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Amazon has so many scam products now I do my best to avoid them. Target and Walmart are two very good alternatives and since I live in an urban area, their deli

Amazon has so many scam products now I do my best to avoid them. Target and Walmart are two very good alternatives and since I live in an urban area, their delivery is comparable to Amazon's delivery. Any music gear I buy I go to Sweetwater or specialized retailers. To me it seems like Amazon is becoming a worse and worse shopping experience with each passing day.

HaloZero 4y ago
Whoever is in charge of quality as my Target sucks though. I expect a kind of meh quality at Target but the counterfeit crap stuff at Amazon is at least better than the stuff at Target. The worse is the patio deck chairs that won't actually fit together at Target. Like the welding/metal construction is just wrong.
- z9znz 4y ago
  I bet that same patio set is listed on Amazon (multiple times under different names and with different photos), and it's the same mfg. This is kind of my point. It seems that we now have millions of psuedo-offerings which ultimately boil down to a fraction of actual sources, most of extreme low quality. If we don't do something about this soon, we better be practicing DIY constructions from the many good videos on youtube. Before you know it, the only tool which will actually suffice is the tool you make yourself.
silicon2401 4y ago
I will vouch for Sweetwater anywhere it's mentioned because I've never had such a good customer experience as I have through Sweetwater. I personally enjoy Target and Best Buy a lot. Shopping at Target is oddly enjoyable for me and using their online store has never given me issues. I only really buy from Best Buy online (for both in-store pickup and delivery) and that experience has been good as well.
- Tarragon 4y ago
  Sweetwater's customer experience is so good that it freaks me out. You have an assigned "sales engineer" who calls after the first order you make. So I've talked to them. At one point I ordered a couple of different guitar hangers to try them out. I got a call asking if I meant to order 1 guitar hanger and 1 ukulele hanger. The sales engineer looked at the order, my history, and apparently had notes from one of our conversations and thought it might have been a mistake. It was and we corrected it before it shipped.
  - taylodl 4y ago
    Sweetwater is the model for online sales. Like you say, you have an assigned "sales engineer" - and you can change who's assigned to you, BTW. My first sales engineer, a good guy, we just weren't into the same kind of guitar playing. He referred me to another sales engineer that could better help me for what I'm into. When I've had questions about anything they're quick to hop on the phone and talk it through, figure out what's the best gear for you. It's an unreal experience. Whenever I need to buy any music gear I go to Sweetwater first. They don't carry everything, but even then I've called an asked about an alternative and they'll tell you the pros/cons of what they carry and what you're actually looking for. They'll even tell you to buy it somewhere else if they believe it's better and they don't carry it! It's 2022 - I'm used to not being able to talk to a human much less get this kind of customer service. It's truly awesome!
  - squeaky-clean 4y ago
    It was a little weird/annoying to be contacted, my assumption was they're trying to upsell me on something. But nope, they're just great support. Like you said it's always the same person so maybe I got lucky with Jimmy as my rep, but he's been super helpful. Had a similar situation to yours where I bough 1 synth 2 road-cases. He called me asking if it was a mistake and it was. They also try to assign you to someone with similar interests. So I doubt Jimmy could help much if I wanted to get into classical woodwinds, but he knows his stuff about synths and setting then up in a studio.
  - rufus_foreman 4y ago
    >> You have an assigned "sales engineer" who calls after the first order you make They stop calling you if you don't order anything from them for 10 years or so.
ROTMetro 4y ago
I bought a pair of studio monitors from Amazon. I received one. Returned it. It took months to get a refund. Amazon claimed I needed to return the other monitor :/ I finally convinced them by pointing out that the weight of what they shipped me could in no way be two monitors. You would think their system would have such basic logic to catch this at shipping, it knows the product weight and it knows the weight of my package. I had a gap of five years between using Amazon or any tech. The difference between Amazon's prior usability and stepping into it five years later was jarring. Like I seriously thought I was just no longer capable of using websites. Turns out, nope, Amazon's shopping site is now a zombie be exploited for some other purpose that is different from why I use it.

HaloZero 4y ago

Whoever is in charge of quality as my Target sucks though. I expect a kind of meh quality at Target but the counterfeit crap stuff at Amazon is at least better than the stuff at Target. The worse is the patio deck chairs that won't actually fit together at Target. Like the welding/metal construction is just wrong.

z9znz 4y ago
I bet that same patio set is listed on Amazon (multiple times under different names and with different photos), and it's the same mfg. This is kind of my point. It seems that we now have millions of psuedo-offerings which ultimately boil down to a fraction of actual sources, most of extreme low quality. If we don't do something about this soon, we better be practicing DIY constructions from the many good videos on youtube. Before you know it, the only tool which will actually suffice is the tool you make yourself.

silicon2401 4y ago

I will vouch for Sweetwater anywhere it's mentioned because I've never had such a good customer experience as I have through Sweetwater. I personally enjoy Target and Best Buy a lot. Shopping at Target is oddly enjoyable for me and using their online store has never given me issues. I only really buy from Best Buy online (for both in-store pickup and delivery) and that experience has been good as well.

Tarragon 4y ago
Sweetwater's customer experience is so good that it freaks me out. You have an assigned "sales engineer" who calls after the first order you make. So I've talked to them. At one point I ordered a couple of different guitar hangers to try them out. I got a call asking if I meant to order 1 guitar hanger and 1 ukulele hanger. The sales engineer looked at the order, my history, and apparently had notes from one of our conversations and thought it might have been a mistake. It was and we corrected it before it shipped.
- taylodl 4y ago
  Sweetwater is the model for online sales. Like you say, you have an assigned "sales engineer" - and you can change who's assigned to you, BTW. My first sales engineer, a good guy, we just weren't into the same kind of guitar playing. He referred me to another sales engineer that could better help me for what I'm into. When I've had questions about anything they're quick to hop on the phone and talk it through, figure out what's the best gear for you. It's an unreal experience. Whenever I need to buy any music gear I go to Sweetwater first. They don't carry everything, but even then I've called an asked about an alternative and they'll tell you the pros/cons of what they carry and what you're actually looking for. They'll even tell you to buy it somewhere else if they believe it's better and they don't carry it! It's 2022 - I'm used to not being able to talk to a human much less get this kind of customer service. It's truly awesome!
- squeaky-clean 4y ago
  It was a little weird/annoying to be contacted, my assumption was they're trying to upsell me on something. But nope, they're just great support. Like you said it's always the same person so maybe I got lucky with Jimmy as my rep, but he's been super helpful. Had a similar situation to yours where I bough 1 synth 2 road-cases. He called me asking if it was a mistake and it was. They also try to assign you to someone with similar interests. So I doubt Jimmy could help much if I wanted to get into classical woodwinds, but he knows his stuff about synths and setting then up in a studio.
- rufus_foreman 4y ago
  >> You have an assigned "sales engineer" who calls after the first order you make They stop calling you if you don't order anything from them for 10 years or so.

ROTMetro 4y ago

I bought a pair of studio monitors from Amazon. I received one. Returned it. It took months to get a refund. Amazon claimed I needed to return the other monitor :/ I finally convinced them by pointing out that the weight of what they shipped me could in no way be two monitors. You would think their system would have such basic logic to catch this at shipping, it knows the product weight and it knows the weight of my package. I had a gap of five years between using Amazon or any tech. The difference between Amazon's prior usability and stepping into it five years later was jarring. Like I seriously thought I was just no longer capable of using websites. Turns out, nope, Amazon's shopping site is now a zombie be exploited for some other purpose that is different from why I use it.