I’m a music store junkie – I have, in the past, spent a LOT of money in music stores. Within 45 minutes of my house there are 2 Guitar Centers, 2 Sam Ash stores, a few teeny mom and pop stores, and a great indie music store named Replay Music.  I’ve spent money in all of them including the small mom and pop stores.  But these days I’m pretty much buying everything on Amazon, and that has to stop… I need to support my semi-local music store.  I’m talking about Replay.

Replay has never done anything to annoy me, and they’ve given me great deals.  Guitar Center and Sam Ash, though… let me just give you 10 highlights…

  1. Guitar Center.  I’m a regular – I’m in all the time playing amps and guitars.  One day I plug into this tube amp and I play a while, then I put the amp in standby and get up.  Sales dude immediately comes over and lectures me about leaving the amp turned on and how that’s bad for the amp.  I immediately walked out the door.  Later, I emailed the manager, who apologized.  Lecturing customers is a bad idea.
  2. Sam Ash.  I just put out my third CD and there was a sales dude at Sam Ash that I liked to talk to.  I brought him a copy of my CD, which was “Every Single Day,” an acoustic album.  The next time I came in, he said he’d listened to the album and it was good, but nobody cares about acoustic music these days and no one would care about mine.  Insulting customers is a bad idea.
  3. Sam Ash.  I went in on a slow day wearing a mask (this was during the first year of Covid.). The sales guy tells me he’s really angry about the Black Lives Matter protesters.  I didn’t bring it up.  He brought it up out of the blue.  Blabbing your politics to customers, regardless of side, is a bad idea.
  4. Guitar Center.  I walk in wearing a PRS t-shirt and was looking at a low end Gibson Flying V selling for like $1,600.  Mind you, this was a slab of wood, dot fret markers, the lowest possible model.  He asked if I was interested in the V, and I said “No way, not at that price – too rich for my blood.”  And the sales dude says “Says the guy wearing a PRS t-shirt.”  Insulting your customers is a bad idea.
  5. Guitar Center.  I put out my 4th album, “The One Thing,” and I swing by Guitar Center to talk to the sales dude I normally give all of my sales to.  I give him a copy of the CD.  I’m in there every week.  The next week I ask him what he thought and he said he hadn’t listened to it.  That’s fine… but he NEVER listened to it.  If a customer gives you ALL of his business and gives you a CD, it’s good business sense to give it a listen.  Not the worst offense, but still.
  6. Guitar Center.  This one takes a little explaining up front.  I’m the main web developer for a large school district with 70,000 students.  We use an online database for Covid case reporting of students and teachers.  I go in and sales dude and I start talking about gigs.  I say “Man, I’m bummed, because our cases in my county are triple what they were at any point last year,” which they were, because the governor of my state made it illegal for schools to require masks.  He basically told me he didn’t believe me.  I explained that the database required the upload of documentation of a positive case, and he said he still didn’t believe me, and walked away.  Accusing your customers of lying is a bad idea.
  7. Guitar Center.  I needed to buy strings and it took 15 minutes of waiting to get someone to ring them up for me, because upper management wants to run Guitar Center on a shoestring.  Understaffing your store and making customers wait is a bad idea.
  8. Guitar Center.  It used to be that they locked up any guitar over around $1,500.  Now they lock up everything but Epiphone and Squier.  They even lock up the Made In Mexico Fenders.  Really?  This means you have to deal with annoying sales dudes.  Making it harder for people to try products is a bad idea.
  9. Sam Ash.  I brought my pedal board with 8 pedals to Sam Ash so I could trade them in.  It took the sales guy an hour and a half to look over my pedals.  I waited an hour and a half.  Making your customers wait an hour and a half is a bad idea.
  10. Sam Ash, online.  I bought a Line 6 Pod Go because the website said they had 5 of them.  The sale was cancelled the next day because they didn’t actually have any.  I repeated this process three more times over the next week with the same result.  I contacted the company and complained.  To their credit, they gave me a good deal on an HX Stomp.  Selling equipment online that you don’t actually have is a bad idea.
  11. Guitar Center.  I’m interested in an amp they didn’t have in stock.  Sales dude tells me he’ll order one and he’ll call me when it comes in.  He takes my phone number.  I never got a call.  Ever.

There are more, but that was just a few that came to mind. Maybe I don’t actually care all that much what happens to these two chains.