GAK - Excellent Service

andyp

I just want to share a story of excellent customer service and just plain all round awesomeness from GAK this week.

I bought an Orange Rocker 15 from them over the phone in mid December and the initial process itself was absolutely first class. The guy gave me a discount on an already very competitive bundle deal for the amp, foot switch, cover and a cable. It promptly arrived 20hrs later, which is fantastic considering it’s going from Brighton to Stonehaven. All good. Loved the amp from the get-go and I was generally delighted all round.

Fast forward to Monday night and after 5-10 mins very gentle practice (I was trying to piece together the Hey Joe solo) I paused to try and figure out the tab in front of me, guitar is silent... buzzzzz... crackle... spit... buzzzz...pop. Dead. Nothing. The Dirty channel has gone kaput. The Natural channel was absolutely fine but no combination of switches, dials or anything could get any sound from the Dirty channel and it was making some nasty cracks and pops when I flicked the channel switch over. Bugger.

I tried to work out what to do with it then quickly realised there was something up internally and my knowledge isn't great but it didn't seem to be a valve... but I had no idea. At the end of the day though, I wasn’t going to investigate it as it was only 6 weeks old. So I emailed the sales guy I dealt with as he’d been superb when I bought it and it’s now 8pm odd so nothing was going to happen tonight with it anyway. Long story shorter, I explained the problem and said I’d like a replacement. Skip to the next morning and around 11ish I get an email “very sorry” etc. “Package it up and we’ll get you another one out next day delivery. Give the broken one to the courier.”

Skip forward to lunchtime today and it's done and dusted. New amp delivered, bust one collected and problem solved. FedEx were superb too, next day delivery to this neck of the woods is more like a target than a promise, so to have it resolved so quickly is just brilliant. Total time from problem to resolution was... let's see... 8pm Monday to 1pm Wednesday... that's only 41hrs and zero hassle.

Problems happen, it's how you deal with them that counts. Can't recommend GAK highly enough based on this experience.

Andy

Voxman

Great story Andy, and it's great to hear about such terrific, fast no hassle, no quibble customer service.  Top marks GAK!  

merlin

GAK quite often gets a bad rap, and I've known a few fellas who've worked there too who didn't enjoy the experience.....     h o w e v e r .... Most of my experience there (and I'm local) has found pretty much the entire staff to be really helpful and friendly. 

BRISTOL86

I have nothing to add other than that my Dad’s Aunt and Uncle live near Stonehaven and this post brought back many happy memories of summer holidays in the area!

Dave_Mc

Voxman said:

Great story Andy, and it's great to hear about such terrific, fast no hassle, no quibble customer service.  Top marks GAK!  

Yep agreed. Glad you got it sorted!

Sassafras

I knew Mr GAK (Gary Marshall) when he just had a cubicle in a small arcade and he's always been a true gentleman in his dealings. Glad he hasn't let things slide.

OnTheRopes

It's good to hear a good report, I was a little disappointed with them recently when I ordered 2 pedals. The email said one was not in stock but was expected in 3-5 days. I was okay with that and the first arrived pretty quickly.
Around a week later I emailed them to ask when it was due in as I had noticed other stores had it listed as in stock. I never did get an answer to that but 24 hours later when I cancelled they replied to confirm that very promptly. A shame really as if they had given me a reply I might have hung on or at least respected an honest 'we don't know'. So now I am shopping elsewhere.
Just my personal experience.

gordiji

Geat. This is similar to my experience with Thomann. I would pay more & accept a sometimes restricted product range to know their guarantee is honoured. I'm in France, where i don't think they have a serious competitor.

andyp

Yeah, I have to say, I really just wanted to share the experience as a lot of the big guys get a hard time and online / remote buying can be a bit awkward. This is the kind of worry I had when buying something like this, which is a lot of money to me and it's proven to have been dealt with superbly.

As a wee side note, I don't know what the issue is with the broken amp and probably never will, but it did make some funny noises from the very start so I am wondering if there's just some kind of fault in the circuit somewhere. Anyway, Amp 2.0 got 2hrs of playing last night and it's simply superb. I will hopefully own this for many years to come.

MagicPigDetective

I had a similar experience when returning an amp to GAK, no hassle at all and picked up by courier the next day.

andyp

That's great, good to hear it's not an isolated thing (not that I thought it was).

It matters... and I will definitely be buying from them again.

randella

merlin said:

GAK quite often gets a bad rap, and I've known a few fellas who've worked there too who didn't enjoy the experience.....     h o w e v e r .... Most of my experience there (and I'm local) has found pretty much the entire staff to be really helpful and friendly. 

I've found them terrifically useful.  They were falling over themselves to help when they sold me my Mesa head which got from Brighton to Manchester quicker than I probably could have, in far better condition than they would have had me believe.

I also bought an Ibanez Artcore (John Scofield 335-a-like) from them sight unseen, which is the first time I've done such a thing; I've not had to touch the setup of the guitar and it arrived (with £100s discount) absolutely pristine and not a fingerprint on it.

I walked past the shop once but never went in - I was itching to but I'd been to a party the night before and had a banging headache and a train to catch.

TommyVercetti

Can't ask for better than that. This is the kinda service you hope for, dare not expect and rarely get.

Lestratcaster

They usually been good with me, a couple of years back one Saturday I was browsing for some monitors  for my teaching room.

A helpful lad recommended some Mackie ones for my budget, and said he'd do a special deal if I got some speaker stands with it as well. So I happily obliged and the order was processed. Initially though he I went for the CR3's but they were discovered to be out of stock, but no dramas he automatically upgraded me to a pair of CR4's that were delivered 3 days later on Tuesday.

I set about using them the same day but by the following Saturday during a lesson there's a loud hiss then a pop sound which causes them to die whilst being switched on. Initially I blamed this on overheating, say if its been running for too long it automatically shuts off. So attributed it as a one-off. It happened again a few days later so I contacted them to report the issue. They said to send it back via FedEx who promptly picked it up the next day and a new set was sent out. Thankfully the new pair were good as gold and no issues so it was just a faulty set I had got. 
They were very helpful through the whole process and very quick too.

vincechu89

Thanks for sharing a wonderful experience, I have never considered GAK as they are miles away from me but will put them top of my mail/web order list now. 

usedtobe

I’ve used them a couple of times, never had a problem. That’s excellent service, though!

andyp

I got an email yesterday morning (albeit an automatic one) saying they've received the returned amp and it stated what would normally happen next (replacement within 48hrs, or something like that) which they had by far exceeded / improved on already anyway.

I'm glad I got this as I was a wee bit curious as to what would happen if the returned one somehow didn't make it back to them...

Wazmeister

Always had excellent service from GAK

Phil_aka_Pip

I bought stuff from GAK, no trouble. One was a Vox AC30CC2X which some time later went faaart ... dead. Contacted GAK, they said send it back so I did and not long after they'd returned it to me fixed. Needed to dig out of them what they'd done to it and it turned out they'd replaced the rectifier valve. (Since then I've learned that Chinese Voxes eat GZ34s for breakfast, and how to prevent it but that's another story). My experience of GAK has been mostly positive.