we buy gear from several big box stores regularly - GC, MF, sam ash, AMS and sweetwater, but today when our new focusrite scarlett 2i2 arrived without a hiccup or any slow shipping, it was such a joy. i ordered it saturday, it just arrived at our front door.
of my last two orders from MF, one someone forgot to ship; eight days after they said it had shipped, i called and it hadn't. it did get here, though. the current order they sent via UPS mail innovations - that's where UPS picks it up, takes it to your area and transfers it to the post office. my box sat in kansas city at a UPS facility for about a week, and only just transferred to our local post office, and since USPS often has dismal tracking, who knows when it'll arrive? true, MF did sent our box, but they choose to use UPS mail innovations, which sucked even when it had another name.
and then there's often an over-45 minute wait to get customer service at MF, and i've discovered that often what they tell you is wrong - because each rep you ask the same question will give you a different answer. and then there was the recurring payment issue where their system wouldn't take my payment - no one could fix it. i finally did by removing any old payment methods.
don't get me wrong - if you're not in a rush, MF/GC often has stuff in stock that no one else has, you can get discounts you can't get from sweetwater and that are more reliable than the sam ash discounts, and MF/GC carries brands sweetwater doesn't have. and then there's the MF 8% rewards program.
but while they don't offer discounts, i can always get quick help without a wait from sweetwater by phone or email, if you ask 3 people the same question, you'll get the same answer from all of them and we've never had an issue of any sort with shipping (they use fedex, which has been very good for us), payment, tracking, changing account info or anything else (ignoring our first ever order there when our rep quit, leaving everything a mess - but that was years ago and never repeated). our rep does things like have the warehouse weigh several sealed boxes of the same cheap bass and send the lightest.
i know some people have had issues, but i have issues from the other stores fairly frequently - some rather amusing, but for years, sweetwater's been flawless. part of that is our rep, ben, but part seems to be sweetwater.
of my last two orders from MF, one someone forgot to ship; eight days after they said it had shipped, i called and it hadn't. it did get here, though. the current order they sent via UPS mail innovations - that's where UPS picks it up, takes it to your area and transfers it to the post office. my box sat in kansas city at a UPS facility for about a week, and only just transferred to our local post office, and since USPS often has dismal tracking, who knows when it'll arrive? true, MF did sent our box, but they choose to use UPS mail innovations, which sucked even when it had another name.
and then there's often an over-45 minute wait to get customer service at MF, and i've discovered that often what they tell you is wrong - because each rep you ask the same question will give you a different answer. and then there was the recurring payment issue where their system wouldn't take my payment - no one could fix it. i finally did by removing any old payment methods.
don't get me wrong - if you're not in a rush, MF/GC often has stuff in stock that no one else has, you can get discounts you can't get from sweetwater and that are more reliable than the sam ash discounts, and MF/GC carries brands sweetwater doesn't have. and then there's the MF 8% rewards program.
but while they don't offer discounts, i can always get quick help without a wait from sweetwater by phone or email, if you ask 3 people the same question, you'll get the same answer from all of them and we've never had an issue of any sort with shipping (they use fedex, which has been very good for us), payment, tracking, changing account info or anything else (ignoring our first ever order there when our rep quit, leaving everything a mess - but that was years ago and never repeated). our rep does things like have the warehouse weigh several sealed boxes of the same cheap bass and send the lightest.
i know some people have had issues, but i have issues from the other stores fairly frequently - some rather amusing, but for years, sweetwater's been flawless. part of that is our rep, ben, but part seems to be sweetwater.
