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Sweetwater and Guitar Center Calling

#61
probably 15 or so years ago I bought a budget-priced studio desk, some monitors, and some other miscellaneous stuff from Sweetwater over the course of about 6 months. I got a call from my sales rep once a month for about a year, then it stopped after I hadn't made another major purchase. It was pretty clear from my purchase history that I was setting up a home recording studio, so it didn't bother me that they called. I figured I was in a target demographic since there can be much gear involved in recording.
 
#64
I don't mind it. My guy took care of a minor issue with an order, had excellent service and even included a cool Sweetwater shirt for the minor delay!

I told my guy Im on the phone all day at work so afterwards I often don't even answer if I know it's family calling. There is only 1 person who would call me from Ft Wayne so he's never getting a pickup unless I was already about to call.

I told him feel free to call me whenever you need to, heck dial my phone up when you just need to look busy if you want you don't even need to leave an intelligible voicemail, I get it, but if it's a quota day and you really need to drum up sales- expect me not to answer.
In return I'll reach out to my guy when it's time to order.

I know what it's like to have quotas to meet, and I know me Getting mad at him won't change what his bosses force him to do, he isn't calling me for his health.



Now as a sales guy who used to have to call people thst specifically requested I call, and then started screaming at me for calling them, you don't owe the sales guy a conversation. They have to call and be nice and try to get you to buy. You don't have to answer or be patient and listen, you just politely ignore them or answer and say please don't call me I'll call you, then just hang up.
Salesmen are required to "overcome your objection". If you want to be nice and save time - just hang up on them. I know it seems rude. But to a sales guy it isn't so bad, who cares, next. Don't let it stress you out to decline and hang up. It's ok to feel bad if you're taking out your own stresses by treating someone else poorly, but hanging up is not treating them poorly.
 
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#66
I've bought a lot of stuff from both GC and SW, going back to the '70s for GC. SW calls me once to see how I like my thingy, did it arrive on time, packaging - common sense customer relations stuff. My "Sales Rep" calls a couple of times a year to say "Hi". I say "Hi". They email me every day, but if I wanted them to stop I'm sure they would. Or I could block them, NBD in either case.

GC, I don't think I've EVER gotten a phone call from. They even drop me from their e-mail list if I don't buy something often enough!

The most annoying thing about both places is their snail mail catalog thing. On the other hand, my nephew works for the Post Office, so I guess it helps keep him employed.....
 
#68
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#69
Sweetwater is following an older style of customer service business model that doesn't always work well with everybody, but used to be the norm and expected. It's still very standard for some age groups and parts of the country.

It doesn't bug me too much, because I know that if I ever have problems with an order, there's an actual human I can talk to. Have you ever tried to call Amazon?
 
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#70
I don't mind when I get a call from my guy at Sweetwater, and I am typically the reclusive "leave me alone" type. He knows that I'm in the live sound business and have wholesale accounts for most of that stuff. He also plays bass and is a nice guy. Occasionally, especially when my wholesale price is basically the same as the price from Sweetwater, I will take advantage of their financing and get myself a toy for my bass gigs. Typically a pedal or something, but I've also purchased my personal X32 Rack and SD8 stage box from them just because I wanted to spread the payments out. I also email him pictures occasionally when I get something awesome that they don't sell, like my Sadowsky bass, he was super jealous. He's a nice guy and really knowledgable, unlike most everyone that I've ever run into in a guitar center.

If I'm busy or not in the mood, I just don't answer. No sweat.
 
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#71
Much ado about nothing.

It's not hard to decline the call when you see Fort Wayne Indiana on your caller ID. I don't believe the OP's story about asking to be taken off of their call list and still getting called. Sweetwater is a reputable company that's putting an emphasis on customer service after the sale. They'll jump through whatever hoops you dictate to make the sale look good on their end.
 
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#72
I hear you! They seem to assume some connection exists with me as their internet customer that just flat out doesn't exist and isn't wanted. Yet I don't care enough to take their calls and tell them to go away. I do feel obligated to taunt them on the internet though.
 
#73
I was actually sad a few weeks ago when I got a new sales rep from Sweetwater. RIP Austin Williams. (Pretty sure he's still alive and just not working for them anymore)

Really love their customer service. If they have it in stock, I buy from Sweetwater.
 
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#74
[skyraider] said:
I've recently bought some fairly expensive gear from both Sweetwater and Guitar Center. Both of which have decided to start calling customers after purchases, which I am finding very annoying.

So far Sweetwater is easily the worst offender, basically calling me every day for weeks after I bought an American Jazz from them. It was bad enough to where I ended up blocking the number. They had sent an email to me asking me to take a survey and I just told them straight up that if they didn't stop with the calling I'd be blocking them and never buy from Sweetwater again. I also sent an email to a bunch of email addresses they had included with the survey asking them to stop. I got three or four more calls from them and blocked.

That was a little while back. Flash forward to yesterday I made another big-ticket purchase from Guitar Center day before yesterday. I get an email from some "Gear Advisor" at GC telling me they would be calling me and emailing me. I had gone to GC because I wanted to support my local GC, but also because they hadn't been calling me, like SW. I replied to the email saying simply "Please do no contact me unless I request assistance."

What is up with this new stupidness?? I know they are hoping to sell me more gear and hoping that I'll be thinking highly of their after the sale support I guess, but really?
Click to expand...

Yeah, Sweetwater is BIG on their follow ups lol! The emails, the calls. My wife will say, "Someone's calling you from (206) area code." I'll say, " Oh, that's my boyfriend from Sweetwater" lol. He must really like me! Calls often, writes me emails! His name was Evan. After awhile Evan stopped calling. Then recently purchased a new case and some strings from Sweetwater. Now I got a new boyfriend calling and writing, leaving messages. His name is Will.
I don't know if I'm over Evan yet lol!
 
#75
i went through this with sweetwater, with the same results.. the phone calls and emails continued non-stop. I blocked the numbers, and marked the emails as spam. Problem solved.

guitar center, musicians friend, and zzounds allowed me to opt out of emails, and, outside of calls to tell me an order is ready to pick up, they've never called me.
 
#76
[skyraider] said:
Actually your "Um.... Just don't answer?" struck me as rather insulting.
Click to expand...

This kind of sums up how your first post reads too. You come off to me, and I'm sure many others, as someone looking to be upset by things.

I spend a lot of money at Sweetwater. The first time I did it, they gave me a rep. He called me after my purchase. He calls me about every 4-6 months if I don't ask him for something. I actually seriously doubt that you asked them to stop calling you, and if you did it was likely only once and extremely impolitely. Sometimes people make a mistake setting the do not call flag. And if you were rude enough, someone on the other end may have made that mistake on purpose.
 
#77
[skyraider] said:
I've recently bought some fairly expensive gear from both Sweetwater and Guitar Center. Both of which have decided to start calling customers after purchases, which I am finding very annoying.

So far Sweetwater is easily the worst offender, basically calling me every day for weeks after I bought an American Jazz from them. It was bad enough to where I ended up blocking the number. They had sent an email to me asking me to take a survey and I just told them straight up that if they didn't stop with the calling I'd be blocking them and never buy from Sweetwater again. I also sent an email to a bunch of email addresses they had included with the survey asking them to stop. I got three or four more calls from them and blocked.

That was a little while back. Flash forward to yesterday I made another big-ticket purchase from Guitar Center day before yesterday. I get an email from some "Gear Advisor" at GC telling me they would be calling me and emailing me. I had gone to GC because I wanted to support my local GC, but also because they hadn't been calling me, like SW. I replied to the email saying simply "Please do no contact me unless I request assistance."

What is up with this new stupidness?? I know they are hoping to sell me more gear and hoping that I'll be thinking highly of their after the sale support I guess, but really?
Click to expand...
GC has been doing this for at least a decade. Salesmen cultivate relationships with their customers by calling them occasionally. This is common in commissioned selling of big ticket items, as far as I know.
 
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#78
[skyraider] said:
I've recently bought some fairly expensive gear from both Sweetwater and Guitar Center. Both of which have decided to start calling customers after purchases, which I am finding very annoying.

So far Sweetwater is easily the worst offender, basically calling me every day for weeks after I bought an American Jazz from them. It was bad enough to where I ended up blocking the number. They had sent an email to me asking me to take a survey and I just told them straight up that if they didn't stop with the calling I'd be blocking them and never buy from Sweetwater again. I also sent an email to a bunch of email addresses they had included with the survey asking them to stop. I got three or four more calls from them and blocked.

That was a little while back. Flash forward to yesterday I made another big-ticket purchase from Guitar Center day before yesterday. I get an email from some "Gear Advisor" at GC telling me they would be calling me and emailing me. I had gone to GC because I wanted to support my local GC, but also because they hadn't been calling me, like SW. I replied to the email saying simply "Please do no contact me unless I request assistance."

What is up with this new stupidness?? I know they are hoping to sell me more gear and hoping that I'll be thinking highly of their after the sale support I guess, but really?
Click to expand...


You must have newbie for a sales engineer at Sweetwater. My guy makes ONE call and then follows it up with an email and that's it. I didn't have to tell him. I still get their regular company emails, but that's infrequent. However, GC is another animal. No phone calls, but it seem like i get an email from a different GC person every
3-5 days. This is because I have one store down the street and I go in there every so often to get strings, cords and such. But that's ok on the emails. I know where the delete button is.:smug:
 
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#80
A couple weeks ago I got an email from Musician's Friend, specifically from a woman introducing herself as my new sales rep. I buy something from MF maybe 2 or 3 times year. I politely told her that I know it's just her job, but she should never email me again and to not even think about calling me. I got an equally polite email back and that was the end of it.....so far.
 

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