1. Did you like summer as a kid? Do you like summer as an (pseudo) adult? Why? If you live somewhere where there are seasons, what do you like most about summer climate-wise?
a) Yes
b) No -- I dno't get it off to go have fun anymore.
c) The good weather and long days make it easy to go outside and do things outdoors. I like the outdoors. They are kewl.

2. Have you taken any vacations/excursions this summer? If so, wadja do?
a) Yes
b) I went rock climbing at Lover's Leap. It was kewl.

3. What is your most memorable summer vacation? Or, if your family was habit-like, what did you do in the summer for vacation?
We never really went anywhere for summer vacations -- maybe short camping trips and such but nothing spectacular. Most memerable? Probably bicycling down through big-sur the summer before my 8th grade year. Took 2 weeks to do it and carried all our gear on our bikes. It was way fun. Hopefully I will be able to do a similar trip this summer...

Bonus Question for Comments: Would you like to have a job (like being a teacher) where you have your summers off? What would you do with an entire 3 months of nothing to do?
a) Yes.
b) Fun things outside!

Okay...
So I order a studio desk from Musician's Friend about 2 months ago. It was going to be way kewl and work great and all that good stuff. It would hold my keyboard, some rack gear, my computer, etc. I was so jazzed to finally have a good workstation to do music at!!

The box comes by FedEx Ground and is totally trashed when it gets here. I take it home thinking that it would still be functional and when I open the box, not only is there scratches in several of the sections, but several pieces are missing out of the box. This all happened about 9 days after I had placed the order. Heck -- I even cleaned my office so that I could put the whole thing together!

So... it comes damaged. No problem, right? Give Musician's Friend a call, have them start a damage claim, I'll get a new one in a week or two. Now, I give them two weeks and when I don't here anything from them, I give them a call. They are still waiting on FedEx to deliver it back to them. OK -- I can see that. So I give them another week. Oh -- they are *still* waiting on FedEx. OK -- there were storms in the midwest -- maybe since it was sent by ground, there were problems getting it across country. Six weeks go by and still nothing. They had said they would contact me and let me know status updates on the whole thing -- did I get a single phone call? No.

Today I give them a call to find out what the heck is going on and they say "Oh -- we just got it yesterday and credited the card you placed the order on" -- I was shocked! Did they call me to let me know they were going to do that? Hadn't they said that they were going a) contact me and let me know as soon as they had any updates? b) send me a replacement desk?

So I started to get pissed -- the guy on the phone was like "Hey -- it was FedEx's fault -- nothing we could do" -- thats way untrue! They could have checked the weight of the box on FedEx's site -- saw that it was the correct weight and size, saw that FedEx admitted it was damaged in transit, and sent me a new one right away. They could have called me to let me know what was going on. They could have contacted me before crediting my card to let me know that they had received it and that this is what they were going to do. They could have frickin' emailed me if they were too busy to deal with calling me!!! I told him to cancel the order and that I would be doing this -- writing it up on my website. He sputtered something to the effect of "You can't slander us! We'll find that posting and have it removed" -- I pointed out that this was a private website on hardware that I owned and there wasn't a whole lot he could do about it. I also pointed out that I was the customer and that I had purchased the item from Musician's Friend -- they could place blame elsewhere, but ultimately the fault, as far as I am concerned, was with Musician's Friend.

He got really upset at that and I asked to speak to his supervisor. The supervisor came on the line and said that there wasn't a whole lot he could do -- basically giving the impression that he didn't give a shit. Thats fine. My business can be done elsewhere for music-related supplies from now on. He apologized for the fact that I was told that I would be getting a phonecall about the status of the return and never did. But it was quite apparent that the guy wasn't going to be willing to do anything for me. Oh -- and if I ordered it again, they wanted to charge me shipping. Again.

So I told him no thanks, I wouldn't be purchasing anything from Musician's Friend again and that they had just lost my business. He said that was fine and I said okay, goodbye and hung up the phone.

Now maybe it's just me, but I can't believe that these companies treat their customers this way. Service has gotten sooooo poor that when you get even mediocre service, it's like wow -- I'm being treated like a king!

Let me give you an example of GOOD SERVICE:
I call the bike store where I normally shop -- the wheels on my road bike need to be trued. I know they are probably pretty busy and am thinking that they won't be able to get to me until next week sometime. After being transfered to the service desk, they tell me there isn't any way they can fit me in today but that if I drop off the wheels they will do their absolute best to get them done by the weekend. This is already better then I was expecting -- and much MUCH better service -- they were willing to work with me! Maybe it wasn't 100% what I was hoping for but it's a lot better then the worst case scenario I had planned on. Plus -- when I take it in, they'll also (without me asking them to) check the breaks, check the shifting, and make sure everything is nice and lubed up. Now THAT is good service.

--B--

UPDATE
Missy gave Musician's Friend a call, talked to the manager of the second guy I had talked to and explained what was going on and what had happened -- this guy was willing to work to get my business back -- I'm getting the desk for $100 -- their cost -- plus shipping through a trucking company instead of through FedEx. That brought the total to like $147ish I think. While I'll go ahead and get the desk from them for this price, I'm going to be real hesitant purchasing anything else from them in the future. I hate having to talk to a supervising manager before being treated like a customer and not just something further down the food chain.