RETAIL :: Sweetwater Sound Reviews
Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2006 3:06 pm
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Sweetwater Sound. World renowned as the best in the business when it comes to professional music equipment. Best equipment, best customer service, they'll do whatever it takes to make the customer happy. It's where the professionals buy their stuff. Let me tell you all a story about how I have received the absolute WORST EVER customer service experience.
Monday, August 14- My wife Emily, sets out for Sweetwater to pick me up a wireless guitar kit I've been looking at. I'm sure it's the one I want because I've been emailing my personal Sweetwater Engineer in the days prior to my purchase. This is how Sweetwater works. Once you make contact with them, they assign you a personal sales engineer. Anyway, he's told me everything about it and he's given me all the info I need to know that THIS IS IT. So Emily enters the Sweetwater facility, and stands inside where the *edit* female receptionists ignore her for nearly 30 minutes. She exclaims over and over again "Can somebody please help me, I JUST WANT TO BUY SOMETHING. I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT IT IS. SOMEBODY HELP ME!" The receptionists are friendly and helpful to any male that walks by, but are giving Emily the silent treatment. Finally, she is able to summons the help of a male employee that is on his way out of work for the night. He points her in the right direction to getting my device. She pays CASH $201.37 for this thing. Finally, she gets in her car, and starts to head home. On the drive home, some dipshit kid ignores his responsibility to yield a left turn at a green light and pulls his sh*tty rust bucket right out in front of Emily. Her new car which she loved dearly (and only had for a month) is totaled and she is hurting badly with bruises and a broken wrist. Luckily she is alive and not seriously injured.
Wednesday, August 16- For the first time in this turned hectic week I get a chance to play with my new wireless device. I take everything out of the box, read the instructions, and get set to play away. First thing I notice is that the unit is tuned to a fixed frequency. That means that the wireless device that connects to my bass talks to the wireless unit at the amplifier on only one fixed channel. I can't change it. More advanced units let you select different channels in case of interference problems. I specifically asked my sales engineer if this device I was going to get was "selectable frequency", and not "fixed frequency." He assured me that this was "selectable" and not "fixed." That's one of the features that sold me on this particular unit. Anyhow, I'm willing to look past that misinformation and try out the unit anyway. I try to proceed to hook up everything, but something isn't right. I can't make the connection from my bass to my wireless body pack transmitter. I read through the instructions again just to make sure I'm not being an idiot....Surely I must be overlooking something. Nope. Something in this package is missing and/or incorrect. Damn. OK. Well I guess I will drive over there and see if they will exchange it for the right thing. I contact my sales engineer and he is not in on this day, but his assistants will be glad to help me with anything I need. OK. So I get to Sweetwater, head toward the showroom and find his assistant. I tell him that something isn't right with this. I take it all out of the box and show him my problem, and he acknowledges that yes indeed, something isn't right. He gets on his little computer online database and starts typing something. I'm thinking he's looking to see where to locate the right part. WRONG! He says "well we can get you this better unit for $200 more. We also have such and such unit for $400 more." Look, I don't want a more expensive unit. I want the CORRECT version of what you guys already sold me- what I thought I was getting. After he gets this idea through his head, he sets back to the warehouse to find the right part. What do ya know, THEY DON'T HAVE IT! He can overnight it, but since I'm there so late in the day it's not going to come in until Friday (2 days from this point). Although very upset, I agree that I'll excercise a little more patience and give it a try and wait for the correct cord to be shipped in. At this point I'm more than disappointed with my Sweetwater experience. It's already been bad enough for me to never want to deal with them again.
Friday, August 18- My engineer calls me and lets me know the cord is in. YEAH! I'm excited. I'm well on my way to wireless freedom. I can do some real Michael Anthony sh*t up on stage now!! Woohoo!!!! I set out to Sweetwater (trip #3 for those of you counting at home, if you count my wife's initial trip). I get the cord from my engineer, and head home as fast as the law allows. I get everything hooked up and I'm ready to go. I start playing some and I'm not real happy with the sound quality. No, this thing really sounds like sh*t. I consult the manual, and try every possible setting and tweak under the sun. This thing sucks. I'm very disappointed. I know now that I have to return it to Sweetwater. So I pack it up and take it back to Sweetwater just about an hour later (trip #4). I walk in there and tell my sales engineer that this isn't working out for me. The sound is bad and at this point I'm so frustrated with this whole ordeal I just want a refund. He immediately cops an attitude with me. He didn't really say anything offensive or anything, it was just his body language and his exuberated poutiness at the fact that I'm returning something. Anyway, he scans the thing back into his computer and stuff, and then says "well I can't give you cash back, I'll have to mail you a check or put it to a credit card." I'm thinking since we PAID WITH CASH, WHY CAN WE NOT GET A CASH REFUND??? Anyway, I give him my bank/credit card to credit back this $201.37 to. He hands me the receipt and tells me that this could take a *COUPLE* days to show up in my account. Understandable I suppose, since this is late Friday afternoon. I'll give it till Monday, or Tuesday at the latest.
Friday, August 25- It's been a week since I've had any encounter with Sweetwater. Emily and I are out shopping and she makes a routine call to the bank to check the account balance. When she hangs up, she has a very disturbed look on her face. I know something is wrong. "Sweetwater never credited that $200 back to our account" she says. It's been a week and they still haven't credited the $200 to our account. In fact our bank said the transaction wasn't even pending. I swear, I saw smoke coming out of her ears, she was so mad. She raced home at about 250 mph and immediately called Sweetwater to ask them what the hell was going on. "Well," he said, "we're like...uh still checking the unit to uh..see if it's like in good condition and stuff so we can resell it. We can't credit your account until we check it." OKAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY. IT HAS BEEN 7 DAYS- HOW LONG SHOULD IT TAKE FOR YOU MORONS TO CHECK IT? Forget about the fact that, when I returned the item initially, he didn't mention they had to check it before crediting the account. I even offered at the time of the return to open the box and show him that everything was there. He declined at the time, saying that would not be necessary. Anyhow, after convincing him on the phone that we were completely dissatisfied with his answer, he NOW agreed to try to expedite the refund. He consults the accounting department and calls us back later to tell us that the best he can do is get us a check on Monday or Tuesday. That's 10-11 days after the return. That's where we stand now. Still waiting for this check. Which by the way, I will have to make an unprecedented *5th* trip to Sweetwater to pick up. Is that not the most ridiculous crock of sh*t ever? These guys are supposed to be THE GO-TO COMPANY for top quality equipment and and excellent customer service experience. I've seen neither.
For all of you reading this...musicians, loved ones of musicians...PLEASE OH PLEASE NEVER EVER EVER CONSIDER BUYING ANYTHING FROM SWEETWATER SOUND. Please take your business elsewhere. This experience shows me that because I'm not a big shot going in there to buy $6000 worth of equipment, they don't give a sh*t about my business. Well guess what Sweetwater, someday I WILL want to buy that $7500 keyboard and that new fretless bass. Guess what company I WON'T be buying them from.
bassjones wrote:I'm highly skeptical of that entire account. And since I know one of those receptionists personally, I think "bimbo" is highly inappropriate.
So just because you know someone there personally, it's not possible for someone else to have a bad experience?bassjones wrote:I'm highly skeptical of that entire account. And since I know one of those receptionists personally, I think "bimbo" is highly inappropriate.