Teenage Engineering ditched by Guitar Guitar

General
#1

Visited Guitar Guitar Glasgow premises last week to ask when new POs would arrive to join the stock of old POs. I’m a regular customer and have given them plenty of business.

One week later, not even the courtesy of a phone call.

Visited again today and complained about lack of the courtesy of any response - even one in the negative.

Despite being blooming polite about it:

  • no apology
  • couldn’t care less attitude
  • won’t be bothering to get new POs
  • old POs at reduced price
  • when I pushed, the chap said they were no longer interested in selling Teenage Engineering kit

I left in disappointment. Local retailers give off about being marginalised by online stores, so you try to support them, and (in this case) this is how they respond. Meh.

CB

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#2

Guitar Center is struggling in general…this from last year:

https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/industry_news/guitar_center_on_way_to_declare_bankruptcy_new_document_reveals.html


#3

Customer service is at an all time low. There is this comic book store in town. Really nice, huge, has everything. Walked around for an hour an none of the three employees helped me. They just ignored me and talked behind the desk and occasionally chatted up regular customers. I was going to drop possibly hundred of dollars on comics and toys, but after walking around with no service I decided to go to the smaller comic store. They don’t have as much, but the guy that owns the place is great. The kind of person you want to support.

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#4

I bought a used VoiceLive3 from them last year and it arrived in JUST a plastic dispatch bag! I got a little in the way of compensation but what kind of Muppet would ship something like that loose in a bag. Needless to say they lost my custom.

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#5

Unusual with guitar guitar glasgow. I had issues with Propellerhead balance and they sat with me, the laptop, their macbook, reason, ableton etc for over an hour to try and work through the problem. Rubadub, just round the corner from richer sounds, have stock (i believe) of the po’s (might just be the 10 series) I was in yesterday and picked up some patch leads and had a good old natter about TE stuff.

#6

I’ve nothing but praise for the Digital side of GuitarGuitar Glasgow.


Wanted to order online but didn’t want next day delivery as was out that day so wanted sunday delivery. Phoned the shop and talked to the manager who set up the whole purchase and phoned me back a few times to let me know the status of the order.
Couldn’t have been any more helpful.

Got to say the same about my local Red Dog Music store too. Couldn’t recommend these guys enough.
#7

Recently I went into GC looking for a reverb pedal, and the young woman hooked me up with a guitar and amp, and laid out several different choices she was fond of, and showed me how they worked. It was the most helpful anyone had ever been at that place, and I was shocked. Also, somehow their online ordering system messed up in my favor and I got a Moog Mother 32 WAY before I should have, as they were generally backordered across the entire globe. I wouldn’t have had a single nice thing to say about that crazy company up until these two recent incidents, but man, amazingly they have really come through for me lately. Normally they are the absolute worst for customer service compared to just about anywhere.

#8

The one flawless place (so far) is pmt.norwich. Never had a bad experience.

#9

Man these retailers are getting worse, I bought all 3 PO’s from Juno last Thursday at £54.99 each, on Monday I thought I’d check to see if they had the cases in stock, they didn’t, but I did notice that now they are selling the PO’s at £49 each, so thinking maybe they had made a mistake I asked for a partial refund of the £17.97 that I overpaid, given that it was only 2 working days earlier and that I have spent a lot of money with them, basically told nope. I will never buy from them again, I understand that after a product has been out a while they reduce prices, but after only a few days is taking the piss, also found out they did a similar thing with the OKGO Volca sample I bought from them in December, 2 weeks later £10 less.

A shame because I have spent thousands with them, basically 90% of my gear puchases, and had planned to get a Minilogue and Moog Mother from them as soon as they had them, it is not about the money but more that I feel fucked over, gouging early adopters for the sake of a few quid is not good business practice.

#10

Buy from me if you’re in the US!

http://www.interstatemusic.com/

::end shameless plug::

#11

Not sure if this is related, but just about every major music retailer in Australia has dropped TE recently, perhaps there is very little margin on their products?

#12

Red Dog music Edinburgh:

Absolutely brilliant when I bought my OP-1 from them. First class service. It’s the only thing I’ve ever bought there.
Tried to buy Roland Boutiques - two or three times they promised to phone me back and didn’t. They just made it too hard.

Guitar Guitar Glasgow:
Have bought a lot of stuff there. Audio interfaces, cases, pedal boards, tuners effects etc. Bought our guitarist a Gibson SG recently. Some of the guys I get on with quite well.
Tried to buy Roland Boutiques from them. The Roland rep told me he couldn’t get me the JP-08 in the first delivery. So I bought the lot elsewhere. Then on the release day, I get a phonecall from Guitar Guitar to tell me my JP-08 has arrived. One hand didn’t seem to know what the other was doing.
Today was a young gothic dude in glasses. Normally reasonably pleasant. But he just didn’t get that they’s done anything wrong. Made it very clear that he just couldn’t care less. Offered no apology. Offered no follow up.
I get the impression that the Guitar Guitar staff think they’re too cool for school.
I will never buy from them again.

Kenny’s Music Glasgow:
They see to understand what they need to do to compete with online retailers.
Guaranteed they would have all 3 Boutiques for me in the first delivery (I was a bit antsy about this as they were announced as a very limited edition). Fulfilled on the promise.
Bought a Roland KC-110 combo from them. Undercut the best online deal by a tenner to get my business (they had it anyway).
They’re my current local favourites.

Rub-A-Dub Glasgow
I’m undecided about them.
They stock some unusual stuff that’s otherwise hard to get.
But they fail to stock the more obvious stuff.
I’ve tried to buy an OP-1 and PO-20/PO-28 from them and they couldn’t find out when (or even if) they’d have them in stock.
They seem to overprice stuff, but then match online prices if asked. Perhaps puts some folk off even trying.

CC Music Glasgow
I kinda like wandering in there on a Saturday morning.
Friendly and feels a bit chaotic :slight_smile:
I’ve bought a Markbass combo and some pedalboard stuff from them in the past and they always give me a fair price.

Dawson’s Music Belfast
Tried to buy an OP-1 from them.
They wouldn’t reduce their price even to within £50 of what it was available for in many online stores at the time.
I don’t really take them too seriously.

Feel free to flame me. But I hope you recognise that I’m being honest and sticking to the facts of my own experiences.
Bottom line for me - many of the High Street retailers are helping to accelerate their own demise.

CB


#13
Customer service is at an all time low. There is this comic book store in town. Really nice, huge, has everything. Walked around for an hour an none of the three employees helped me. They just ignored me and talked behind the desk and occasionally chatted up regular customers. I was going to drop possibly hundred of dollars on comics and toys, but after walking around with no service I decided to go to the smaller comic store. They don't have as much, but the guy that owns the place is great. The kind of person you want to support.

Ugh. There was a book store here that was like that. It was a very old bookstore but for a while they had a really young staff who seemed to think they were only there to chat amongst themselves or with members of their too-smart-and-cool-for-the-rest-of-us club. They had an air of “if you have to ask a question, you’re not good enough to shop here. If you don’t already know exactly where something is, you shouldn’t be looking for it in the first place.”

#14

Love my local wargame store. The prices are fantastic, quite good selection, run/owned by the guy (younger veteran) and his wife, they host game nights every day they’re open and are open until midnight, it’s fantastic. They even discount a certain company “because they charge too much” lol. Even get coupons after spending X amount of money good for any next purchase. Any next, not just the very next, they encourage you to use it for a good one!

Ever since I found a local/established guitar shop that carries brands/models usually only found online I will never set foot in Guitar Center or Sam Ash again if I can help it. Wish their synth selection was similar.

I love Amazon, and I appreciate the fact that a lot of things have to be bought online, but places like ive described just make me happy.

#15

Totally with you @KrisM.


When-oh-when will physical stores realise that the world has changed forever.

A physical store’s ‘Unique Selling Point’ used to be merely that they had an item in stock.

Then when competing physical stores arrived, a store’s USP was that they had it in stock, at a better price and provided good service.

Now that all these factors are replicated all over the web,

Physical stores need to create different USPs - like those that @KrisM mentions.

If they don’t, then the clock is ticking for them. The offline-generation of the public are dying out, replaced by screen-agers.

CB
#16

It’s an infrastructure issue for me. Overheads on having a store on a decent location in town are far higher than a warehouse and web dev.

My mate works in one of the Glasgow stores (not mentioned) and they’ve had to sell a lot of stock with little or no margin. Customers come in test gear and then order from amazon or the like. When they have these conditions imposed it’s not surprising that late openings etc aren’t (yet) catered for.

No excuse for not being courteous and informative for customers though.

Fwiw rubadub often have tuition late at night. They ran a novation circuit “play” season recently.

#17

Had pretty good service from Rubadub Glasgow over the phone.

I bought my MicroGranny and BastlMidi from them.
When I had problems with the latter they sorted me out with a replacement pronto. Were always very helpful over the phone.

Their shop on the other hand is a different story. It’s a gear shop and a record shop so you get lots of DJ scenesters hanging around. Once I went to the shop and it was so busy and the music was so loud, had to shout at the guys to ask if they had OP-1 case or something.
Second time was pretty much as rammed with four to the floor blasting with groups of people standing nodding heads in time to the music so I literally walked in then out.

I guess the shop is more of a social club for the owners :wink:

#18

I’ve used Rubadub online a few times, and spoken to them on the phone. They were really good and genuinely interested in what I was doing with some of the things.

#19

I like going in to rubadub, but I really miss the music selection they used to have. I pretty much had a substitution to the Scottish/Glasgow hip hop section!!