Monday, January 19, 2015

Can't fix your internet problem

I HAD A great experience yesterday selling a nice guitar to a musician from Iowa. He'd been in Second String Music before trying out some of our Takamine and Blueridge guitars. He's a farmer and it's hard for him to drive the hour or so to Quincy. So he asked if he could come down on a Sunday afternoon.

Sundays are the only day we take off. But it's OK. It's all about making the customer is happy. So we met and he took some time to play more guitars, and he ended up buying a beautiful Takamine Pro Series guitar. Everybody went home happy.

While he was in the store, there was a knock on the door. It was a guy who'd also been in before and was driving by. He'd been interested in a nicer guitar, too. But he wasn't buying anything Sunday.

"Well, I liked your guitars but I found one cheaper online and I bought it off the internet," he said.

Wow.

"Now there's a crack in the body and I was wondering if you do repairs."

Wow. Wow. Triple wow. Or, in the words of the other young man who was strumming a guitar in the store, "That took a lot of stones."

There's more to the story but I'll stop here. It's not the first time I've heard a sorry story from a customer that bought their guitar online - I would never buy an acoustic guitar online, ever. If you are going to pay $400 to $3,000 (or more) on a nice solid-wood guitar, don't you want to see and play it first? We liken this to buying a car. No one buys a car without test driving it first or having a trusted friend test drive it, too. Maybe three or four test drives.

No Worries, Mon
You've saved a few bucks. Congrats.

What I'm taking away from yesterday is that going the extra mile to help a musician is worth it. We take pride in making sure we have great, playable and beautiful-sounding guitars. Your local small business thanks you and your local economy benefits greatly.

If you buy your instrument on the internet, we don't mind helping you out, but when you buy direct from us you have our personal guarantee that anything that goes wrong with it will be taken care of by us or the manufacturer directly.

No extra hoops or worries.

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