One-Stop shopping
Written: Oct 12 '01 (Updated Oct 13 '01)
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The Bottom Line
I've made several purchases from Musicians Friend and I've never had a problem with them. Fast service and great shipping prices.
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| Full Review |
Over the past several years, I've purchased many items from Musician's Friend. I've never had a problem with them, and they've been good about matching prices, etc. I've also returned some items and everything has worked very smoothly. First, however, you have to know what to expect.
Dealing with Musician's Friend:
Since I'm the type of person that does my own research on products, I wouldn't call Musician's Friend to ask them questions about products. The people who take the orders simply sound like order takers who aren't paid to think. However, they've always been accurate with the shipment and billing - no problems there. If you're looking for a place to call with a bunch of product questions, I don't think you're going to get a lot of help from Musician's Friend, so I wouldn't expect it.
Over the past few years, I've watched Musician's Friend move from a company that offered pretty good deals, to one of the higher priced mail order shops. I wouldn't buy a PRS or an Ernie Ball guitar from them, and even their string prices are expensive unless you get in on one of their sales. However, often they'll run sales and clearance where you can get some good stuff for a good price.
Another great feature about Musician's Friend is their quick and inexpensive shipping. I ordered a guitar, amp, and a bunch of accessories once, and the total shipping cost was less than $16 - and it only took two days to get here. When I had to refund part of my order, I simply called and got an RMA number, shipped the item back, and promptly got credit for it. No problems at all.
I mainly use the Musician's Friend catalog for shopping. They print a great catalog and send it out several times a year.
Musician's Friend - Online Store:
Musicians Friend unfortunately has one of the worst e-commerce sites on the web. Their product info is sorely lacking, their pictures are small, and often their availability of items is inaccurate. They have several reviews of products by their own staff, but they're unrealistic sales-pitches at best. They don't have a mechanism for user reviews or comments (currently), so you're left to scour the web for more info and better pictures. (They just give you tiny pictures for $1000+ items. If you click Larger View, you get a somewhat larger but still tiny picture. No closeups of controls, no pictures of the back of an item - nothing.)
Searching their online store often brings up unrelated matches, and it's sometimes hard to find exactly what you're looking for. Occasionally, you'll click on a product only to find they don't carry it anymore, or the item is backordered and not due in for months. Once I placed an order online for an item that showed to be in stock. It turns out it wasn't, and I had to wait quite a while for the backorder to get filled.
By comparison, Musician's Friend's competitor zzounds.com has a much nicer site with much more content.
Conclusion: If you're a catalog shopper, Musician's Friend is great. If you're a web-shopper, I think you'll find their e-commerce and website needs to mature a bit. Still, despite all that, I've successfully ordered from their website without problems, and overall been pleased with the service. Everything arrived A-ok, when I expected it, with the exception of the backorder problem mentioned above.
Recommended:
Yes
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About the Author
Location: Dallas, TX
Reviews written: 21
Trusted by: 6 members
About Me: Enjoy spending time w/ family. Interested in Guitars, Cars, Pro-Audio Recording, Audio and Video, Music.
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