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Why I I Got Kicked Out of Guitar Center


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Sounds like he has psychological problems.

 Find 660 of my jazz piano arrangements of standards for educational purposes and tutorials at www.Patreon.com/HarryLikas Harry was the Technical Editor of Mark Levine's "The Jazz Theory Book" and helped develop "The Jazz Piano Book."

 

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Good thing I wasn't there.

 

Years ago the Korg PolySix was brand new in a store and I was checking it out. The first affordable polyphonic analog synth that could store user patches.

 

One of the store clerks passing through made some snide insult about my playing.

 

So I punched up every patch and altered them so the cutoff frequency was down all the way - no sound comes out. Anyone else who tried it will think it is broken. Store clerks were guitar players with zero concept of analog synths.

 

Revenge is a dish best served cold :evil:

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I was referring to the employee at GC.

 Find 660 of my jazz piano arrangements of standards for educational purposes and tutorials at www.Patreon.com/HarryLikas Harry was the Technical Editor of Mark Levine's "The Jazz Theory Book" and helped develop "The Jazz Piano Book."

 

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In response to El Lobo question

 

The only thing I said to the guy was...its best that we don't communicate

 

When I did the moo moo deal...yes I told the salesperson that I did not appreciate that guy telling me that anything was in poor condition

Then give 'em hell
These are only my opinions, not supported by any actual knowledge, experience, or expertise.
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Humor mode on:

 

-- Post a negative review to Yelp.

-- Complain to corporate.

-- File in small claims if he reneged on the verbal contract.

-- Take out a restraining order for the guy following you.

-- Call 911

-- Refuse to leave and then ask them "Am I being Detained?"

-- Don't back down especially when they call the authorities -- this is the key to your whole success.

-- If the authorities try to take their side, fight back, and resist as aggressively as possible. Aggressiveness will be viewed as a positive factor in their overall view of you.

-- Be sure to Die fighting rather than be taken alive on any keyboard deal gone bad. Keyboards are way more important than any other factor. If we allow keyboard transactions to be run over, it's just a slippery slope from here on out.

-- File a Civil Rights Lawsuit (you or your heirs depending on if you were taken alive).

 

Humor mode off.

I am not going to take this lying down...

 

Exactly. Never take any conflict lying down.

J a z z  P i a n o 8 8

--

Yamaha C7D

Montage8 | CP300 | CP4 | SK1-73 | OB6 | Seven

K8.2 | 3300 | CPSv.3

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Good thing I wasn't there.

 

Years ago the Korg PolySix was brand new in a store and I was checking it out. The first affordable polyphonic analog synth that could store user patches.

 

One of the store clerks passing through made some snide insult about my playing.

 

So I punched up every patch and altered them so the cutoff frequency was down all the way - no sound comes out. Anyone else who tried it will think it is broken. Store clerks were guitar players with zero concept of analog synths.

 

Revenge is a dish best served cold :evil:

That may have hurt Korg more than the store. The store probably spent a few minutes to decide it was broken by a customer or defective. People really interested in a PolySix would not write them off encountering a non-functional floor model. They would wait or a chance to try one in person. Korg probably dispatched a replacement and lost a little revenue downgrading another keyboard from new to floor demo.

 

Somehow somewhere you lost something without understanding why or how when your karma number came up.

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I consider Guitar Center to be the lowest of the low when ranking music stores.

 

I also know of their financial troubles and believe that this propagates bad morale which results in poor service to the customer.

 

In selling old gear, you have alternatives. In the current environment within the United States, hostility has risen seemingly exponentially.

 

I find that it's best to turn around and walk away in many instances; this being one of them.

 

Guitar Center, and their employees, are not worth your consideration.

 

With this post, you have made your point to those who matter. Let it go. Life is short. Find happiness in other places.

 

However, keep this experience in your memory.

 

I will.

 

Tom

"Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent." - Victor Hugo
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I thought about sabotaging my own synth LATER. I didn't act on the thought.

 

The thing that happens to me in a situation like this is that fight or flight adrenaline ge

ts stirred up.

 

What I chose to do is my decision and in most cases I respond appropriately.As I was leaving the store I did ask to speak to a manager but I was told he wasn't available.

 

What I did do was drive 45 minutes to the Portland store and spoke to management there. I was told that I would get a hearing from the regional people at GC.

 

There was a bit of positive serendipity that happened after. I left the Portland GC store. I stopped by a thrift store near GC and picked up a vintage 50s Silvertone guitar that will definitely make some money. That would have never happened if I wouldn't have felt compelled to talk to management in Portland.

.

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I thought about sabotaging my own synth LATER. I didn't act on the thought.

 

The thing that happens to me in a situation like this is that fight or flight adrenaline ge

ts stirred up.

 

What I chose to do is my decision and in most cases I respond appropriately.As I was leaving the store I did ask to speak to a manager but I was told he wasn't available.

 

What I did do was drive 45 minutes to the Portland store and spoke to management there. I was told that I would get a hearing from the regional people at GC.

 

There was a bit of positive serendipity that happened after. I left the Portland GC store. I stopped by a thrift store near GC and picked up a vintage 50s Silvertone guitar that will definitely make some money. That would have never happened if I wouldn't have felt compelled to talk to management in Portland.

.

Which Silvertone? I had an original '58-ish U2 â just love them.

____________________________________
Rod

Here for the gear.

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If you feel comfortable to do so and you can stand by your words (I have no doubt you can), could you private message me the salesperson's name and general description? I'm happy to help you escalate this. I don't work for Guitar Center (well, I did in the early 90s), but I may be able to get your voice heard. I'd like to hear what the response from the manager of the Clackamas store is first, though.

"For instance" is not proof.

 

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Also when you have a really good experience with a salesperson or customer service person let the company they work at know. First it really helps them when they get a "Atta boy" from a customer, but they remember it and next time I deal with them they are real nice.

 

The way some countries have mandatory couple years of military service I think we should have mandatory couple years of working in retail or customer service. Once you work with dealing with the public for awhile how you treat sales people and customer service people changes.

This. This. A hundred times THIS.

 

Before settling into my first academic full-time gig, I paid the bills however I could. I waited tables, washed dishes, and manned the grill in a small mom-and-pop. Those experiences were formative, and brought home one of my favorite sayings: "If you want to know the true character of a person, see how they treat someone who either can't benefit them in any way, can't fight back, or both."

 

That's why I am always polite to service people, friendly and cheerful even when things don't work out, reassuring when it's obvious that the employee is young, nervous, or new on the job, and effusive with thanks (often calling the manager or owner over to publicly praise the employee in question). It builds such incredibly good karma, and good relationships as well. You want them to remember you as the person who always cuts them a break, always has a nice thing to say, and always puts a smile on their face, even (especially) when things are rough.

 

I think dB was at the table for the one time in the past several years that I can remember being genuinely angry at the service in a restaurant...

 

Oh, and on the subject of GC: for whatever reasons, the ones in the Denver area are actually manned by folks who are, if not always technically expert, at least very nice to customers. I was told that the Arvada store had consistently won awards from Corporate as being the branch with the highest rate of positive customer feedback in the entire chain. So maybe I'm spoiled, but my local experiences have been excellent. (Of course, the fact that I treat the employees there as described above probably helps at least a little bit.) I made a couple of friends at GC who have stuck with me for a very long time, including at least one person who's a KC regular (hi CJ).

 

TL;DR -- it never hurts to be nice, but it always helps to be kind.

Dr. Mike Metlay (PhD in nuclear physics, golly gosh) :D

Musician, Author, Editor, Educator, Impresario, Online Radio Guy, Cut-Rate Polymath, and Kindly Pedant

Editor-in-Chief, Bjooks ~ Author of SYNTH GEMS 1

 

clicky!:  more about me ~ my radio station (and my fam) ~ my local tribe ~ my day job ~ my bookmy music

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Is the above post saying I should be nice or kind to this salesperson?

 

This guy was chasing me around the store...waving his finger in my face and then demanding that I leave.

 

I had already suffered his attempt at humiliation at the first encounter. I wasn't going to do it again.

 

Regarding being nice to service people... Sure its a good idea but it helps to be treated in a reasonable manner in the first place. At a certain point I have to just try to walk away..which is exactly what I tried to do.

 

The thing that concerns me at that I have a strong feeling that there is a connection between GC financial state and the level of people they hire.

 

As far as a suggestion to be more nice....I would

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I was goin to guess Jump in the keyboard room. I have a couple hours to kill, I almost want to go over and play Jump a few times. Maybe encore with the intro to Sailing Away while I"m at it.

 

Alas, the GC near me in North County only demos about 3 professional keyboards. They instead have a couple dozen $200 digital piano models and the use the rest of the keyboard rooom to stack a thousand mini key USB controller boxes, mostly the 49 key variety. Have to drive down to the east San Diego GC to actually see a professional keyboard.

The baiting I do is purely for entertainment value. Please feel free to ignore it.
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I wouldn"t waste 5 minutes on this tussle, much less drive to another town over it. Then again i probably wouldn"t have gotten in a tiff with a sales guy to begin with.

Oh, who am I kidding - I"m trigger happy - I"d totally get in a feud with a snarky sales dick, I"d do it just for fun, actually. But i wouldn"t expend any energy after i left the first store.

 

Did OP really compare himself to Rosa Parks?

 

GC used to be awesome, it was like a magical candy store. It kind of sucks now. I buy from them occasionally as I know guys who have lived their music dream so long they are managers at GC now, so I get a great discount. I"d just as soon buy from Sweetwater to be honest, and get double warranty vs GC trying to hard sell their pro coverage (whatever they call it now) insurance. I bought my last keys at GC (MODX7) and i think got 30% off.

The baiting I do is purely for entertainment value. Please feel free to ignore it.
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Sounds like Cow Guy agreed with your initial guess at the value of your keyboard, yes? So all good in the kingdom in the end, even if Better Price Guy initially overvalued it in your favor. Correct? Bummer, but hardly much of a crime.

 

I love the image of the guy making cow noises while haggling over price. I wish I were there for that. Probably not fun if you're the Cowee and not the Cower, but definitely a win as a spectator sport.

 

I personally can't imagine driving 45 minutes away to complain about getting a slightly lower price on a trade-in of a lower-end board, particularly since I'd make more working those two hours out and back than I'd ever lose on the trade-in, and might even spend more in gas alone than the price difference, depending what it was. But that's everyone's own call I guess.

 

This doesn't seem like any great civil rights victory, just a random bit of score-settling with Cow Guy for scuttling your bounty. Accurate to say?

 

I like Guitar Center, probably mostly because I don't expect it to be anything more than what it is. A few of the guys there are "real" gigging players, and the keyboard dept has at least two who know as much as any of us about the boards there. We have a Sam Ash here now; same store to me. All walk-in music stores are roughly the same; just a place to "try before you buy" and maybe pick up some cables or gaffers' tape.

Now out! "Mind the Gap," a 24-song album of new material.
www.joshweinstein.com

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Sounds like Cow Guy agreed with your initial guess at the value of your keyboard, yes? So all good in the kingdom in the end, even if Better Price Guy initially overvalued it in your favor. Correct? Bummer, but hardly much of a crime.

 

I love the image of the guy making cow noises while haggling over price. I wish I were there for that. Probably not fun if you're the Cowee and not the Cower, but definitely a win as a spectator sport.

 

I personally can't imagine driving 45 minutes away to complain about getting a slightly lower price on a trade-in of a lower-end board, particularly since I'd make more working those two hours out and back than I'd ever lose on the trade-in, and might even spend more in gas alone than the price difference, depending what it was. But that's everyone's own call I guess.

 

This doesn't seem like any great civil rights victory, just a random bit of score-settling with Cow Guy for scuttling your bounty. Accurate to say?

 

I like Guitar Center, probably mostly because I don't expect it to be anything more than what it is. A few of the guys there are "real" gigging players, and the keyboard dept has at least two who know as much as any of us about the boards there. We have a Sam Ash here now; same store to me. All walk-in music stores are roughly the same; just a place to "try before you buy" and maybe pick up some cables or gaffers' tape.

 

I would t pay much for a keyboard that makes cow noises. I might be aligned more to different genres.

The baiting I do is purely for entertainment value. Please feel free to ignore it.
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Did NOT compare myself with Rosa Parks. I think that I made that disclaimer in the post.

 

I would never say that Aziz have had to put up with racism to the degree that black people do and did.

 

What I am saying is that she had the courage to say

..enough is enough. And that we have the opportunity to learn from that example.

 

Things are getting weird in the world. I witnessed a mass shooting at a gig and see shooting in the news on a daily basis.

My 45 drive also included other business up there.Would I drive that far if I had a son or daughter that had been harmed? Damn right I would ....

plus it was a gorgeous day...time to think.

 

The question here is to let it lie or to pursue some kind of feedback at least. Bullies exist in the adult world and

its act

ually quite unpleasant. I cant just get adrenaline out of my system when someone engages in fight or flight with me.

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I think it would be logical to ask, then, if there's a chance that adrenaline might have been a factor in his asking you to leave the store. If "flight" had kicked in, you'd have left on your own. So that only leaves "fight" in the equation while you were there.

 

I'm not saying he wasn't a first-class douchebag; most music-store employees aren't the most socially well-adjusted folks. They are second only to record-store employees in their unearned haughtiness. But as someone on my social media feed once said: ERO--Event + Response = Outcome. I think it's worth considering if the adrenaline factor, which you've mentioned a couple of times, might have colored your response to the "event" of his perceived dbagness.

 

From very far away, my general sense of How Things Work would find it more likely that a conversation escalated in a way the employee felt might harm their ability to do business in that moment, than that some employee is choosing strangers at essentially random to stalk and wag fingers at--and no one is mentioning it until now. Particularly since you did disagree with his decision and even his manner.

 

As I get older my personal "kids these days" gripe is that we've all sort of lost the ability to disagree about things. Him not offering the price the other guy offered is all "in the realm." You can haggle, but his is just one opinion and one shop. If it was worth driving 45 miles to complain, it might also have been worth driving 10 minutes to get some other trade-in offers on the Cow machine.

 

/.02

Now out! "Mind the Gap," a 24-song album of new material.
www.joshweinstein.com

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At this point if just talking it out with people here in this thread has not used up the energy you have on this you will never let this go until you get even. Life is too short making this your fight to the finish. Why not harness that and apply it to something that matters in the greater scheme of things? If some random guy can upset you this much make this the catalyst to seek therapy so you can learn how to direct your energy on constructive and truly worthwhile goals. No one but you really cares. That guy surely doesn't care. You only have your own outlook to adjust.
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I have to respectfully disagree that anyone owes a business kudos for achieving basic customer service. That's their job. If they have to go in the storage room and bench press a Hammond B3 to get to the last keyboard in stock that you asked for, then yes, commend that individual. I spent 7 years in customer service and I never acted like the cow salesman, and I never needed kudos after doing my job satisfactorily.

 

Perhaps we are indeed only hearing one side of the story, but I'm 100% on LX88's side the moment the cow guy interrupted the sale that was already agreed upon. That's BS. It doesn't matter what else happened, that's worth filing a complaint.

 

The second interaction does sound like the mentality of a road rage incident, like someone else said very astutely. The cow guy has perceived a slight and then pursued a confrontation until he had to create one. I have met people like this, and it is incredibly unpleasant.

Keyboards: Nord Electro 6D 73, Korg SV-1 88, Minilogue XD, Yamaha YPG-625

Bonus: Boss RC-3 Loopstation

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Some people feed on negative reactions... he sensed you were angered and possibly bitter by his intervention that a month later he still persued you.

 

It can only be resolved when you stand up in the face of it. And you can still do it by being polite.. firm, but polite

 

 

It should have been nipped in the bud at the moment he started playing your keyboard for 5m.

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I always vote with my wallet. Be it stores, or restaurants.

 

I understand retail is never a dream gig, but GC and its brethren act like the internet was never invented. I've got some talented friends that currently work at GC, and aren't dicks or hacks. But having taught for Music and Arts (the parent company of GC and Musician's friend) I know their culture of clueless top-managment all too well.

 

I agree that guy has probably not given it a second thought as it's probably part of his MO. If it bothers you, contact corporate. Life is indeed too short.

 

Some stores get it. I mostly shop at Sweetwater, but also ZZounds because they were a local store for me back in the day. Buy local when I can, especially any of the Mom & Pop music stores that are left. Sell used stuff privately, or through forums.

Chris Corso

www.chriscorso.org

Lots of stuff.

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Did NOT compare myself with Rosa Parks. I think that I made that disclaimer in the post.

 

I would never say that Aziz have had to put up with racism to the degree that black people do and did.

 

What I am saying is that she had the courage to say

..enough is enough. And that we have the opportunity to learn from that example.

 

Things are getting weird in the world. I witnessed a mass shooting at a gig and see shooting in the news on a daily basis.

My 45 drive also included other business up there.Would I drive that far if I had a son or daughter that had been harmed? Damn right I would ....

plus it was a gorgeous day...time to think.

 

The question here is to let it lie or to pursue some kind of feedback at least. Bullies exist in the adult world and

its act

ually quite unpleasant. I cant just get adrenaline out of my system when someone engages in fight or flight with me.

 

lol you literally compared yourself to Rosa Parks while saying you didnt. Now you compare your unsuccessful management escalation to the physical harming of children - because sure, that too is the same. I"m looking forward to the next analogy of your plight.

 

⦠I"m going to go pop some corn.

The baiting I do is purely for entertainment value. Please feel free to ignore it.
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I am fortunate that I was never within driving distance of a Guitar Center. Over the years I have read one bad story after another about GC and would never bother to visit one of their stores for any reason.

 

I live close to a town that use to have several locally owned Music Stores that have folded over the past year because of the "Pandemic". The College Students were not in town and that took away most of their customers, Too bad, The days of Mom and Pop Stores is over.

 

Sweetwater seems to be the only option for most of us, unless you live close to Chuck Levens in the DC area, as does brotha Prof D.

 

 

Mike T.

Yamaha Motif ES8, Alesis Ion, Prophet 5 Rev 3.2, 1979 Rhodes Mark 1 Suitcase 73 Piano, Arp Odyssey Md III, Roland R-70 Drum Machine, Digitech Vocalist Live Pro. Roland Boss Chorus Ensemble CE-1.

 

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