I have fond memories of our local music store in Lansing, Mi (Marshall Music) letting me beat on drums, play with keyboards, and generally be a nuisance there as a child. I'll never forget it, and 40 years later, I am still making major purchases there. I send other people there. What goes around comes around!
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OK, I get it. My bad.
- Thread starter Bullitt5135
- Start date
Even though they just opened a Guitar Center right next to it, I'll still swing by Marshall Music when I spend time back home. Also, Elderly Instruments was great - is that place still around?
I would not welcome people conducting personal business in my retail store. The owner and manager have nothing to gain and there is significant potential for liabilities.
For example: you drop the amp on someone's foot. The lawyers will definitely come after the business, and the owner's insurance will go through the roof.
For example: you drop the amp on someone's foot. The lawyers will definitely come after the business, and the owner's insurance will go through the roof.
Customers. There are customers to gain.
The lottery-like odds of you dropping an amp on their foot and them successfully suing you for it seem well worth the hundreds of new customers you could gain.
Every one of those customers is a potential seed for your future, they are far more than an $8 profit on a set of strings if you treat them right and they come back and tell their friends or bring them along.
That is how I discovered the good music stores. I wouldn't have known that Guitar Showcase was far better than Guitar Center if a musician friend didn't drag me there to memorize free tabs from the magazine rack. I never went back to GC again.
Retail is tough, I owned a mall store and a strip mall store and ran them at the same time. I had low foot traffic at the strip mall and quickly learned to see customers as seeds for the future, not profits for today. I didn't get enough chances to throw any away.
The courts are flooded with lawsuits that should've been avoided. Personal injury is only one of the potential nightmares possible in this situation. It happens, a lot. My wife works in insurance litigation, and the crazy things I hear from her are never ending. The owner/manager/whatever has no idea if either party will damage their property, commit fraud, or react hostilely if not satisfied with the personal transaction. If the amp gets damaged while it's present in the store, the owner may be liable. I seriously doubt that in a scenario like this that the music store would have their lawyers provide a disclaimer for OP and his party to sign.
If the owner or manager agreed to this, they'd be setting a precedent for more of this behavior to follow. OP may expect to conduct his business again on their premises, and other customers may witness this and expect to be granted similar rights.
While it's reasonable to think that the transaction could likely go through without incident, it's too risky to take that risk. I would consider someone nuts to allow something like this to take place.
However, I think that the Manager could have been more polite. Clients/customers often have no idea why businesses have various policies, and it falls onto the staff to enforce boundaries in a positive way.
I am kind of surprised that you would even ask. Quite literally - what would have happened if you plugged in the head and fried a cab? Would you have bought the cab? I doubt it.
I think they made the right call. It's the same call I would have made. Now if it had been a combo amp and no risk to the store or their merchandise I can see answering either way. But it's their call.
I think to your credit you were at least polite about the whole thing.
I think they made the right call. It's the same call I would have made. Now if it had been a combo amp and no risk to the store or their merchandise I can see answering either way. But it's their call.
I think to your credit you were at least polite about the whole thing.
- Sep 14, 2012
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- Disclosures
- Reverend Guitars ; SIT Strings ; Trickfish Amplifiers ; LK Straps ; Rattlesnake Cables
The way I would have handled that is to go in and say "Hey, I am meeting this guy about buying a head and I am not sure if it works. Can you guys do a quick check on it to see if it works?" Then pay whatever thy want to charge look the amp over.
I dont think it was out of line, a lot of you seem to be missing he said he had his own cab, cables and bass and ONLY wanted to use a wall socket. If they're nice then maybe he buys something, maybe he comes back instead of shopping online or GC? Worth the rsik of letting the guy plug an amp in to his own gear.
I remember when I was in my first moderately successful band. I was very young (about 16) but making money playing and wanted to upgrade to a pro instrument. On Denmark Street ( loads of guitar shops in central london) the staff were always rude as hell and would be reluctant to let me play anything until I let slip I had over a grand to burn on a bass a thwich point they'd be all over me and I would leave and not use their shop again. All those shops got such a bad rep that they lost huge amounts of business and got bought out (literally most of the street changed hands) and someone with decent customer service took over and they have improved. My point being in this age of cheap internet sales it never hurts to be nice to the customer. I found a shop that are good and friendly and I go there to get my stuff even if its a bit more pricey than online.
I remember when I was in my first moderately successful band. I was very young (about 16) but making money playing and wanted to upgrade to a pro instrument. On Denmark Street ( loads of guitar shops in central london) the staff were always rude as hell and would be reluctant to let me play anything until I let slip I had over a grand to burn on a bass a thwich point they'd be all over me and I would leave and not use their shop again. All those shops got such a bad rep that they lost huge amounts of business and got bought out (literally most of the street changed hands) and someone with decent customer service took over and they have improved. My point being in this age of cheap internet sales it never hurts to be nice to the customer. I found a shop that are good and friendly and I go there to get my stuff even if its a bit more pricey than online.
If the OP only needed an outlet, why go to a music store? I'm sure ANY store would be happy to have him conduct his personal business there. Just haul it all into Target and plug in. Buy a pair of socks to keep them happy.
You know, this is a fantastic idea, and one that shows not only creative thinking, but adaptability. Why not take it a step further? Set up in a retail store, put out a jar for tips, and see how long you can busk before the rent-a-cop kicks you out!
I used to do a running piece for my no-budget cable show in the nineties, called "how long 'till they kick me out?" I filmed a lot of people in various businesses, telling me I couldn't film them. I always told them, "but I already did," to which they usually raised their voice a few notches in their inevitable reply.
In a stroke of artistic genius, I lost every single bit of footage I had, (and I had quite a lot,) and so no one ever saw it. I've wandered off-topic again, haven't I?
With the availability of equipment online now, it isn't the stock that brings a person into a store, its the service and the vibe of the place. Back in the day you could be a jerk to customers and get away with it if you had the location or stock to make up for it. Now I can buy anything in your stock online for probably cheaper, so if you want me to be in your store you better be cool about it.
The OP may not have been buying something at that moment, but that does mean he didn't in the past or will in the future. If you tick him off then he won't buy from that store in the future.
If it was me I would have said that I just wanted to see what my head sounded like with some different cabs.
The OP may not have been buying something at that moment, but that does mean he didn't in the past or will in the future. If you tick him off then he won't buy from that store in the future.
If it was me I would have said that I just wanted to see what my head sounded like with some different cabs.
The reality is that lots of people will go in and try things out at the store and then buy them cheaper online no matter how nice the store manager is to them. I'm not saying customers shouldn't be treated with courtesy, but thinking that courtesy is going to trump cheaper online prices is naive.
The way the mgr saw it was risk vs reward. There was too much liability for too little potential benefit, that simple. You buying a cable and some strings vs. potentially thousands lost defending yourself in possible lawsuits, and that's just attorney fees. If you were a known customer who bought thousands worth of gear from me in the past, or a leader of a hot local band looking to move up in the world, I might help you out. Some random guy that may have bought something from me in the past? No.
They totally will; I do it all the time. (Well sort of. I try stuff out, realize it isn't what I'm looking for and then don't buy it.) But the world of a MI merchant is VERY tough right now and everything you can do to make a customer want to come back into your store helps. Is it the coolest thing in the world to go try out someone else's equipment at an MI store? Probably not, but at least the customer asked. People do that every day and don't say anything to the store. Retail means kissing the customer's @$$. It sucks something awful and I hated it, which is why I don't do it anymore.
Being nicer to customers won't trump lower prices, but if that's really the only arrow in your quiver you better use it. The only other option is to go $%& yourself and shut down your store because you can't possibly survive on emergency accessory sales or the non-existent margins of matching online prices.
I was never sued as a retail owner. Perhaps your world view is a bit biased by only seeing the litigation side and not seeing the customer side, and the real life ratio...
I hear all the time about how sue happy people are, yet I can't think of anyone I know who has been sued maliciously down here in Southern California - but of course our culture here frowns on that.
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I think the way the manager saw it was, 'I am not going to help anyone that doesn't help me first.'
I know that attitude, he didn't calculate odds of lawsuits versus potential profits - which would be highly in his favor. He got snotty because he was likely frustrated and tired of watching people walk in and out without buying anything - so here comes this guy who tells you straight up front that he isn't there to shop....
"Don't waste MY time' is the real attitude behind this.
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Think about it.
If the risk/reward ratio for a retail customer walking through a shop door was negative, there would be no retail. Anywhere....
People are too uptight and scared of each other, I think it is because of all these dire warnings floating around our culture that get amplified in the echo chamber, but that really aren't what people make them out to be.
If the risk/reward ratio for a retail customer walking through a shop door was negative, there would be no retail. Anywhere....
People are too uptight and scared of each other, I think it is because of all these dire warnings floating around our culture that get amplified in the echo chamber, but that really aren't what people make them out to be.
That's why they started painting logos and such on glass doors.
