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
Comments
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.
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.
It matters... and I will definitely be buying from them again.
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.
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.
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...
Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself