Sam Ash

Full review
The first thing I noticed was the 4 glowing reviews posted on April 23rd, 2006 (by users "hornbuff", "guitarbuff", "djbuff" and "drumbuff"). At least now I know how this store wound up with any good reviews at all.

Anyway, found an ad on the website for a guitar pedal on clearance for $70. Clicked on the ad, which led me to the item but now read $100, and when I added it to the cart it was still $100. So I called customer service.

Long story short: They ended their "clearance" sale -I guess it really wasn't a clearance sale- but hadn't updated the ad. Fine. They would not offer me the sale price but instead $85 (which was still reasonable), so I bought it. This was about 9am on a Monday, and I did not even get a tracking number until Friday which was the same day it was picked up from their warehouse. 5 working days just to get it out of the door.

Then, it arrives. It has slight wear on the rubber of the pedal. Even worse, some knucklehead left the battery in the battery compartment! So, they sent an open item... it didn't look bad or anything so it wasn't the end of the world. Until I tested it to find the effect didn't function, it only worked when the effect was off. Guess how that made me feel... really, try to imagine.

Next - customer service. Talk about insult to injury. I rehash what happened, and I wind up arguing about whether I purchased a refurb or not. The guy even asked me what I expected for a discount. Discount?!? They didn't even honor their true sale price (remember that I paid $85, instead of the advertised $70, without giving them a hard time). At no point was I ever told anything about my item being anything but 100% new.

Last, if you place an order with them over the phone (without opening an account online), they will create one for you using your email and give you the stock password "samash". I found this out when I tried to go online to set up my email to try and find a tracking number and found my email already had an account for it. They never even mentioned that... I wonder how many customer accounts are sitting there with the "samash" password. This is 2008, how about a little security?

I can't fathom any reason to ever shop at Sam Ash again. This experience was like I was dealing with some crummy seller on eBay and not a major retailer.