Dean Sales Representatives

Today I visited one of the remaining “local” stores I had not personally seen: 8th Street Music. They have a small retail store presence in Philadelphia, but sell many instruments on line both through e-bay and amazon.com. The bulk of their sales seems to come through on line sources, and they advertise themselves as the original internet music instrument retailer. Their history appears to support that claim.

So I went to the store because when I have looked for unusual guitars, like the Parker Fly or the Dean Soltero, their store always comes up as a dealer. I was unimpressed by the physical retail store, but I was impressed by the employees within. I had conversations with two of the workers, and mostly spent time with the second. He was able to find a Leslie West Standard, a one-pick-up version of the Soltero for which I have been searching. We talked about guitars, the local guitar market, the market for instruments in Philadelphia, and Dean guitars.

What I learned was that Dean has quality control issues, dealing with Dean is not easy, and the Dean sales representative was given much of the responsibility for the difficulty in selling their guitars. After playing the Dean, I decided that I liked the playability of the neck. But the guitar was poorly set up from the factory, and required some adjustments to the pickup, so it wouldn’t contact the high E string. The guitar was strung with 9′s, and while they certainly were easy to bend, the guitar had a thin tone that might have been caused by the strings. Or it might have been caused by the fact that it was a $600 single-pickup guitar. But I didn’t learn of the price until I was home, because nobody could find out how much it cost! I agree that Dean should provide their dealers with enough info that price should never be an unknown, but it was.

I plan to return to the store, perhaps next week. They have a Dean Soltero, American made, two pickups, in their NJ warehouse, and plan to get it to their store so I can play it. I’ll be interested in its tone, and hearing how much of a difference the second pickup makes in the variety of tones I can squeeze out of the Soltero. In the meantime, it was a nice way to spend an hour this morning. Its just a shame that parking in Philadelphia set me back $13.50 for 90 minutes. Ouch!

Anatomy of a Sickness

My latest obsession continues to get worse. Last night, several times during the night I dreamed of the Dean Soltero guitar. I’ve noticed that in the past, this is the next-to-last-step before buying the guitar sight unseen from either e-bay or some other internet retailer.

Hoping to stave off the inevitable, I stopped by Springfield Music. Springfield Music is owned by the owner of Swarthmore Music, about which I’ve already written too much. The owner himself was in today. I asked about the Soltero, and he indicated that he thought he might have heard of it. Then he said he had some Deans at his other location, and called to check . Then hung up. A good 5-10 minutes later, he called back to find out if they had any. So this “inventory check” took between 10 and 15 minutes. I tried to walk out twice, but he stopped me both times with promises of things to come. Finally, he took my name and phone number, and wrote down what I wanted to know into a computer that must have been 15 years old. It shouldn’t have been hard, but I had to repeat it several times:What is the difference between the $3500 model and the $400 model ($3100, said the keyboard instructor overhearing our conversation).

So now I’ll wait and see if he calls me back. I hope he does, so I have some reason NOT to spend the $3500 on the expensive version (which has a beautiful figured maple top and is made in America).

Business negativity

Flushed with excitement over how smooth everything was moving along with a possible guitar store, this week I ran smack into the “What? Are you kidding?” of my daily existence. Married to an anesthesiologist, this seek I was again reminded of what a large share of everything child- and house-related I perform. And my wife’s hours, which she modified once about two years ago, aren’t going to get any better. So this week I have spent less time contacting guitar dealers or real estate agents, which were the next steps on this possible new venture.

Instead, I bought a beautiful Parker Fly guitar off e-bay. I have been bidding on Parker Flys for several months and was never the high bidder. It was my inability to locate a new Parker locally that first drew me to the idea of opening a guitar store. So buying one is something of n accomplishment. And I simply love the guitar. It is high tech, and unusual, but mostly it fits me well. And I find myself exploring new things, and letting my creativity out to make up things, which I never did on any of my other guitars. So for now, I am a very happy player.

I am also bidding on a Gibson ES-335. Its 1960′s vintage, and I am hoping to win an auction with a high bid less than $10,000. The Blue Book of guitar prices I have pegs the value of this instrument around $12,000, and the auction listing says it’s worth $12,000 in the Vintage Guitar Price Guide, also. I’m not really planning to play this guitar, if I win it. Instead, I view it as an investment, a possible guitar for the wall in a guitar store (should I ever pursue that dream to fruition). And if no store materializes, I can still sell it on e-bay some time in the future, hopefully for more than I pay this week.

e-bay PowerSeller Program

e-bay has a program to recognize high-volume sellers. Its called PowerSeller. I have purchased items from PowerSellers in the past, often electronics. But as a result of my recent sales activities for my friend, I have become a Power Seller.

When I received the e-mail inviting me into the program, I first was concerned that it was a phishing scam. I e-mailed the customer service department at e-bay, and was told that I had indeed qualified to be a Power Seller. So now I am.

In order to maintain that elite designation, I need to sell an average of $1000 per month, averaged over the prior three months, and maintain a feedback rating over 98%. I’m already plotting how I am going to maintain the rating for as long as I can. I have taylor 420 guitar that I want to sell, but I won’t sell it until November. I want to have something next month to replace the items I sold several months ago that will become off my average.

But I still don’t think I’ll be getting rich selling on e-bay anytime soon.

Customer satisfaction – Success

It appears that I have a happy customer. Faced with a choice of paying the $40 to ship the amplifier back to me, and have nothing for his trouble, or given the offer of a $100 rebate (on a $345 amplifier) he took the check. So the check is in the mail, and we are both anticipating positive feedback from the transaction.

I did some follow up research before mailing that check. I learned from the good folks at George’s Music that amplifiers are usually shipped with the tubes already installed, as I did. They are often in cartons marked fragile, which mine wasn’t. And even with that precaution, amplifiers sometimes arrive at their store with broken/damaged tubes. He was candid enough to mention Mesa Boogie as a brand that particularly had trouble with tubes damaged during shipping, and which they no longer carry. So it made it seem reasonable that the tubes in the amp I shipped were damaged by a clumsy DHL driver or package handler.

The buyer also e-mailed to say the amplifier, when connected to an outside cabinet, lost the rattle that he thought was a cabinet rattle. It still had a tube rattle, but with new tubes, would be livable.

So I have a happy customer (I think). And I learned a lot about tube amplifiers and shipping. Fortunately, the Mexican Stratocaster I sold arrived quickly in Florida and was met with a satisfied buyer. I’m hoping for more of the same when the Gretsch Duo Jet sale closes on Sunday night.

I just hope there aren’t any more expensive lessons lurking within the Gretsch!

Losing Confidence

I sold my friends Gretsch Duo Jet guitar in an e-bay auction that closed Sunday night. The winning bid was for $1205 from a buyer in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, approximately 1 hour from my home . I awoke Monday morning to find a message from the buyer asking if he could pick up the guitar from my house, and avoid having to ship the potentially fragile instrument. I was happy to agree, since it saves me time of packing and driving to the shipping store.

And then a funny thing happened: he couldn’t use Pay Pal to pay me because it said I had already been paid. But he hadn’t paid me any money, and I hadn’t received any. At first we thought it was related to him checking out, and canceling in mid-process. But now it appears that it might be something more sinister.

What I found very frustrating was my experience on the phone for almost one hour with the Pay Pal service representative. It almost goes without saying that the representative spoke English with a strong Indian accent. But what was frustrating was that she would become excitable as she discovered some new problem, and then wouldn’t tell me what that problem was. Finally, she thought I should let e-bay know that there might be a duplicate item number, that coincidentally was for the same guitar and sold for the same amount (yeah, right!)

I did learn several things though. My legitimate buyer says that the other buyer lives in Chicago. And in one of my efforts to reset my passwords in e-bay and Pay Pal, and verify mine as the only legitimate e-mail address on the accounts, an unknown hotmail e-mail address popped up as the default in the log-in box. As if that was the last address used to access my Pay Pal account.

In summary, my interactions with e-bay and Pay Pal were both unhelpful. Both the phone conversation with Pay Pal and a later on-line chat with a customer service rep from e-bay, did nothing to alleviate my concerns about fraudulent access to my account(s). In fact, I didn’t have any concerns at all until I contacted them. This morning I changed my passwords on e-bay and Pay Pal, and removed one of the linked accounts on my Pay Pal account, to further insulate that account from my other financial assets.

Customer satisfaction

I believe strongly in satisfying customers, no matter what business you are in. Whether you offer a product for sale or a service, the customer needs to feel good about the transaction. Bad customer service will kill a business faster than almost anything else I can think of.

So now I have an opportunity to live by that principle.  The winning bidder for a guitar amplifier, which I sold for my hairdresser on e-bay, is unhappy with the product. I listed it as new, which my HD told me it was, and the buyer thinks its used because it has some smudges on the case. And even more importantly to the buyer, the tubes and case both rattle on low frequency notes. The buyer claims to have talked with a friend at a Memphis Guitar Center who says the tube rattle is fixable, but perhaps not the case rattle.

I’m no amplifier expert, but I agree that the tube rattle is fixable. I just fixed my own rattling tubes in a Carvin amplifier, if “fixing” you mean “replacing”. But the solution did work. The case rattle is more puzzling, as I didn’t notice it when I tried the amplifier in my house, hoping to avoid this very problem.

So today I will talk with HD about his amp and find out as much as I can. How much did he use it and still call it “new”. How much would he be willing to give back of the purchase price if the buyer will accept it at a lower price?  Does he want to give me his money back and he can keep the amplifier? And how much will I be out from my own pocket keeping my customer happy?

e-bay commissions

One of the problems I have with the idea of getting rich on e-bay is the volume of work required to make any money. I just sold a guitar and a guitar amplifier for my friend, the hairdresser. Each item sold for over $300. But after e-bay fees, shipping charges, Paypal charges (damn, I forgot to subtract them out!) I took $50 and was still able to give my friend a check for $520. Now I have to take out my Paypal fees ($23.00) and I’m left with $27 for my trouble. Its a slow way to getting rich.

Selling on e-bay

Selling on e-bay can be an amazing thing. No matter how obscure the item, there are some people that are interested in purchasing it. Over the past several years, I have successfully auctioned numerous pieces of slightly used girls clothing (only the nicest of the dresses my daughters outgrew). And now I am auctioning off several statues for a friend raising money to purchase a trailer parked at the Delaware shore.

But the process is not without some frustrations. Perhaps first and foremost are the potential bidders that ask questions about shipping that are addressed in my listing.  I clearly state that I ship to the domestic United States, and nowhere else. Still, in the past week I have received requests to ship to Canada, Hong Kong, and Australia. In some cases, I will be willing to ship “internationally” when that means Canada. But shipping to Hoong Kong or Australia? Then I expect the buyer to have some idea of what is required, and a very good feedback history. Still, they keep asking.

The other thing I find frustrating is the timing of bids. On a 10-day auction, I often get bids during the first weekend, then nothing until the second weekend. Similarly, on a 7-day auction, I receive a flurry of bids early on, then nothing until the last several hours. Even allowing for the growing use of automatic software to make last minute bids, it takes the fun out of watching an auction.

Still, I have been getting some good action on my items. And I have many watchers on the guitars and amplifier; not so much on the Giuseppe Armani figurines.

Selling more e-bay guitars

My hairdresser has again asked me to sell some items for him on e-bay. I have previously sold an Gibson ES-345 for him, managing to get $2000 for it, far less than I thought it was worth given how new it was. Still, he gave me $50 for my help in selling it, and the buyer was quite happy with the deal he made.

Then about 2 weeks ago my friend had me sell a Crate Palomino series 35W tube amplifier and a Mexican Stratocaster. Those auctions are ongoing, scheduled to end Sunday night.

Then this week, he asked me to sell the Gretsch Duo Jet. He had previously asked me to sell it, then changed his mind. Now, confronted with the need to raise money for a vacation home (trailer) he and his wife agreed they should sell the Gretsch. As well, he brought 10 collectible statues for me to sell.

The entire episode has reminded me of the rules people should follow when acting as Trading Assistants on e-bay. This is a friend, and it started off with just one guitar, so our relationship didn’t start off following e-bay’s recommended procedures. And our interactions I think reflect an unhealthy dynamic around the selling transaction.

First, and most importantly, my friend continues to say “See if you can get $XXX for it” which negates the whole idea of an auction. I can specify a Reserve Price, and for some of the stautes I will, but having a high Reserve Price, in my experience, hasn’t helped generate activity on my items. My other concern is trying to pin him down to what an acceptable price would be, and an accurate description. With the Gretsch, I am certain he originally talked about getting $1500-1800 for it, since it is only 3 months old and costs $2350 new. But one sold today on e-bay for $1225 and it was new, even having the Styrofoam on the Bigsby’s arm. When confronted with that info, he acted like of course he wanted whatever I could get for it, perhaps $1000 – 1100 would be great. Then I start thinking: $1000 winning bid, minus listing fees and shipping. Perhaps I should offer him $950 now, on the spot. I could put it into inventory at Media Music.

Then I look at my bank balances in Quicken. An