Plaidophile: Musician's Friend: Not The Environment's Friend

February 20, 2008

Musician's Friend: Not The Environment's Friend (customer experience, rant)

by fluffy at 7:31 PM

So, recently I ordered a bunch of stuff from Musician's Friend. Given that it was over $100, shipping was free. Some of the items were backordered and would ship at a later date. I was fine with this.

The first shipment arrived several days ago, and contained the two items which weren't backordered. This seemed fine.

The second shipment arrived today. It was a fairly large box. Inside this box was the following:

One 10' instrument cable, blue
Packing material

So, there was one item, which could have easily been shipped in a regular padded envelope, assuming it even made sense to ship it alone at all (which it didn't). It's not like I'm in dire need of rush delivery of a single instrument cable. The other two cables I ordered (one red, one green) are still listed on my order status page as "backordered," along with the pedalboard case (which I actually do want to get as soon as possible). Will each of those cables also ship individually in a large, environmentally-unfriendly box, wasting fuel too?

Why doesn't Musician's Friend use a bit of common sense when they decide what to pack together? Do they just look at the orders generated by the computer and laugh when they see that someone's (apparently) ordered a single $6 instrument cable?

On a related note, why do they constantly send out so many catalogs and mailings which are pretty much impossible to get off of? Why do many of their "special offers" require calling a salesperson on the phone rather than making a web-based order (which would ostensibly be cheaper for them, and certainly makes me as a customer feel more confident that I'll receive the right item)? I think they need to rethink a few of their strategies, here.

Comments

#10473 craig 02/21/2008 07:49 am

i ordered a t-mobile phone card from amazon that came in a huge box with that inflatable padding stuff... very stupid!

#10474 ucblockhead

02/21/2008 08:33 am

I once bought a memory stick that came in a box about the size of a standard Amazon shipping box. Between the plastic display box, the bubble wrap and the shipping box itself, that was a damn safe 1/2" square of plastic.

#10498 fluffy

02/25/2008 07:40 am

Okay, so my violin needs a new bow. So I ordered a bow. The bow was $40, so I thought what else did I want that'd cost at least $60 (I am very quickly running out of things in that category) so I ordered a glockenspiel as well. Both were in-stock and ready to ship. So far only the glockenspiel has shipped.

What's the point of a shipping discount if they're just going to ship each item individually anyway? (Aside from the obvious thing of generating more sales.)

#10577 fluffy

03/11/2008 08:51 am

Just got another shipping confirmation from them. At least they're sending the two instrument cables together.

I'd really rather just get my pedalboard though. Meh.

(Oh, and I forgot to update about the last post, but it turned out they did ship the bow and the glockenspiel at the same time. In different boxes. The glockenspiel was in a box that was sized exactly right for it. The bow was in a gigantic box filled with packing material.)

#10594 fluffy

03/15/2008 03:46 pm

So the two instrument cables came in a MUCH smaller box than the previous single cable (though still much bigger than it needed to be). Do they just have a random pile of boxes that they grab the most convenient one off of?