Musician's

Say what you will about Guitar Center or Musician's Friend, this is one of the fastest management-level responses I've seen to a story on Consumerist, and other than the promotional boilerplate in the last paragraph, it's the sort of honesty and openness that we wish more companies would embrace: "it was a mistake, we are deeply sorry, we are correcting it and looking at how to prevent it from happening again."

Musician's Friend Responds To Guitar Center Shipping Mix-Up - The Consumerist 2009

Update: Musician's Friend has responded with an apology.

Guitar Center Ships Broken Guitar From Another Store's Inventory, Says Too Bad, Now It's Yours - The Consumerist 2009

That's the explanation a Musician's Friend CSR gave Mitch when he tried to solve the mystery of the dented, twisted-neck, not-even-from-the-right-store Fender Telecaster.

Guitar Center Ships Broken Guitar From Another Store's Inventory, Says Too Bad, Now It's Yours - The Consumerist 2009

About a week later I was cleaning out my basement and noticed that on the box my guitar was shipped in was a big yellow tag that said two things: Musician's Friend and COMPLAINT.

Guitar Center Ships Broken Guitar From Another Store's Inventory, Says Too Bad, Now It's Yours - The Consumerist 2009

Did you know Guitar Center, Musician's Friend, and "a few other online music retailers" all share the same centralized distribution center?

Guitar Center Ships Broken Guitar From Another Store's Inventory, Says Too Bad, Now It's Yours - The Consumerist 2009

Musician's Friend and/or Guitar Center (they're related) followed up with Mitch and corrected the mistake, but it turns out that Mitch was in the wrong on this one.

Customer Apologizes For Guitar Center Screw-Up - The Consumerist 2009

So I decided to write Musician's Friend to inquire about their warehouse tags.

Guitar Center Ships Broken Guitar From Another Store's Inventory, Says Too Bad, Now It's Yours - The Consumerist 2009

Paul, myself, and all of the upper management team here at Musician's Friend are particularly concerned that we failed Mitch so miserably after he trusted us with his hard-earned money and desire for a new, pristine Fender Telecaster electric guitar.

Musician's Friend Responds To Guitar Center Shipping Mix-Up - The Consumerist 2009

Why in the world would there be a tag from Musician's Friend (Guitar Center's online competition) on my package?

Guitar Center Ships Broken Guitar From Another Store's Inventory, Says Too Bad, Now It's Yours - The Consumerist 2009

Bob Weibel at Musician's Friend contacted us only a few hours after we posted Mitch's story of the used guitar shipping screw up.

Musician's Friend Responds To Guitar Center Shipping Mix-Up - The Consumerist 2009