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Problem with Kalium strings?
- Thread starter snake23
- Start date
Those posts are from a couple of years ago, I ordered strings last year and didn't have a problem.
Really sucks cause those are the only strings that I like on my Dingwall.
The answer is yes, looking at their Facebook page. Recently, it seems that those who are unhappy are getting their strings roughly a month from order, and are not getting replies to their enquiries.
There is no excuse for not being open about what's going on and not managing customer expectations. However, if it helps at all: Kalium became a 1-man company a year or so ago when Chris left. Skip has been very busy with website work (which Chris used to do), and was recently ill for 2 months. Again to be clear, i do not mean this as an excuse, only to inform to help customers.
I suspect what is happening is that because customers are still expecting a fast service they become concerned after a week or so and email to enquire. This is probably causing an overload of enquiry emails, causing many to not be answered.
Skip is an excellent and extremely innovative designer and engineer, in my opinion the best in the guitar string industry, but i think he needs a partner to deal with communication with customers and some other aspects of the business.
There is no excuse for not being open about what's going on and not managing customer expectations. However, if it helps at all: Kalium became a 1-man company a year or so ago when Chris left. Skip has been very busy with website work (which Chris used to do), and was recently ill for 2 months. Again to be clear, i do not mean this as an excuse, only to inform to help customers.
I suspect what is happening is that because customers are still expecting a fast service they become concerned after a week or so and email to enquire. This is probably causing an overload of enquiry emails, causing many to not be answered.
Skip is an excellent and extremely innovative designer and engineer, in my opinion the best in the guitar string industry, but i think he needs a partner to deal with communication with customers and some other aspects of the business.
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I know a string retailer that offered to help with distribution 3 years ago or so when they had delivery and communications issues but they turned it down. Maybe time for them to re-think?
If the guy is truly having health issues and some other problems I can totally understand that. If that's the case and it's going to take a month to get strings them there should be a disclaimer on the website saying orders will be filled but it may take up to a month. I have a recording session in two weeks and I don't know what I'm going to do for strings now.
It's a shame because all my past dealings with the company have been good.
It's a shame because all my past dealings with the company have been good.
Not sure what gauges you like, but these are in stock:
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This has probably been resolved by now, but I had a problem earlier in the year with an order that hadn't been fulfilled, and it turned out that they had been waiting for a response from me to an email (which much have gotten caught by my spam filter) about a potential problem with one particular long-scale string breaking at the tuning peg. Apparently there is (or was) an automatic flag on orders with any long-scale strings to make sure it wouldn't be a problem. Skip called me to sort it out and I had my strings a few days later. I've been buying from them for several years and that's the only remotely negative experience I've had.
Skip told me about health problems too. he has $1000 of my deposit that he won't give me back until he sells a bass that I cancelled buying after twice the said build time had elapsed in april. By July he had not posted it for sale on either the website or the facebook page. I posted it and he did copy the post and share it on the facebook page. Never has posted on website and said that costs money. How much money does it cost to have potential customers spreading the word that he doesn't hold up his end of the build process. I can't get my money back until the bass sells and he won't advertise it. highly frustrating and bad business practice
dickwagor, i read your reddit thread on this issue. Some points to consider:
It is very common for builds to take longer than expected, and Skip was ill for a long time, so there was a valid reason for the delay.
So i think it was probably a mistake for you to cancel buying it. But anyway, putting that aside ...
From your reddit thread it seems that you will get your deposit back in 2 to 3 weeks. It seems lucky that you wil get it back at all, deposits are usually non-returnable if a buyer backs out, that is partly point of having them.
So having to wait for the bass to sell before gettng the deposit back is very reasonable. Using the words "won't give back" suggests he is doing something wrong, not at all.
It is unreasonable to expect a company to invest the time, effort and cost of modifying their website to advertise this bass, for your personal benefit, when you backed out of the order. He was right to refuse to do this.
He did reproduce your post on the Kalium FB page (and i then made a post on a guitar forum about this bass to try to help get it sold, to help you). So "he won't advertise it" is untrue.
You suggest that you made a 'Beware Kalium' thread on reddit primarily for this reason: "my issue is the bass has never been offered for sale on his website" this seems unreasonable and unjustified.
However, the above paragraph is actually somewhat irrelevant, because this bass was actually already being advertised on the website: The website promotes Quake basses for sale, the bass you ordered was not secondhand and did not require a separate section on the website. The next person who wants a Quake bass of matching specifications will be sold the one you ordered. I expect anyone who wants a Quake bass, of any specification, would be told about the one you ordered so that they can consider it, because Skip would obviously be very keen to have a buyer for it.
Your Paypal resolution states "he has not advertised the instrument at all on his website, so there is no way anyone knows the bass is for sale." this is untrue, it is advertised in the post on the Kalium FB page which probably gets more views than the website.
I see on reddit that the bass has now sold, this is good news for you, i hope you get your deposit in a few weeks time as suggested.
Also to be clear, i am not pretending Kalium has no customer service issues, they do, and some of your other complaints may well be justified.
It is very common for builds to take longer than expected, and Skip was ill for a long time, so there was a valid reason for the delay.
So i think it was probably a mistake for you to cancel buying it. But anyway, putting that aside ...
From your reddit thread it seems that you will get your deposit back in 2 to 3 weeks. It seems lucky that you wil get it back at all, deposits are usually non-returnable if a buyer backs out, that is partly point of having them.
So having to wait for the bass to sell before gettng the deposit back is very reasonable. Using the words "won't give back" suggests he is doing something wrong, not at all.
It is unreasonable to expect a company to invest the time, effort and cost of modifying their website to advertise this bass, for your personal benefit, when you backed out of the order. He was right to refuse to do this.
He did reproduce your post on the Kalium FB page (and i then made a post on a guitar forum about this bass to try to help get it sold, to help you). So "he won't advertise it" is untrue.
You suggest that you made a 'Beware Kalium' thread on reddit primarily for this reason: "my issue is the bass has never been offered for sale on his website" this seems unreasonable and unjustified.
However, the above paragraph is actually somewhat irrelevant, because this bass was actually already being advertised on the website: The website promotes Quake basses for sale, the bass you ordered was not secondhand and did not require a separate section on the website. The next person who wants a Quake bass of matching specifications will be sold the one you ordered. I expect anyone who wants a Quake bass, of any specification, would be told about the one you ordered so that they can consider it, because Skip would obviously be very keen to have a buyer for it.
Your Paypal resolution states "he has not advertised the instrument at all on his website, so there is no way anyone knows the bass is for sale." this is untrue, it is advertised in the post on the Kalium FB page which probably gets more views than the website.
I see on reddit that the bass has now sold, this is good news for you, i hope you get your deposit in a few weeks time as suggested.
Also to be clear, i am not pretending Kalium has no customer service issues, they do, and some of your other complaints may well be justified.
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There‘s no need to defend these guys. Kalium is a great company that always keeps their customers up to date!
You'll see by the posted date, this is now July 2020 and I can confirm that Kalium is still shipping strings 1-2 months after they are ordered.
My first order was November 16th, 2019. My strings arrived 7-8 weeks later. They came in the same package as my second order. Which I placed on Nov 27th, 2019. I have made 2 more orders since. One on January. The other in May during their COVID-19 sale. My January order took about 6 weeks. My May 14th order still isnt here. It's been 6 weeks though. The strings I ordered through Kalium could just as easily been filled by LaBella. But, when I ordered, LaBella was shut down because of COVID-19. Sadly, even if I ordered them from LaBella, I would have them by now. Had I known how backed up Kalium was going to be, I would have saved them the time it takes to deal with me and gone elsewhere.
I love their selection of strings. 2 of my orders were for 7 string basses I bought. I wanted a lower note on them. Not a higher note. So, going with a 168 and a 208 made sense. I'll be getting a 10 string guitar in a few weeks. I want a custom set for that. However, given how long it takes Kalium to fulfill orders, I hesitate to use them again, unless I must. Then, I will only order the strings I need to get from them and do it in bulk so I have them ready when I need them. I will also have to order them MONTHS in advance.
Sad thing is, I teach business school classes and use Kalium as an example of what NOT to do if you are a small business. By way of comparison, Kurt from Rondo Music will get back to me within a day or 2. He keeps his clients up to date with everything. That is an example of what a company SHOULD do. If Kalium is having issues with production and management of it's products, there are plenty of students near Kalium's Headquaters that could do an internship and help out for little to no wage. If Kalium is now a "one-man" operation and he thinks he can do it all, clearly he can't and needs to swallow his pride and hire more people. If he has a team. He needs to grow his team. I'm sure there are plenty of News outlets that would love to tell the story of a small company that continues to grow during COVID-19. The free publicity would be well worth the time.
My first order was November 16th, 2019. My strings arrived 7-8 weeks later. They came in the same package as my second order. Which I placed on Nov 27th, 2019. I have made 2 more orders since. One on January. The other in May during their COVID-19 sale. My January order took about 6 weeks. My May 14th order still isnt here. It's been 6 weeks though. The strings I ordered through Kalium could just as easily been filled by LaBella. But, when I ordered, LaBella was shut down because of COVID-19. Sadly, even if I ordered them from LaBella, I would have them by now. Had I known how backed up Kalium was going to be, I would have saved them the time it takes to deal with me and gone elsewhere.
I love their selection of strings. 2 of my orders were for 7 string basses I bought. I wanted a lower note on them. Not a higher note. So, going with a 168 and a 208 made sense. I'll be getting a 10 string guitar in a few weeks. I want a custom set for that. However, given how long it takes Kalium to fulfill orders, I hesitate to use them again, unless I must. Then, I will only order the strings I need to get from them and do it in bulk so I have them ready when I need them. I will also have to order them MONTHS in advance.
Sad thing is, I teach business school classes and use Kalium as an example of what NOT to do if you are a small business. By way of comparison, Kurt from Rondo Music will get back to me within a day or 2. He keeps his clients up to date with everything. That is an example of what a company SHOULD do. If Kalium is having issues with production and management of it's products, there are plenty of students near Kalium's Headquaters that could do an internship and help out for little to no wage. If Kalium is now a "one-man" operation and he thinks he can do it all, clearly he can't and needs to swallow his pride and hire more people. If he has a team. He needs to grow his team. I'm sure there are plenty of News outlets that would love to tell the story of a small company that continues to grow during COVID-19. The free publicity would be well worth the time.
I hadn't ordered strings in probably 6 years as I was on gigging hiatus, and all things bass in general. I ordered a standard drop tune 4 string set, plus an extra single low B in the gauge I like, and it definitely took some prodding to get the strings in. I was given the "lost at the post office" line, which okay, may or may not be right given the climate but I never had these issues in the past, that's for sure. I need to order a new set like ASAP but have a question, so wondering when I'll hear back on that. Will say, Skip gave me a call when I informed him the strings were missing and they shipped the next day, so that's good at least.
But they definitely could be having the issue of scaled too big, too fast, and that happens all the time. I manage my tax practice that way- I only grow and take clients nowadays I WANT to work with, it's not worth the time required to mess with smaller accounts that could possibly delay interactions with my bigger ones. Hope he gets it together, they're the only strings I like anymore...!
But they definitely could be having the issue of scaled too big, too fast, and that happens all the time. I manage my tax practice that way- I only grow and take clients nowadays I WANT to work with, it's not worth the time required to mess with smaller accounts that could possibly delay interactions with my bigger ones. Hope he gets it together, they're the only strings I like anymore...!
Placed an order for strings with Kalium on July 10th, got them today, skip was cool to talk to and very helpful in picking out which strings he thought I would like the best (been on a playing hiatus for a few years and just now getting back to it), got them today. Wouldn’t say that’s even close to an excessive wait time.
It took a while to get my strings. But, eventually I did. If you strings are common, they might be quicker.
I ordered a set of bass strings from Octave4plus.com. Their delay is about the same time but, I can email them and get a response. For that reason, I plan on ordering more strings from O4P. Kalium can KMA goodbye and FO!!!
I ordered a set of bass strings from Octave4plus.com. Their delay is about the same time but, I can email them and get a response. For that reason, I plan on ordering more strings from O4P. Kalium can KMA goodbye and FO!!!
@Nev375 You and me both!
I put in an order on 9/18 and received tracking on 9/26. Unfortunately, it's still in "Pre-Shipment" so they just printed one off and haven't yet shipped. I sent questions through their site asking for updates, but nothing.
I'm not in a rush for them as I am using Daddario Pro Steels on my 5'er and actually really like them but I really want to try a balanced set with a tapered > .140 B string.
This will be my first and last order with Kalium. There is really no excuse for this.
I put in an order on 9/18 and received tracking on 9/26. Unfortunately, it's still in "Pre-Shipment" so they just printed one off and haven't yet shipped. I sent questions through their site asking for updates, but nothing.
I'm not in a rush for them as I am using Daddario Pro Steels on my 5'er and actually really like them but I really want to try a balanced set with a tapered > .140 B string.
This will be my first and last order with Kalium. There is really no excuse for this.
Email Jason at Fretnation.com. I get custom sets made from single Pro Steals and Nicole XLs from him.
Next time for sure. I've dealt with Jason a few times in the past, and have never been disappointed.
