Roger Rettig
From:
Naples, FL
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Posted 7 Nov 2003 2:42 pm |
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This isn't steel-related, but most of us have dealings with 'Mr Brown' from time to time, so.....
Last week in Nashville, I was seriously impressed witha 1951 Martin 000-28 - the price tag ($9500) was a deterrent, but, after much soul-searching, and after my return to FL, I called Gruhn's Guitars and had it shipped to me. I won't bore you with the various thought-processes that led to my having second thoughts, but I took the guitar (carefully repacked) to the Naples FL UPS Depot on Wednesday morning.
I paid $161 for 'Next Day Air' to Nashville, and went home to keep tabs on it's progress back to TN.
By 11.00pm there was still no evidence of any movement on their tracking-site (just an acknowledgement of the billing), so on Thursday morning I went to see them. There were red faces all around - the Martin had been placed in the Manager's office for safe-keeping, and nobody had remembered to retrieve it for shipping. It was still there!
I was offered Next Day Air, this time for 'ground' rates (still $60, as the insurance was so high), and, after much grumbling I left in their hands again.
Can you believe it? By midnightlast night (Thursday) there was no sign of the package on the web-site!!!! A lady on the night-staff went out of her way to trace it, even awakening the 'High Value' clerk to see if he remembered it going out. Nothing.....
You can well imagine how fitfully I slept - if had gone astray, I would be responsible for the guitar. There's a time limit on getting a guitar back to Gruhn's, and it's only due to their leniency that I wasn't penalized.
It HAS arrived safely - it wasn't scanned until it arrived in Louisville, KY (at 3.30am!!!) and that scan didn't appear until 7.00am today. This has been a fraught 36 hours, I don't mind admitting - I've aged ten years!
Maybe this will cure me of lusting after vintage guitars that I can't afford - it's certainly cured me of using UPS....
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Roger Rettig
[This message was edited by Roger Rettig on 07 November 2003 at 02:45 PM.] |
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