DjangoBooks.com
Welcome to our Community!
Categories
- 19.7K All Categories
- 1.1K General
- 452 Welcome
- 57 Archtop Eddy's Corner
- 136 CD, DVD, and Concert Reviews
- 380 FAQ
- 26 Gypsy Jazz Italia
- 22 Photos
- 199 Gypsy Picking
- 21 Unaccompanied Django
- 15 Pearl Django Play-Along Vol.1
- 16 Gypsy Fire
- 40 Gypsy Rhythm
- 1.3K Gypsy Jazz University - Get Educated
- 126 Gypsy Jazz 101
- 210 Repertoire
- 208 History
- 696 Technique
- 47 Licks and Patterns
- 6 Daniel Givone Manouche Guitare Method Users Group
- 20 Eddie Lang Club
- 1.2K Gypsy Jazz Gear
- 748 Guitars, Strings, Picks, Amps, Pickups and Other Accessories
- 423 Classifieds
- 45 Recording
- 62 Other Instruments
- 18 Violin
- 5 Mandolin
- 22 Accordion
- 7 Bass
- 10 Woodwinds
- 315 Gypsy Jazz Events
- 137 North America
- 95 Europe
- 83 International
In this Discussion
Who's Online (0)
Today's Birthdays
Comments
And sir you might not want to bad mouth and tell others not too. But it was a funny comment about McDs. I haven’t ate there in almost 10 years I’m patient.
just please clarify: did you specifically tell him you didn't want the guitar prior to him telling you it was ready? That is unclear.
Yup sorry it’s hard to get a year and half of info in a post so if that wasn’t clear. I informed him well in advance via emails and messages on FB and no response. I get you want to defend the honor of luthiers ( I do to!). I’m probably not thorough as I don’t get kicks out of sharing bad experiences online. You can check my post history!
Never met Ari nor communicated with him, so I don't really "have a dog in this fight." But I did work several years for a Finnish company and have some friends there. Culturally, it is important to remember that they are generally not a super-communicative lot--by their own admission. They take pride in this fact and thoroughly own the maxim "silence is golden." Here's a humorous coffee mug. These are broad cultural traits and won't reflect every person, but it is important to know some of these tendencies. When people from different cultures enter situations with different expectations, it can cause friction or misunderstanding. But, as this information becomes known, it can help to change your expectations and perhaps ease some tension. Please, if there are any Finns reading, do refine my understanding of this matter.
There's a great guitar player in Asheville named Hank Bones. He's been known to say "there are places in the world where silence is a sign of respect" or something along those lines, when the band finishes a tune and no one in the audience claps.
I've also shared my communication issues with Ari in other threads.
I get that delays happen, and that if you quote 6 months and it ends up being 8 months, so what. What's unforgivable is not letting the customer know without them badgering you. There were some delays with my Duffell, but I was never in the dark.
And for what it's worth, when I did receive my AJL, the bigtone was not working correctly. I reached out asking if he had suggestions and he never replied. Still hasn't. Great builder or not, communication styles or otherwise, you absolutely owe paying customers some nominal level of communication.
Well ultimately I remain feeling like if you commission a guitar from someone, you bought a guitar. You owe them the remainder of the money. Unless you had a clause or contract saying you had the right to back out or get your deposit back, you need to pay for the guitar you asked someone to make for you. Once the person starts the guitar, it's yours.
I've not really heard of people backing out of a commission and expecting a refund.
If he is kind enough to sell it to someone else and give you your deposit back, that reflects well on him but I don't think that's his obligation. And if he's not responding quickly to that, I mean, it sucks a lot for him and it might not be his highest priority.
But ultimately, once you give someone the money to build you a guitar, and the job commences, I would not assume that you can get that money back. That's the whole point of taking a deposit.
@paulmcevoy75 Yeah, that's why I asked because @jsparr1983's OP didn't specify a timeline and that seemed like an very pertinent detail. At this point I'm not going to comment anymore other than to say 2 things can be true, which are OP has every right to be ticked off by poor communication and AJL has a right to become fully recovered financially (i.e. selling the guitar) before sending any kind of refund.
They came to an agreement to refund the money when the guitar gets sold. Everything else is besides the point. Sure, the builder could've said no (I'm intentionally leaving the name out so to not feed the Internet search engines), but he agreed. Why the buyer didn't just take delivery etc...it's all besides the point. He asked (as my bandmate, Randy, taught me "what's the worst that can happen, they say no?") and the builder said ok. All that matters is what came after that.
I'm 99.9999% positive he'll come through in the end.
In another post about the same type of the guitar, just about every person who ordered directly said something about delays and lack of communication. This isn't unusual. Like is said in my original post, a lot of these guys, they just want to build, in piece and quiet. And I get it. They didn't go to business for customer relations. They like to disappear in their own silent world, only hearing the sound of their tools, saws buzzing, the wood scraping...
On the other hand, how long does it take to write "no buyer yet, you'll know when I know when that changes". Radio silence is frustrating, especially if you're relying on that money.
But a few months isn't that bad in a big picture. A friend here had to take a luthier to collections court when he couldn't get his vintage Gibson back from a fret job, after waiting for one year past the promised date and receiving a total of one email from the guy during that period. That's bad.
But, when so many people say your guitars are awesome but you constantly build passed the promised date...that shouldn't be hard to solve, no? You compare the two dates, promised and delivered and in the future add that time to your new ETA.
I had to do a lot of job labor estimates in my old business. Early on I underestimated 90% of the time because I didn't want to overcharge the customer. I wanted to be right on with my estimates. I never asked for additional money. A few times a customers said, this is ridiculous, just keep track of your time and bill me, when my estimate was grossly under for a large job. Most times I was just out. Eventually I would do my labor estimate and then add 50%. (My old boss would take the field tech estimate and add 150-200% on top of that). That way I was much closer to the target but usually still a bit under. But you learn from experiences and adapt.
Both sides here could've had more tact. In the end, it'll be fine. OP will get the refund and the builder will continue building his awesome guitars.
Actually one of most memorable guitars that I tried in this genre comes from him. The one he built for Adrian H in Chicago. That sound, omg...
I'd estimate it'll all be over in another month...plus a 50%.
I hereby nominate Buco to be "Director of PR" for all the gypsy jazz luthiers in our family.