can't use points until they post to your account, he just didn't want to say he didn't have the ability to do it
 
I have the exact opposite experience with MF. My rep hardly ever calls. I kinda wish he would more if anything lol. I do a fair amount of business with them too and I do make sure to reach him before I order. :🤷:
 
MadAsAHatter said:
No, I didn't


His claim is that I could still return the items the points came from. So if I used the points before the return period ended then returned said items I would have gotten free points. He said that would be ripping them off.
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Well, technically, he's got a point. However, his delivery wasn't real tactful. I'm sure at some point, they figured this out the hard way, hence the long wait for the points to kick in.

In GC & MF's defense, there are ALOT of abusers of their return policies. Not to say you personally, but there's a lot of douchebags out there that use them to "rent" gear. Hell, if I worked there and dealt with a customer that returned everything they bought, I'd personally tell them to take their business elsewhere!
 
The only issue I see is lines about 'ripping them off'. That's not a phrase that should come out of a customer service rep's mouth. I get tons of email from MF, but they never call me.
 
technomancer said:
The sale reps also can't override the sytem. You can't use points until they post to your account, he just didn't want to say he didn't have the ability to do it
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napalmdeath said:
Well, technically, he's got a point. However, his delivery wasn't real tactful. I'm sure at some point, they figured this out the hard way, hence the long wait for the points to kick in.

In GC & MF's defense, there are ALOT of abusers of their return policies. Not to say you personally, but there's a lot of douchebags out there that use them to "rent" gear. Hell, if I worked there and dealt with a customer that returned everything they bought, I'd personally tell them to take their business elsewhere!
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Here's the thing, there's no harm in asking if something can be done especially when the points were going to post soon anyway. I talked to the guy yesterday evening. The points posted earlier today. Where in the scenario was I trying to rip them off? Seriously, what was I going to do overnight? Magic a return to them? All he had to do was say the system won't let me do it. But to assume then flat out state that I might try to rip them off... that's pretty far out of line.

I've given the company as a whole the benefit of the doubt that I was just connected to a crappy sales person. Once maybe even twice; okay it happens. But this has been a regular occurrence when I contact them. I get an email coupon code for whatever % off. It doesn't ever want to work when I put it in for an online order. I triple check that I didn't miss anything saying what I want is in the exclusions list or the coupon was expired. Nope all is good on that so I call. Then I get treated like garbage near every time. Then because I called my number is on the top of their list. So I get phone calls like it's my best bud wanting to give me the special deals. What happened the day before when you couldn't do shit for me and I was just trying to weasel something out of them? <-- Yes that's been said to me too.

This is recently when buying my ENGL Inferno. My prior experience with them was all pretty crap and I would have gone elsewhere, but MF was the only place that had one in stock. I should also mention that the price jumped $400 from the night before from $1900 to $2300. I wasn't overly happy with that but was going to suck it up since that's what I wanted. I called with my coupon that wasn't working online to see if they could get it to work. I had the sales lady tell me that she wasn't going to waste her time trying because the coupon wouldn't work. Then try to tell me they're not allowed to give discounts, if I want it I need to suck it up and pay full price. At that point I just hung up.

For gits & shiggles I called right back just to see what would happen. I did have ONE good experience here. This lady I talked to said Oh I notice the price went up from yesterday let me knock it back down to $1900. I was like I guess I won't be able to apply the coupon then. She came back asking what the % off was. I told her and she applied it no problem. I wonder what made her so special that she could do all that when others couldn't?

That was the one really good experience I had. Even though all my other dealings with sales people have been complete crap, I thought maybe they do have some decent sales people that will work with you. I don't know maybe I'm the stupid one for trying to give them one more chance.
 
Signs of going out of business. Most of the Music stores are gonna die and make way for the big names in the future.
 
I've found that I can get new gear with "the discount" cheaper than open box gear because they won't discount the open box gear. So the same guitar new can be discounted at a higher rate than the open box one. So open box gear never made sense to me.. they don't discount it much unless it is damaged.. and who wants damaged gear.
 
jchrisf said:
I've found that I can get new gear with "the discount" cheaper than open box gear because they won't discount the open box gear. So the same guitar new can be discounted at a higher rate than the open box one. So open box gear never made sense to me.. they don't discount it much unless it is damaged.. and who wants damaged gear.
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They'll send you the open box stuff anyway. I got a "new" eventide pedal for a discount but when I got it, I couldn't register it because it was already registered by the person who originally bought an returned it. lol Fortunately eventide fixed it for me. In the end, I didn't mind as I was happy with the price I got it for - even if it was a return item.

My experiences with MF have generally been good, and I generally look to buy from them if they have it in stock as they'll always give me at least 15% discount, plus the 8% in points. That's tough to beat. Used to be even better when they didn't charge sales tax.
 
mhenson42 said:
They'll send you the open box stuff anyway. I got a "new" eventide pedal for a discount but when I got it, I couldn't register it because it was already registered by the person who originally bought an returned it. lol Fortunately eventide fixed it for me. In the end, I didn't mind as I was happy with the price I got it for - even if it was a return item.

My experiences with MF have generally been good, and I generally look to buy from them if they have it in stock as they'll always give me at least 15% discount, plus the 8% in points. That's tough to beat. Used to be even better when they didn't charge sales tax.
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Yeah, when they started charging sales tax I went to Sweetwater because they were cheaper but soon after Sweetwater also started charging tax to I'm back to MF.

I bought a Kemper and they sent me a used one. The only good thing about it was I didn't like the Kemper and told them they sent me a used one and they took it back at no shipping cost to me.
 
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