I have to admit, I'm a little annoyed.

[Bones]

I have been dealing with American Musical Supply since 2001 and have always been pretty happy with them. They are my go to online music retailer and I have spent over $20,000.00 with them on gear. never had a real problem and their shipping has always been reasonably swift.

Anyway, I ordered a new guitar and amp from them on Friday and paid $92 extra for two day shipping. Paid for everything and got an order confirmation and then got another confirmation saying that my order had shipped and was awaiting a tracking number. And that's what it still said yesterday. So I went on and did their online service chat and was told that it did ship but the site just had not updated the info, but the rig was on the way.

Last night the info still had not updated, so I went online and chatted again, this time the service rep told me that basically, they had a power outage Friday afternoon and they couldn't scan anything so they just quit for the day and left everything in the warehouse. he then told me that since I paid for 2-Day shipping that I should contact their customer service on Monday when there would be a real CS person there and that I should also contact Fed-Ex since I paid almost $100 and didn't get what I Paid for, Shipping-wise.

The things that grip me are:

1. They are very quick to process your payment and seem to be able to contact at will via phone or e-mail yet they are strangely silent when they are not actually providing the service I paid for.

2. In this day and age i can't even fathom that they don't have a back-up plan for power outages. seems they could have gotten some sort of logistical help from Fed-Ex and kept the wheels turning. Something, it just seems odd that they would just give up and leave everything for monday.

3.Why do I have to do anything about the $100 for 2-day shipping? Seems like they know I'm not getting this thing on time and they should just deal with it on their end, at the very least overnight it to me at their expense.

4. Why are there no actual CS reps who can deal with this on the weekend? They sell 24/7, they should have real CS reps 24/7.

Certainly not the end of the world, I have plenty of gear to mess around with, but I gotta say, I'm bit annoyed by the way this is going this time.

[Nick JD]

Oh, the (horrors) luxury of being a wealthy, disgruntled consumer!

I've set a place in my heart to quell your angst.

[Bones]

Originally Posted by Nick JD

Oh, the (horrors) luxury of being a wealthy, disgruntled consumer!

I've set a place in my heart to quell your angst.

I work 70+ hours a week, I figure I deserve a new piece of gear once in a while.

[RedTele58]

Deep breath. It'll be OK...

We all work hard. Sheist happens...

[oceanman2]

I'd be ticked too. I've had good luck with AMS and will use them again, but your experience doesn't speak well for their order management.

[oramac7891]

Bones, I see your frustration, but think that they are not terribly out of line. If an unexpected power outage stopped their process, they could not move on. For a company that ships things and handles calls ( all of this is now controlled or assisted by computers) you would prefer them to stop, rather than try to do things " manually" . If they had still done things the old way, your gear could have been shipped to the wrong place, and made you wait even longer.
Also, it is unrealistic to expect a company to have 24/7 customer support like you are requesting. They may not have the structure, or the capital available to do so. If they moved to that, the gear would go up in price.

I know you are frustrated, but I am sure if you call them Monday, they will try to make it right!

[Bones]

Originally Posted by RedTele58

Deep breath. It'll be OK...

We all work hard. Sheist happens...

You guys are funny, it has nothing to do with needing a deep breath or taking a chill pill. I state quite clearly that I'm aware it's not the end of the world and it's just an annoyance. However, i do feel that if you drop $1,500.00 on a purchase and they fail to provide the service you paid for for any reason, they should at least drop you a note explaining what's going on and agreeing to correct the situation. Not pretending nothing went wrong. Who does business like that?

[Bones]

Originally Posted by oramac7891

Bones, I see your frustration, but think that they are not terribly out of line. If an unexpected power outage stopped their process, they could not move on. For a company that ships things and handles calls ( all of this is now controlled or assisted by computers) you would prefer them to stop, rather than try to do things " manually" . If they had still done things the old way, your gear could have been shipped to the wrong place, and made you wait even longer.
Also, it is unrealistic to expect a company to have 24/7 customer support like you are requesting. They may not have the structure, or the capital available to do so. If they moved to that, the gear would go up in price.

I know you are frustrated, but I am sure if you call them Monday, they will try to make it right!

i shouldn't have to do anything. They know my gear and the gear of everyone else who had purchases going out on Friday is sitting on the floor in the warehouse. they should have come in on Saturday and moved the stuff out once the power was on. When I lose a day at work due to unforeseen circumstances, I make that time up and I'm not collecting money 24/7 like AMS does.

[Green Lantern]

If you make enough purchases online, unfortunate things, in some way, are eventually bound to happen. Not that I'm saying buying online is bad. In fact, I do it all the time, but chances are things will eventually go wrong somehow with a transaction. That, however, doesn't mean they can't be made right.

[Colo Springs E]

Originally Posted by Bones

The things that grip me are:

1. They are very quick to process your payment and seem to be able to contact at will via phone or e-mail yet they are strangely silent when they are not actually providing the service I paid for.

2. In this day and age i can't even fathom that they don't have a back-up plan for power outages. seems they could have gotten some sort of logistical help from Fed-Ex and kept the wheels turning. Something, it just seems odd that they would just give up and leave everything for monday.

3.Why do I have to do anything about the $100 for 2-day shipping? Seems like they know I'm not getting this thing on time and they should just deal with it on their end, at the very least overnight it to me at their expense.

4. Why are there no actual CS reps who can deal with this on the weekend? They sell 24/7, they should have real CS reps 24/7.

1. I hear ya.
2. Well, my place of employment was hit with power outages twice in the past 3 years when a construction company actually hit (and destroyed) the power source to our building. We have some sort of UPS/backup thing that saves our computers/data, but beyond that, we're hosed, we were pretty much shut down for both of those afternoons. Don't know if that's typical or not though.
3. TOTALLY with you here... that's exactly what they should do. Especially since it sounds like you're a long-term customer who has likely dropped a lot of coin there over the years.
4. Yep, with you again.

Anyhoo, hope it ultimately works out to your satisfaction.

[piece of ash]

The guy who would send you the email... presuming he knew something was wrong... and knew who you were... is also the same guy trying to reboot the servers and reset all the software.

[Bones]

Originally Posted by Colo Springs E

Anyhoo, hope it ultimately works out to your satisfaction.

I'm sure it will.

[Colo Springs E]

What guitar/amp Bones??

[Bones]

Originally Posted by Colo Springs E

What guitar/amp Bones??

Fender Classic 60s telecaster and Vox AC 15 C1 Limited Edition Blue Tygon

[studio1087]

Even in this day and age it's very hard and very unsafe to attempt to operate a warehouse in a power outage. The warehouse where I work is 200,000 square feet (common) with rack storage going up 6 pallet positions high with fork lift traffic everywhere. The forklift drivers all have touch pads mounted on their fork lifts to tell them the rack position of the items that they have to fetch to fill an order.

We are talking about thousands of sku's and finding stuff and safe operation of lifting and sorting (in the dark). If we have a power failure our safety directors go nuts. They have to get 100 people out of a big building and count heads in the parking lot.

I understand about the power failure.

What they did after the power failure was lousy Bones. If you have paid a large sum for faster shipping and if they fail for a reason beyond their control then they should reach out to the customer and explain and refund part or the shipping fee. it's very simple in distribution to know where a package or order is. They can isolate the orders that were delayed and send an email to all the applicable customers in 15 minutes time.

Making the customer do the investigative work and follow up work was crappy. Distributors don't manufacture. All we do is buy low and sell high and add value by warehousing and delivering and offering expert information. It's ok for a customervto have high expectations of a distributor. If we can't "distribute" effectively than what good are we?

Sorry about the stress Bones. I can picture you waiting like a kid at Christmas. They owe you $92 an an apology.

[7171551]

I would be annoyed too...

Although this is pretty much the standard of service I have come to expect here in the UK, I must admit that I had the impression the American consumer expected (and received) better.

Just as an unrelated example of service standards here: my adsl broadband service from Virgin (R Branson) has been completely unreliable for over 2 months now... either below dial-up speed or no connection at all for days at a time. This is despite numerous calls to so-called "tech support." This fault-according to them- has been solved twice now.. errr, no!
All that has happened is that I have been given a succesion of differring explanations and fobbed off with assurances it will be fixed soon. The latest story is that it is actually BT who are to blame, not them at all.
They are still taking my monthly fee though...

Sorry, rant over: but it helps to vent sometimes! And to possibly head off the sarcasm- like the OP- I too know this is not the end of the world!

[Ricky D.]

In the dream world, everything would be handled as you think they should be. Not the world you are actually living in.

Chances are pretty good you are talking to a 3rd party call center if the phone is covered 24/7. The AMS shipping department went clusterf*** on Friday, maybe after office hours. The call center doesn't have an SOP for this one, except to ask you to call Monday when AMS has a full lineup in place to resolve the issues.

I'm guessing your order was pulled, prepped, and moved to a cage at the loading dock on Friday, then toggled to "shipped " status. Normally, the pickup driver would apply the tracking number stickers, the warehouseman scans everything out, and your product is on its way. If they can't scan it out, they can't release it.

[waparker4]

Hopefully on Monday they will sort out a refund for the failed shipping.

[thorton077]

Originally Posted by Bones

Fender Classic 60s telecaster and Vox AC 15 C1 Limited Edition Blue Tygon

Nice.

But yeah, that sucks that they're not very helpful especially making you contact FedEx.

[elicross]

I'll bet the "real" customer service person you speak to tomorrow will sort out the shipping charges without your having to call FedEx. It doesn't make sense that you'd have to go to FedEx yourself for a refund; you're not the shipper, and it's not FedEx's fault that the shipper wasn't able to get the guitar and amp out in time. Seems to me it's not only AMS's responsibility to sort out a refund on the shipping, but they're the only ones who can.