Travis S.

After dealing with nightmare customer service at Sweetwater, I choose to purchase with Sam Ash. They had more in stock, and were very informative and nice. Will do business again. The price was lower than everybody else, the shipping was super cheap, and again, they actually had the products I needed when no one else did.

Have been a customer since at least 2016 or earlier. Made a large order and 3 items were listed on the site as "in-stock very soon", so I figured I had 6 weeks to wait, no big deal. 4 weeks go by, I send in an email asking for an ETA. Was told "late December/early January". Early January gets here, I send in an email. No response. I call Support to find out. Support then tells me that 2 of my 3 items were another month to 2 months out. The lack of warning or communication and the fact I had to be on the phone with Support for 45 minutes already frustrated me. They transferred me to another agent. This CS agent tells me they will credit my account instead of give me a direct refund after I ask to just cancel the items and return refund to the card I paid with. I say I need it on my card and let me them know I was charged the full amount and there was no "credit" issued to my account. They try to tell me I was not charged full amount and I was credited. The proof was in my AMEX statement. I told them this and the agent literally screamed at me and berated me for disagreeing. When I asked to speak to someone high up in management, they then screamed at me, "It won't do you any good. They're not going to do anything." After screaming and berating me some more, they finally transferred me to a very kind CS Manager that confirmed I was correct about my frustration and refund I was supposed to get. From there, I was issued a refund and an apology. I've spent a lot of money with Sweetwater over the years, it'll be a hard choice for me to do business with them again. Gave an extra star for the past good service, but this interaction has left me with a bad taste. Review your CS agents phone calls, and teach them patience and how to respectfully talk to people without raising their voice or personally attacking them. Sweetwater was in the wrong from the beginning here, still in disbelief how this situation was initially handled.

Update: The Customer Service Manager called me directly the next day to confirm with me that they listened to my phone call in question. They apologized profusely and even sent me a gift card, which they did not have to do. That went a long way with me.