Commission frustration - help needed

[Ian Price]

On a similar theme to Afghan Daves (I didn't want to thread-jack) I am having difficulties getting money owed to me from a guitar store in Reading.

Some of you may recall that I recently sold my Signature Les Paul. I didn't get many decent offers, or people that were serious about it, so decided to go through the commission sale route. After a day hanging in the store in Reading it sold. Pretty good I thought, one days worth of it hanging around and it had gone. Obviously the commission fee took away from my profit but I was happy with the sale.This is where the problems started. I had done a few commission sales with this shop before and was always given cash when I popped into the shop after the sale. I went into the shop on 17/08 (the working day after the sale) thinking I was going to get cash again. At this point the guy in the shop explained that the owner (who is no longer on site) had changed his policy and now issues cheques after 2 weeks of the sale to ensure that the buyer is happy with the product. I was a little miffed as this hadn't been explained to me but accepted it. 2 weeks went by and I heard nothing. I phoned the shop and they said "the cheque will be issued shortly". Another week went by and I phoned again. This time I was told "Nigel (the store owner) had decided to take a holiday (!) and was due to issues the cheque shortly". I arrived home yesterday hoping (it feels like hope is all I have) that the cheque would be there. Surprisingly it wasn't.

Has anyone had any experience like this before? What's the best way of resolving it? I'm extremely annoyed that the store owner is never on site any more and doesn't appear to be contactable by anyone other than the store manager and has a presumable relaxed (at best) attitude of sending out money owed to his customers. I'll be calling them again today but feel like calling is getting me nowhere. I know I won't be using them again - stubborn I know but I work on principles and morals.

Any pointers appreciated,

Ian.

[maverickf1jockey]

Maybe you could threaten them with a court summons stating your claim and a deadline for payment.

I don't know so much in the way of liability in this case though so I would recommend hearing out the other members of the forum first who are likely more qualified to recommend what course of letigious or other actions you would be best taking.

I would however recommend that you keep that as a last resort.

[Twinfan]

Can you call into the shop?  Kicking off in front of other customers can often work wonders  ;)

[Jonny]

I think they have money problems.

[Ian Price]

I think they have money problems.

Do you know that or is it just speculation? I hope it's just speculation!

[mikeluke]

Ian - is this GuitarWorks ? I know someone who works there that I might be able to ask....

[Ian Price]

Cheers Mike, very kind of you. Yes, it is guitarworks. I've just been on the phone to them about it. I'm a little bit suspicious as they refused to give me contact details for the owner. They assured me they would contact him by email and text and give me a call when they have done so. If I don't hear anything back I think I'll be taking Dave's advice and paying a visit to the store.

[mikeluke]

OK, mate - I know the guitar tech there - he usually has his eye on the £££ if things are going pear-shaped as he gets paid after the shop gets paid - if you get my drift....

[Jonny]

I think they have money problems.

Do you know that or is it just speculation? I hope it's just speculation!

I'm speculating, if a shop won't give money and say they'll give cheques for the benefit of the person buying and then trying it within the 2 week time period then fair enough but if they hold that off even more and can't produce a cheque after 3+ weeks then I think there is a fair speculation that they can't produce the money. I doubt they'd be assholes and not give money which technically isn't theirs but if you think cash in hand is the easiest money around right now so maybe they thought 'We'll hold off Ian for a week or so more, he won't mind' and use it elsewhere.

I'm not trying to sound grumpy or anything if I am, but it could happen, lol

Kind-of-EDIT: But after mikeluke's post I think my whole post is pointless now :P

[Dmoney]

start off by writing a formal letter saying what happened so far, what resolution your after and give them a time limit to respond. there is a lot of stuff on the citizens advice website. I went through hell with sounds great in manchester and it helped a lot, although nothing was ever solved in terms of me & sounds great... soldano resolved the problem when they didnt really need to. beware sounds great. thats what i say

[Ian Price]

OK, mate - I know the guitar tech there - he usually has his eye on the £££ if things are going pear-shaped as he gets paid after the shop gets paid - if you get my drift....

yeah - get your drift. Julian strikes me as a thoroughly decent chap who knows his stuff. Thanks.

[Dmoney]

get a forumite to call up pretending to be from citizens advice or something investigating a complaint.
go help yourself to their stock.

[Ian Price]

get a forumite to call up pretending to be from citizens advice or something investigating a complaint.
go help yourself to their stock.

 :D I think that'll be considered if nothing happens in the next few weeks!

Thanks for all the responses so far guys - very helpful. I suspect that it is just bad/lazy administration and poor customer service. They always appear to be getting new stock in - maybe I'm being naive but wouldn't expect them to have new stock if they had £ problems.

Having said that a lot of their recent trade has been on commission sale - they mentioned something like 25 guitars in a month were sold on commission.

[Afghan Dave]

Sorry to hear the problems I'm having are becoming commonplace  :(

I hope you get some resolution soon.

The particular Director of the company I'm having issues with has promised to call me this afternoon and refund my money so we will see...

When this is sorted I'll share a VERY interesting story with you all...

Till then Good Luck Ian... I'll chip in to advise or help if I can.  PDT_003

[Prawnik]

I had a similar problem. The guitar shop eventually went belly-up, but not before I got my money.

What I did was I went in and quite calmly told them to produce cash (not a check) immediately or I would call the police for theft and fraud. (Just in any other situation where you had lent money to someone and they refused to pay it back.)

The store manager confessed that the employees also had not been paid. I was not happy with this explanation but this guy had always been straight with me, and others were confirming the story.

Deciding that it was better to take whatever I could get my hands on right away, rather than wait for cash that would probably never come, we settled for some gear worth more than what I was owed.

I sold the items and made a small profit on the transaction.