Singing the praises of a string supplier...

[AndyR]

I thought I'd post this one here... there must be some other people reading this who need guitar strings...

With my growing arsenal of guitars, and my acid sweat, I'd been hitting a "restringing budget" problem.

I knew I could get good deals on the interweb, but I have awful issues with mail-order, it always seems to f***-up for me in some way. For example, I will never, ever, deal with Amazon again after one or two experiences. I also wish I could have our postman and all the employees at our local sorting office shot (without any legal/moral repercussions...), and my wife sometimes seriously worries about my blood-pressure!

Anyway, I bit the bullet and went with these guys: http://www.soundunlimited.co.uk. I ordered a 10 pack of D'Addario EXL115, my current string of choice for all scale-lengths. Even with p&p, a grand total of £3.26 per set, straight to my door  :P.

If that was the end of the story, I wouldn't bother posting - you can find your own deals :lol:

No... as usually happens to poor mistreated me, after the initial, very quick, order processing, and the nice emails to say they're on their way 1st Class Post... 'twas one big, monumental f-up from start to finish. (The f-up was all "Royal Mail" by the way, but I didn't know it at the time.)

A week and a half later we received a grey Post Office card to say that there was postage to pay (£1 plus £1 admin fee). We went online, as instructed, and paid it. Several working days later, the thing still hadn't arrived, so I had to sit on the Post Office phone number for the usual 15-20 minutes until I could talk to a "human being", who informed me that "oh yes, it's out on delivery... er... today...". At this stage, we still didn't know the size of the package, so we didn't know whether we'd now get a red card saying "we tried to deliver". But when I got home, there were the strings, beautifully packaged in a manner that meant they safely fit through my letter box...

Obviously, with what I knew at the time, I was annoyed with Sound Unlimited, but felt that as long as they could get their postage right in future, I'd want to deal with them again. I appreciated that the Post Office here received it a week and a half ago, and it took them about a week to let me know they wanted money - so the delay was actually the PO, but I believed it was caused by inept "postage evaluation". So I waited a day or two, and then sent Sound Unlimited a polite email saying I wasn't worried about the £2, but I thought I ought to let them know what had happened so that my future orders wouldn't suffer the same delay and confusion.

In under three minutes I received a google-checkout email informing me that my card had been credited £2. I sent a "wow! that was quick!" email to Sound Unlimited, and then received back the explanatory email that the guy had been writing - I was the third person to suffer from not enough postage in the last few weeks. Basically, they'd been relying on their local post office to price 1st Class packages and put the correct stamps on, they just paid what they were asked to, same as the rest of us do  :?  And then he offered me a free set of strings - was there anything out of the ordinary I was tempted to try? So I decided to try out a set of pure nickels (of course this might end up more expensive in the long run, but what the hell, still cheaper than I can get my ordinary ones in shops!).

The free set arrived the next working day.  8)

I'm very impressed with these guys now. What's particularly good for me, as long as they can sort their post office counter out, is that I can order my EXL115s at a very reasonable price, and they fit through my letterbox!! And because of the lengths they went to as soon as I reported a problem, I'm already scanning their accoustic strings trying to figure out what I want to put on my resonator, wondering about trying half-rounds on telecasters, etc, etc...

In general, I don't usually have a good word to say about the online traders I've dealt with, I'm either vaguely indifferent or downright incensed... but these guys (like BKP) seem to provide good ole fashioned service :D

And, I've just realised, I still owe the missus £2 - she paid the excess postage :lol:

[dave_mc]

that's very nice to know. I've used stringbusters and stringsdirect, and never had a problem (but then i've never had a problem with amazon either)... it just boils down to luck a lot of the time... internet purchases are great, as long as nothing goes wrong... :)

[noodleplugerine]

Brilliant!!!

[badgermark]

Thanks for that, I've been looking for a good place to order strings from in bulk and I think i found them! My usual shop has upped their prices, went from £4 for a set up to £5, a big difference for a previously poor student such as myself. This place looks ideal, and it means i might change my strings more often than twice a year...

[HTH AMPS]

I always use Thomann for strings, fast as anyone in the UK and never had any problems.

As for Amazon, I've used them for years and never had a problem either.

[AndyR]

Looks like I'd better explain my Amazon problem! (I nearly deleted that from my original post, wish I had now :roll:)

Aside from the high incidence of cracked CD jewel cases and DVD cases (not attributable to transport damage) in comparison to, say, play.com, my big beef is over their wish-list processing and their attitude when it all goes horribly wrong.

A few years back, one christmas or birthday, I received a large number of duplicate presents from friends and relatives. All parties felt they were buying, in good faith, from my wishlist.

It took an age to sort out.

Amazon did allow me to return the duplicates - but I had to extract order numbers from the original givers - and they issued gift certificates to me for the original prices paid. However, they insisted on deducting return postage and obviously I had to pay postage on the new items I eventually bought. In some case, this amounted to MORE than the original items had cost the people who bought the presents!!

I managed to figure out what had probably happened. You know when you add something to your basket, and they cross-sell by offering you "Customers who bought this also bought..."?
Well, what if the items displayed on that list are also items on a wishlist you've just bought from, and that you were intending to buy for that person as well? You are very tempted to click on them - and if you do, you HAVE NOT BOUGHT THEM FROM THE WISHLIST, and someone else thinks that the person is still wishing for it...

Amazon did not appear to be at all interested in this, and instead assured me that there was no hole in their wishlist processing, that it worked how they intended it to, and therefore that the duplicates were down to customer fault, and that therefore all extra postage was due. I also found that the person I was speaking to was somewhat condescending and offensive.

I told them I was very unhappy with their attitude, I disabled my wishlist immediately, and informed them I would never buy from them again and would advertise that fact to anyone I saw fit...

That was a couple of years ago, various relatives thought that I was over-reacting, in fact my wife continued to use Amazon and her wishlist. And then last christmas, she received a load of duplicate presents. She didn't actually do anything about it, the books are still in the spare room last time I looked...

How many of you use Amazon wishlists?
How many of you end up with duplicates and everyone's scratching their heads?
Do you get charged postage?
Or, worse, did you not have the heart to tell "granny" that she gave you the same present as "auntie" (that's the option my wife took, because the only way of sorting it out is to inform one of the givers that there's been a f-up) and so now you've got two or three useless extra copies of an item, copies that your friends and relatives PAID for.

Amazon know this is going on, and a) do not care, or b) regard it as a morally acceptable way of making money out of you and your friends and relatives.

RANT OVER :lol:

Sound Unlimited, however - good bunch of dudes :D

[dave_mc]

ah, that would suck. i never really bothered with a wishlist, other than to remind myself of stuff i wanted to buy later.

also, i used thomann for strings too, and no problems, just unless you order over 200 euro (that's a lot of strings :lol: luckily i was ordering other stuff too), postage is pretty expensive.

[AndyR]

I've never really looked at thomann, but when I was checking prices out the other week, these guys seemed to have stringsdirect beat (this is subject to change, I guess! :lol:)

And also, it all depends on what you use and whether they stock it - I'm going to give some of D'Addario strings they stock a go for my Resonator (I want 016s !!), but the brand I was last using was pretty specialised, so they don't stock it...

[HTH AMPS]

^ +1

Thomann have a massive range of string products.  I get my pylon-cable gauge strings for my Explorer from them, and also Gretsch strings for my LP jr and Pyramids for everything else.  Six sets generally runs me ten euros, so its no more than I'd pay in the UK for postage.