I am not owning an AC bass - but I went through the great experience of customer service offered by Roger Sadowsky and his crew, and I am a working at a large service-focused company. I know a thing or two about treating customers, the pitfalls involved and how to 'behave' when somebody is unhappy with the things that my company does.
I think this is what I learned so far:
There is no natural link between the talent to build great instruments and the ability to apply rigorous quality control and customer focus. We seemingly just see a good example for that. Great if you are able to build perfect basses. But you need to invest an extraordinary amount of energy and focus in order to keep up good quality each and every time you ship an instrument. This is the hard part: Not building some good basses, but making sure that each and every instrument is as close to perfection as possible. And the funny thing: The same is true for customer interaction.
If you really treat every customer as if he/she was the very first customer of your small start-up business, you probably are doing the right thing. The saying goes that you've got no second chance to make a first impression. Now, especially for the boutique bass builder (but also for every service provider), every customer, even after a long track record of business successes, is as important as the first one.
If you have a sound business judgement, you know that it's worth nothing to "be right". Fix your customers problem. Or refund without complaint. Never be unfair or accuse, because nobody is interested in that - but every potential customer really wants to know how you treat the other, now unsatisfied, unhappy, complaining customer.
The fundamental misunderstanding of Jimmy, imho, was that he thought the public here on talkbass would be in the position of a somewhat "objective judge".
Wrong.
The public interest here was focused on another thing: "What if I was the unhappy customer? What would it feel like to be in his shoes?"
And what a great opportunity this would have been for Jimmy to build up great reputation by simply fixing things, refunding, and being a really nice partner to deal with.
But instead, Jimmy imho stated that the complaint was not justified, that the complaining person might have been manipulating pictures, and that the customer was not right.
Bad idea, because it gives me a vivid impression what could happen if I once became an unhappy customer of AC. I guess that I'd rather not be a customer at all. No, thanks, too risky.
It does not matter what "really" happened. All that matters is the tonality that Jimmy used for his reply. Nobody cares if he was "objectively" right or wrong. All that matters is that he communicated in a very unprofessional way just when it would have done wonders to simply let go of "being right". Solve your customers problem, and don't make the customer look bad (in public or in the mirror). Never try to be right, except in front of a judge (and even there, it's not always the best idea)
Building skills, energy and drive to constantly achieve great quality, and management / customer care / communication skills simply do not correlate automatically.
We knew that, now we know even better.
Do I believe that most AC basses are great instruments? Sure.
Do I believe that AC needs to re-think the way they treat unhappy customers? You bet.
It takes years to build up credibility, and only hours and a message or two to severely damage it. How sad.
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