Samuel

Nov 19, 2023

Worst online guitar buying experience I've had

Judging by the reviews here, it sounds like using the in person store is a great experience, and highly recommended, unfortunately my experience with chase direct was buying from them as an online seller, and was a much less positive experience. I ordered a tanglewood 3/4 classical guitar through their storefront on ebay that was on sale. For context, this is a budget guitar, when ordering a budget guitar you shouldn't be surprised if the item needs a setup, and you shouldn't expect any vip treatment, totally reasonable. However the item I received was not only horribly packaged and lacking adequate protection, but the guitar itself was unplayable, to the point I'm wondering if the item was actually b-stock masquerading as a regular guitar on sale. Every other guitar I've purchased, including cheaper purchases such as a £60 bax music own brand fazley guitar, and a £99 pound vintage Statesboro parlor, have all come with adequate protection, being double boxed, they've also all been made very well playable with a setup by myself. The Tanglewood from chasedirect has the worst intonation issues I've ever seen, it's not just a saddle that needs a bit of filing, issues that a set up hasn't been able to solve, I suspect the bridge is misplaced and is going to need work done from a professional guitar tech. Way too expensive of a job for a guitar of this price. It also has a bit of general wear and tear, scratches and an huge amount of dust collected on the tuning machine rollers, also unlike all my other purchases it didn't come with an allen for the truss rod, it also didn't come in the nylon gig bag I saw this guitar be packaged with in other locations selling it, all this further making me think this is an old ex display or b stock item labeled as 'on sale'. As stated above, literally every other guitar I've ever ordered online has been double boxed, this was just the thin cardboard box housing the guitar in some bubble wrap, how it didn't get broken on the way to me I don't know, but the box itself had taken a few knocks and had become dented/softened in several locations. Looking at some other reviews here, chasedirect have refused full refunds for some people returning faulty items, the packaging this was sent to me in wasn't adequate for one trip, let alone a return one, and I don't have means to arrange alternate packaging, as to not risk losing the guitar, as unplayable as it is, and the chance of a refund, I don't feel like I have any choice but to keep it. Especially as chasediect failed to respond to an attempt at communication through ebay. I've already wasted time and money trying to make this thing playable, and with the amount of money it'd take to fix it's issues, I could have just gotten a better, solid top 3/4 classical for less money than this will cost me. Not happy.