Just an observation.
I can't find many UU posts about these music shops, but we keep getting posts about Amazon specials and deals all the time. If there is so much opposition to Amazon why do we support so much free promotion for Amazon?
Also I think I recall some of the people who have commented hear posting negative comments about sellers shops in the north of England a few times.
If you want to keep these shops in business, you need to support them. UK people, particularly those who live in the north, seem very reticent to post positive comments about anything, including ukulele sellers.
Maybe if you jumped off the high horse and started being a bit more positive about the ukulele sellers in the British Isles there would be a lot more of them?
Always like your posts Bill so I’ll try to answer your points though it does seem to me that you might have ‘got hold of the wrong end of the stick’ on a few things.
The shops in question are tiny compared to Amazon and served only a small number of people hence you’re unlikely to hear anything about them. Lots of people like a bargain so if one of the big retailers in a big market, like the US, has a special on then it’s going to get publicity. That’s just the way of these things.
Folk post negative and positive comments about shops in line with their experience. I don’t recall anyone posting anything negative about Omega and personally I try to never name a shop. At one time they did have a good name for Ukes but the member of staff responsible for getting it for them left. To be fair Omega was a mail order music store who, over many decades, had a good reputation for the variety, range and price of its goods and hence I have dealt with them.
What’s posted on this forum and what happens in real life can be very different, UU represents a tiny fraction of U.K. Uke players so has no significant influence on sales. Whilst I’m not positive about some sellers I’m happy to buy from others on a competitive basis, they need to be in that group that offers me good value and pays their taxes.
I see no horses and definitely no high ones. People in the U.K. virtually only buy from U.K. sellers, the business doesn’t go anywhere else so talking sellers up or down has next to no effect. Anyway, whether good or bad, isn’t it best that people are honest with their experiences here? Transport costs for selling Ukes to other countries can be prohibitive so our dealers have that to contend with. Between those two factors, and demand limits, the U.K. has about as many shops as the market will support.
I hope that that has answered your points.
I used to use Amazon a lot but having listened to various programs about them and read various newspaper articles about them too my views have changed. I dislike Amazon because in my opinion they both dominate the marketplace (typically that ends up being a bad thing for society) and they steal from society by vigorously avoiding tax. If they are efficient in their business operations then, IMHO, that’s something to be admired. However that admiration shouldn’t extend to how they treat some of their staff, which I believe is very badly. If anyone does feel that abusing staff is OK then go work for someone who’ll treat you that way.