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Is Musicians Friend part of Guitar Center??


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There was a little more to it than that. At one time, Musician's Friend received sales strictly from it's catalogs. As we all know, when you buy something from a Musician's Friend catalog, you get away with not paying any taxes on your purchase. If you buy something from a store, you do have to pay a sales tax on your purchase. Therefore if you went to an actual Musician's Friend store, you would have to pay taxes on your purchase. Therefore, if Musician's Friend had a store in a particular state, it would then be required to charge a sales tax not only on sales at it's stores, but also on any catalog sales from within that particular state. As more and more stores started to pop up around the country, it legally had to charge a sales tax not only on it's store sales, but also it's catalog sales.(which would be different for each state) I don't think that Musician's Friend was charging the required sales tax in it's catalogs, which caused some legal controversy. So by changing all Musician's Friend stores to Guitar Center, and operating the two as independent companies, Musician's Friend could legally not charge sales tax on its sales. That is why Musician's Friend is now strictly a catalog and internet based company. --Matt
"Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man how to fish, and he'll spend all day in a boat drinking beer."
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Another part of the story... Musician's Friend had a deal where you could make monthly payments on your credit card. Problem is, they didn't make you sign a contract. So if you cancelled your credit card after one payment, they had no recourse. The word got out about the scam, and apparently they got hit for a huge loss. That happened right before they merged with Guitar Center.
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I was employed by Musicians Friend a few years ago, and was around when the company started in the 80's... The company was initially a showroom store (as well as mail-order) in Medford, Oregon, and Oregon is one of two remaining states that don't have a sales tax. My understanding was that out-of-state purchasers are not subject to sales tax, regardless of the state of origin. However, if I'm wrong, trouble may have began for them when Musician's Friend located it's main shipping warehouse in Utah around '98. By 2000, MF had like nine showrooms, all of which are now Guitar Centers, but the mail-order MF is still intact... At least that's what their showroom crew tells me.
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<> You are correct, at least that is the way it used to work. I used to live in NW side of D.C. and we used to buy big ticket items at a music store about 4 miles from my house, it was in Silver Spring Maryland-across state lines, and then we'd have it shipped to the house...tax free!! UPS was MUCH cheaper!
TROLL . . . ish.
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