NGD from Richard's Guitars

RedRabbit

I placed an order for a new acoustic from Richard's Guitars a few weeks ago.  Buying from Richard is definitely a different experience than pretty much any other online retailer I've used.  I know a fair few on here are familiar with Richard and I believe the man himself is a Fretboard user but I thought it might be useful to recount the experience rather than just doing a NGD thread.

First off the guitar.  I've just started up a new acoustic duo and needed something a bit more reliable than my existing Seagull dreadnought so ended up with this 

 https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5256888/2015-11-20 16.04.44.jpg

A Faith Naked Venus.  I've been eyeing up a Faith for years now so I'm happy to finally have my hands on one.  It's a fantastic guitar.  Very playable and easy to handle.  It's much brighter sounding than my Seagull but not in a bad way, there's just more detail to the high end which makes it really articulate.

I have to say Richard did a superb job of setting up the guitar and shipping it.  He was also eager to help out with queries most of the time.  Overall I'm very happy with the fact I order from Richard but that's not to say there weren't problems with the order.

Before I placed the order I contact Richard about it to enquire about a suitable case, how it compared to the more expensive models and I also enquired about the 0% finance he had available.  Given that I sent the email on a Sunday I was amazed to get a response within a couple of hours and then a response to my second email sent that same night within minutes.

Suitably impressed I placed the order first thing Monday morning and sat and waited for the finance details to come through.  Come mid-afternoon there was still no sign of it so I contacted Richard to find out what was going on.  He replies telling me that his wife had locked him out of his computer/account (I forget the exact details) and he wouldn't be able to process it until the next day but he'd send it over first thing in the morning.  Fair enough, these things happen.

So Tuesday morning comes and goes and no sign of the finance details.  Getting slightly impatient I send an email and then go onto his site to see if the live chat is on.  It's not but I notice the twitter link so follow that to find his twitter feed has several posts made that day about his trip around the Gordon Smith factory.  The finance details do not show up on Tuesday.

I sent what was probably a fairly curt email on Wednesday chasing it up having had no reply to my email the previous day.  Richard responds and is very apologetic and promises to send the finance agreement out before lunch time.  This time he's true to his word and it turns up and it all goes through with out a hitch.

I'm probably coming across as being slightly narked by this and, to be honest, I was.  The set back on the Monday I wasn't too bothered about but the second delay annoyed me.  It's fair enough that he was out and about on a factory tour that day but I'm sure he'd have known about it in advance so could have either told me about it in advance or, if it had slipped his mind when he promised to send the documents out Tuesday morning, he could have sent a quick email explaining the further delay.  I think it's safe to assume that if he was posting on Twitter then he'd have been able to send an email.

For someone who prides themselves on their customer service I felt his approach to dealing with customers was entirely reactive rather than pro-active.  If there's been a problem or set back with the order I want to know about it.  I don't expect to have to continually chase things up after it becomes clear there's been an issue.

My second issue is how long it took to receive the guitar.  The order was placed on the Monday morning (the 9th) and I finally received the guitar on the 20th.  I appreciate that Richard puts a fair amount of work into each guitar that he ships out but even so I feel this took longer than it should have done.  If you dig deep enough on his website then it does state 7-10 days for delivery but I really had to go looking for it.  The issue was compounded by the fact I had to email him three times to get an response to my request for a shipping date so I could make sure I was in the office on that day.

I think it's great that Richard's out there providing the service he does and his reputation and the fact he isn't just a box shifter are the reasons I decided to order from him.  I don't know if the communication problems I had were a blip but I do think he needs to take a little more care of his customers given the service he claims to provide.

All that being said the guitar really was set up flawlessly.  However, would it have been any worse if bought from Andertons who had the same model at the same price and were offering next day delivery?

mellowsun

Nice guitar!

7-10 days seems reasonable if that includes the time taken to set up the guitar to your specifications. Would Andertons have done this also?

That said I've never ordered an acoustic unseen, as getting the right one is such a personal thing, for me at least.

GuyBoden

Yes, nice looking guitar.

LooseMoose

Faith guitars are set up by the distributor I believe?  Now, fair enough there is a chance it's wandered a bit since but they should be pretty smack-on by the time they hit the dealers. 

I may have this wrong.

But yeah, too long for me - I wouldn't order based on that lead time

RedRabbit

mellowsun said:

Nice guitar!

7-10 days seems reasonable if that includes the time taken to set up the guitar to your specifications. Would Andertons have done this also?

That said I've never ordered an acoustic unseen, as getting the right one is such a personal thing, for me at least.

I was expecting it to be about a week so the start of the following week would have been fine. To be honest waiting until the Friday didn't bother me once I knew about it. And, for the record, I didn't get have say into the set up of the guitar. I'm sure if I had asked for different strings etc then Richard would have obliged but I never got asked for any input. I should probably stress that I do think Richard provides a quality service but his communication wasn't great and I do think the lead time needs to be made more obvious.

LooseMoose

Speaking as someone with a career based in 'service', it's almost 100% communication-based.  This is an odd thing to scrimp on. Good comms = good service = customer more likely to be lenient when other things don't go their way (such as delivery times).

mgaw

doesn't he wait for an order and payment to come through then order the guitar from the distributor...i kind of got that feeling when i phoned up enquiring about a guitar a few years ago...especially when the chap on the end of the phone told me they didnt keep the guitars in stock !    maybe the answer lies there

RedRabbit

mgaw said:

doesn't he wait for an order and payment to come through then order the guitar from the distributor...i kind of got that feeling when i phoned up enquiring about a guitar a few years ago...especially when the chap on the end of the phone told me they didnt keep the guitars in stock !    maybe the answer lies there

Quite possibly as I did find something on his site about a certain brand (Godin maybe?) not having a UK distributor so it would take slightly longer to receive the guitar.  

If this is the case I think it's something else he needs to be more upfront about.

For me a lot of customer service is managing the customers expectations.  Richard didn't do this with either the delivery time or sending over the finance documents.  Being kept in the dark is worse than being told a mistake has been made. 

kjdowd

RedRabbit said:

mgaw said:

doesn't he wait for an order and payment to come through then order the guitar from the distributor...i kind of got that feeling when i phoned up enquiring about a guitar a few years ago...especially when the chap on the end of the phone told me they didnt keep the guitars in stock !    maybe the answer lies there

Quite possibly as I did find something on his site about a certain brand (Godin maybe?) not having a UK distributor so it would take slightly longer to receive the guitar.  

If this is the case I think it's something else he needs to be more upfront about.

For me a lot of customer service is managing the customers expectations.  Richard didn't do this with either the delivery time or sending over the finance documents.  Being kept in the dark is worse than being told a mistake has been made. 

Fairly sure this is the case based on my experience. I had a mixed experience with him. Ended up OK but similar problems with comms. That said, I'm sure it's a tough old market for the smaller dealer.

Gru

It sounds like there were a few comms problems overall, but I think phone should always be people's first contact source.

Yes email, live messenger, etc is all good, but companies get inundated with them every day they don't always arrive on time, or at all. I personally wouldn't use them if I wanted information re an order quickly.

I've personally dealt with Richard two, possibly three times, I don't remember having any real issues, but I didn't do the financing part. It is just Richard and Josh (assuming Josh is still there) and one person setting them up. For a small business, it would be impossible to hold stock of every guitar he lists, and thus I think that 7-10 working days for delivery is pretty reasonable, especially as I doubt yours was the only one being ordered, set up and tested.

Today we live in a world where people are used to getting things next day, myself included, it's a luxury. I have certainly been guilty of wanting guitar purchases quickly in the past. That being said the ones that Richard have supplied have always been worth waiting for.

I am not criticising your post, although it may read like I am, these are just my thoughts re ordering guitars and my experiences with Richard.

It does sound like maybe a couple of things could be communicated better, or clearer on the web page, but I am glad you got the guitar and like it. :-)