Cool story. I love those sexy, pointy B.C. Rich guitars. Craig Goldie and the guys from W.A.S.P. played them...It was many years ago...back in '84. I wanted one of those new Guild Brian May "Red Special" copies that had just come out. My normal guitar store (Guitar Showcase) wasn't a Guild dealer so I went into the local GC and bought this absolutely awful guitar (it wasn't even a good copy other than the color and body shape...the pickups were weak, the klunky pickup sliding switches looked like they were bought at Home Depot and it didn't even have Brian's cool knife edge vibrato but an off the shelf Kahler locking unit). I was young, naive and had only been playing guitar for a couple years and got it into my OCD head that I had to have that guitar. I ended up thoroughly screwed on the deal paying GC full price of $1400 & trading in my Les Paul Studio Standard (the cheapest LP of the early-mid 80's: no pickguard, dot inlays, etc and probably worth about $250). After having this hunk of junk BHM1 for a couple weeks I went back in and said I hated this thing and wanted to return it.Has anyone else been insulted by GC as egregiously?
The sales guy goes into the back and brings out the "manager" who oddly enough was usually the keyboard dept sales guy. He says they can't take it back as a return and refund my money, but they can buy it back from me for store credit. This is where it got ridiculous. He says he'll give me $700 in store credit...but not $700 toward the actual retail price of another guitar, $700 towards the listed full price of another guitar. He said, for example here's a Fender Strat with a full price of $699 that I could trade for. The screwing was they actually sold that Strat for $299 list price. So they wanted to give me $299 actual store credit against a perfect condition BHM1 that 2 weeks ago I paid $1400 for![:rage:]( "Rage!")
I walked out and went to Guitar Showcase where I was friends with the guitar Mgr Dan. Told him my tale of woe and he said he wished I had called him first as he would have told me the BHM1 was garbage and that's why he didn't sell any Guild electrics. He said the best he could do is give me $700 in actual store credit towards another guitar. I found a beautiful frost white BC Rich Mockingbird, fully loaded with all those crazy on-board electronics they used to stuff in those along with a couple strong humbuckers and fancy neck inlays and was happy as a pig in shit. Ya, I took a huge bath on the whole deal but I learned a lot and walked out with what became my main guitar for the next few years. Tough lesson learned but I never bought a guitar from GC again
Statistics: Posted by KinDesu — Sat Apr 27, 2024 11:04 pm