Warwick lost a custom sale due to USM incompetence

Coop

Coop

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First off, I apologize for the rant I'm about to launch into. When someone is ready to pull the trigger on $12k+ for a custom bass, one would think the salesman would be eager to complete the deal. This was not my experience with USM and Warwick's loss was Alembic's gain.

As an introduction, I have been a Warwick evangelist since I got my first Thumb in 2006. I have had three of them (still playing one), one standard and two custom shop. I have also had two Corvettes, a FNA Jazzman and a custom $$. So, I'm familiar with ordering custom Warwick basses.

Back in September of 2013, I decided to make a change to my custom Thumb (BO) and see if Warwick would make a custom neck for me. Warwick said "no", so I started pursuing other avenues. After a lot of soul-searching, I decided to for for the gusto and order a mack-daddy, no compromise bass. I wanted to have Warwick make me a custom Dolphin NT with Ovagkol or Zebrano body, Wenge neck, LEDs, 3-band eq, etc. In December, I contacted the custom shop who referred me to USM, who replaced Dana B Goods as the distributor. I have had bad experiences with USM dating back to the days they were mis-managing Eden Electronics, and crossed my fingers they could handle my order without botching it. "K" (not his real name - PM me for that info) contacted me on November 4th and we started the ordering process. Normally, I would go through Bass Central in Orlando, but I wanted to get an MSRP to make sure I was in the ballpark regarding my budget. I'll spare you the details, but over the course of the next few months, we had several emails as we worked out the order and I was promised a final spec on December 18th. The last time I heard from "K" was January 17th, 2014, and that was after two reminders from me asking about the status of the spec and his reply did not have any information about the spec.

Suffice to say, I was unsatisfied with the sales experience. I got tired of waiting for "K" to get back to me and felt that if he wanted the sale, he would have followed up. Having no confidence in USM's capability to accurately make a custom shop order, I decided to go in a different, non-Warwick, direction. Since USM's failure to communicate, I have ordered a custom graphite neck from Moses for my fretless Thumb that should be here next week and have ordered a custom mack-daddy Alembic Rogue that should be done in a couple of months. I'm still going to play my Thumb from time to time, but my Rogue will be pulling regular duty rather than a Dolphin, and that's a loss for Warwick and a reason to be wary of USM if you are ordering a custom shop instrument.
 
Just a question, and I'm in no way affiliated or biased against any of the mentioned parties (including you);

But why didn't you take this paperwork to another Warwick distrubutor? I'm not quite knowledgeable on the US situation, but surely there are lots of other enthusiastic people who do want to do business?
 
Man that is one painful experience bro. Did you at any time contact Warwick in Germany or the N.Y. Custom Shop?
 
Gnermo said:
Just a question, and I'm in no way affiliated or biased against any of the mentioned parties (including you);

But why didn't you take this paperwork to another Warwick distrubutor? I'm not quite knowledgeable on the US situation, but surely there are lots of other enthusiastic people who do want to do business?
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There is only one USA distributor.
 
Wow! Does that mean you have to go direct to Germany if you want your bass ordered correctly?
 
No, you HAVE to go through USM, and that's the problem. My first contact was directly to the custom shop in Germany and they sent me right over to USM and this is why I did not contact Warwick directly after that.

After "K" didn't deliver the spec on December 18th, never answered my status request sent January 11th, and finally responded to my January 16th resend of the 11th's email with a short answer to a question and still no spec, I was pretty disgusted. Knowing Alembic makes fantastic custom instruments and with two Alembics already in hand, I turned to them.

Man, looking over the old emails I kept remind me of what a kick-ass Dolphin it would have been! I will say that the experiences I had with the custom shop when Dana B Goods was the US distributor were great and that's one reason I went to Warwick first (in addition to the quality of the instruments). I had a sinking feeling when I found out I had to work through USM - their tenure at Eden's helm was a disaster.
 
Can't you buy it abroad and then ship it ?

I had bad experience with 2 Warwick distributors locally in 5 years period and decided not to go for CS but now, if I ever decide to buy CS Warwick bass I would not try luck with distributors, when we already have forum mates Warwick distributors.
I would ask some well known forum member to give me the best price and then go for it knowing he will do his best.

Win win situation for both parties.
 
11080, If you wanted to go CS, you could take a train ride to Manukirchen and order it in person. Those of us in the US aren't so lucky. I could have flown over to order, but the trip would have cost half of what the bass was going to. We have to go through the one distributor for the whole US.
 
PM me to tell you the name of the dealer!

When I complained on Serbian dealer who gave me a lot of trouble when trying to buy CS Thumb BO BN 6 with maple body and maple neck (which I had never bought) he offered me his best service. (By that time I have already decided to go for used discontinued Thumb BO BN6 which I had luck to find and buy.)

So, if you can get lower price (dealer could/would lower his profit and still gain some extra $ for selling goods to unexpected foreign customer) you can use that spared money to pay shipping and insurance.

The only loss is not yours; but your country's; it will not collect value added tax. You can get CS Warwick for the same money and probably not pay even value added tax due to the fact final user (you) is in other country. If he sends you the bass as used one, you may not even pay tax at all. Of course, paper work could be sent separatly so you would have all the papers and guarantee for your new CS and the bass could still be clasiffied as used one and because of that, no value added tax payed locally.
 
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I am sorry you had this experience, Coop. Next time (if the dreams of the dolphin will still hunt you) please consider that Warwick is also directly present in
Warwick / Framus Custom Shop Showroom:
76-80 East, 7th Street
New York, NY 10003
Tel 1 (0) 212.777.6990
Fax 1 (0) 212.777.6994
E-Mail: [email protected]

Really sorry about your bad experience.
 
Florin,

Thanks for the comment. You never know, I may be knocking on the door again for a Dolphin - I still love my Warwick basses and the Dolphin is such a unique design. I wish I had known the NYC custom shop was more than a boutique. I was following the lead from the German custom shop response that referred me to USM and did not mention the NYC shop. If it is possible to go to the showroom and configure a custom order, it would be a good idea to mention that somewhere on the website in the custom shop section. I would have gone up to NY just to make sure the order was accurate and I was aware of the options and capabilities available to me.
 
Hi Coop,

USM is our distributor in US, so it is our duty to point you to them in the first place. Also you can PM me personally or write an email to [email protected], If you have problems in the future.

Thanks!
 
It is clear that Warwick has always had the enemy right at home, talking about their US distributors (past and present).

BTW, don´t forget to post pics of your Alembic when it comes to your hands.

Cheers.
 
Interesting development in this ongoing trial of mine. After I gave up on USM and had already ordered my Alembic, I had a horrible experience with Moses Graphite.

Long story short, I gave them my specs, they agreed they could do the work, they made one neck with the side dots in the wrong place (for a fretted bass instead of a fretless), then made another neck with the correct side dot placement. All this took from January 18th to August 1st. When I received the bass (they did the install), it felt wrong. Sure enough, they didn't even bother to use my specs to build the neck, they just built what they wanted. It kind of feels like a 33" P-Bass; hell, if they would have sent me a 32" J-bass neck, I would have been fine with that. When I called them on the mistakes, they admitted the mistake, agreed that they cannot make the neck that I want, and will give me a full refund on return of the necks.

To add insult to injury, they didn't return the neck screws, so I can't even replace my old neck. Needless to say, I am really disappointed with Moses Graphite. Between the long waits between emails and the disregard for the details of my order, I would never recommend them for custom work.

So, does anyone know if the custom shop can shave down an existing Thumb BO neck?
 
Nachobassman said:
It is clear that Warwick has always had the enemy right at home, talking about their US distributors (past and present).

BTW, don´t forget to post pics of your Alembic when it comes to your hands.

Cheers.
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Way back, Dana B Goods used to be a fantastic distributor. I remember people sending casual emails to have a JAN III and get it.

Anyway, don't know if Florin is still distributing, but, IIRC, people ordered from him.
 
Distributors suck. I want to buy a CS Streamer Jazzman, but where I live (Argentina) you can't even find a regular Jazzman (or even a SSI). So I called the local distributor, Tevelam, and they told that they don't take orders from buyers, only shops. Also, they clearly told me that under no circumstance they were going to order a single bass, not even a standard model because their orders were "by the hundreds". Of course this notion of hundreds of warwicks is ridiculous because you can only find 10 warwicks (mostly rockbasses) in all the music district in Buenos Aires. A couple of weeks later I decided to ask warwick directly. They forwarded my custom specs to Tevelam. I got so angry! I emailed warwick and asked them why did they do that, to which they answered that they can't sell directly to customers, only through distributors. Clearly, someone at warwick told tevelam to cut the bull*** and start taking care of customers. Now from Tevelam they assured that everything they had told me was a missunderstanding, and now they try to sound really polite saying how sorry they are and making haste to get the estimated price for my custom... It is a real pitty how Warwick lowers their reputation because of this incompetent distributors.
PS: sorry for my bad english
 
Heimdall said:
Distributors suck. I want to buy a CS Streamer Jazzman, but where I live (Argentina) you can't even find a regular Jazzman (or even a SSI). So I called the local distributor, Tevelam, and they told that they don't take orders from buyers, only shops. Also, they clearly told me that under no circumstance they were going to order a single bass, not even a standard model because their orders were "by the hundreds". Of course this notion of hundreds of warwicks is ridiculous because you can only find 10 warwicks (mostly rockbasses) in all the music district in Buenos Aires. A couple of weeks later I decided to ask warwick directly. They forwarded my custom specs to Tevelam. I got so angry! I emailed warwick and asked them why did they do that, to which they answered that they can't sell directly to customers, only through distributors. Clearly, someone at warwick told tevelam to cut the bull*** and start taking care of customers. Now from Tevelam they assured that everything they had told me was a missunderstanding, and now they try to sound really polite saying how sorry they are and making haste to get the estimated price for my custom... It is a real pitty how Warwick lowers their reputation because of this incompetent distributors.
PS: sorry for my bad english
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your english is good enough.

You can contact any competent dealer you like.

Is a wick endorser and has some contacts to dealers afaik:-)

maybe you contact him - this would be the same continent at least;-)
 
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