Guitar Center is crappy

I thought I would write about the past couple of times that I have been to Guitar Center because I think it illustrates what a problem the company has with management and employees.

The first time I went into the Guitar center was over the weekend and I thought, “You idiot, you shouldn’t come in here on a weekend, every idiot who needs strings and picks is going to be in here.” What I did notice was that the noise was insane. So many people playing awful Eddie Van Halen licks, it was truely funny. I even heard someone playing “Stairway to Heaven” which is like an inside joke at guitar stores.

I was looking at Telecasters and the other thing I noticed was that they had like 10-12 telecasters on the floor and they were all screwed up. Missing strings, knobs, dings in the neck. I chalked this up to the weekend figuring that they didn’t have time to see that these guitars should not be on the sales floor like that. I couldn’t get any help and I wouldn’t have been able to hear anything anyway, so I left. Cash still tucked in my wallet.

I went back the next week and to my amazement I found an empty sales floor filled with all the same broken guitars. So I had some fun and started to walk around and count the problems.

So, out of 10 or so telecaster guitars on the floor:

• All were missing knobs of one kind or another
• one had a jack that was hanging out
• 5 were missing strings
• 3 had visible dings in the neck,
• 3 had visible dings on the body
• 1 had a pickup that didn’t work

As if this was not enough, no one could help me. I had cash in my pocket and didn’t look like a troll who just wanted to touch the guitars. Did I smell that bad? And before you can answer that, No I didn’t. The “manager” got on the intercom and asked for sales help to guitars and no one came. He finally put a guy right in front of me and I asked if “These were the only telecasters they had”. He promptly left and spent the next 10 minutes at the computer screen while I walked around.

After he came back his only answer was “No that’s it” and turned and went back to his computer terminal. So once again cash in hand I was turned out at the largest music retailer in the U.S. without being able to purchase one the oldest and most widely used guitar styles ever.

So I took my money and went down to Haight Ashbury Music store and was able to play a nice selection of Fender telecasters with a nice helpful salesperson (Thanks Steve) and came home with a great black Telecaster.

Scratch another major music retailer off my list. Don’t think I will be back there.