My Cursed Amazon Order

Skitzic

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I have decided this entire ukulele purchase is cursed. I ordered a Córdoba 20 TM-CE from Amazon. I ordered the uke on the 16th of this month (after a terrible experience at an open mic, but that's a rant for a different day). On the 20th, I emailed Amazon wondering why it hadn't shipped yet. I wasn't upset or rude, I was just wondering because the website said they were in stock.

So, Amazon upgraded my shipping, charged my credit card the shipping cost, and emailed me telling me it would be there 2 days AFTER the original date. The shipping charges were 8.06, not a huge deal but I thought they should have asked me before just charging my card. The email also included a rather long winded rant about warehouses being all over the country and not everything can be shipped out of the warehouse closest to me (which I understand, because I'm not an idiot. I was just wondering why it was taking a week to ship out). So I get refunded the shipping charge and the uke was waiting for me last night.

It was really well packaged. It was probably the best packaging job I have ever seen. Anyway, upon inspection I noticed a HUGE crack running up the neck. It looks like someone was too heavy with the file and took huge chunks of the binding off when fixing frets (which were wonderfully smooth by the way). and the binding cracked all the way up to the headstock. The crack was so bad I could get my nail in there and pull the binding away from the neck.

So, I contacted Amazon again. Then I get a shipping notice that another one went out. Shortly after I get the shipping notice, I get an email from their customer service department telling me I could keep both and I would be billed later. After a few more back and forth emails, I get the return shipping label for the broken ukulele and now I just have to figure out how I'm going to get it to a UPS store. I think I'll just bring it into work and let him take it away.

Then, while I am repacking the uke, my dog steals my tuner off of the ottoman and proceeds to tear up the box. She has this weird obsession with tearing up paper, she doesn't eat it...she just shreds it. She didn't eat the tuner, so it's no huge loss, but the box was gone. My fiancé saw it before I did, and said 'oh, she's going to kill you.' I looked over and said 'he's right, I'm going to kill you.' She didn't die, and it wasn't Amazon's fault my dog ate my tuner box, but it was still irritating.

End rant: I hope my weird luck ends soon.
 
Sorry to hear about your amazon experience, I hope everything works out and you get what you payed for.

On another note, as someone who host an open mic with an ukulele, I'd like to hear about the terrible experience you had.

Thanks!
Rod
 
I'm sure it will work out. The new uke is supposed to be at my house now. So we'll see how it looks when I get home. If this one is a dud as well I'm going to get my money back and buy the Kala equivalent from MGM.

Ok I suppose I will tell you about the open mic fiasco. I've been frequenting open mics for a few years now, and I use a sound hole pick-up for my guitars because none of them have internal electronics. There have been times that I have forgotten / killed a sound hole pick-up and had to mic a guitar. There was never a problem with that. So I figured since I've done it with the guitar, it will be fine with an ukulele. I've been doing it a few months now with only a few hiccups where they couldn't get the levels right.

Anyway, so I go to the usual mid-month open mic with the usual host and everything is ok until he sets up the second mic for me. I don't know what he did, or what happened, but when I strummed an open chord to test it, 2 of his speakers blew. I'm sure it had nothing to do with me, he just doesn't know how to run his system, but he FREAKED OUT. Suddenly I was this demon trying to sabotage his open mic so I get better turn outs at mine.

So the host gets in my face, my fiancé gets in his face...and before anyone knew what was going on the cops were there and people were everywhere and my coffee got spilled. My perfect cup of Wawa coffee got all over the carpet.

In the end everything was ok (ish). The guy is obviously cracked out and I will not return to his open mic. No one got arrested, and I managed to convince my fiancé that I really did need an uke with electronics (because we're always looking for reasons to buy new ones).
 
and my coffee got spilled.
Oh no, not the coffee!! Oh the humanity!!

Yer darn tootin' blown speakers are not your fault. It's the sound guy's responsibility to set the right levels. That what all them fancy VU meters and LEDs and knob thingies on the mixing board are for.

On the other hand, the idea that you have a killer ukulele is kind of cool ...
 
I think that was the worst part of that whole fiasco. My coffee got spilled.

I really have no idea what that guy did to blow those speakers. I love my Lanikai but she's a quiet one. so his sound master skills are really lacking.

Ah well. In the end I will get a new uke. So all that was lost was some awesome coffee and an hour of my life.
 
I hope the uke works out for you. I have the same model and all is fine with it. The plugged-in sound eq's up nicely.
 
I NEVER order cursed amazons they scare me.
 
I really have no idea what that guy did to blow those speakers. I love my Lanikai but she's a quiet one. so his sound master skills are really lacking.

This sounds like a clear case of user error, and since it's the sound guy who's the user here, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. Either that or you've got one POWERFUL uke there, Skitz! :nana:
 
I'm just going to start calling that one Killer. That's an amusing name for a uke. Heh.

The new Córdoba came. This one is not broken. It's a nice looking little uke. I really like the satin finish. I like the simplicity of it, and even though I'm not a huge fan of cutaways I like it on this one.

The dead one will go away with UPS tomorrow, and all will be grand in the land again.
 
I used to play bass in a band with a BIG (10,000 watts if we used the whole system) PA. The sound guy was the former bass player. We did a big outdoor gig where we were getting low-end feedback, and he kept insisting that my 8x10 Ampeg cab was causing it. "Your cabinet is too tall and is hitting the vocal mic.. TURN DOWN!". I muted my amp, turned the volume all the way off on the bass and stood there whacking the strings to demonstrate that I was OFF.. all the while this low-frequency feedback was welling up louder and louder. "TURN DOWN!" he kept yelling to me. I turned the amp OFF and it kept going. Turns out, there was a mic in the open kick drum with a vocal monitor RIGHT in front of it... duh... But he was all pissy and still wouldn't admit that it wasn't me. I pointed out that Ampeg 8x10 cabinets are kind of the industry standard for BIG stage bass rigs. He still insisted it was too tall. It became a running joke with the band.... anytime something didn't sound right, someone would turn to me and say "Well, you know what it is? Your cabinet is too tall." I never could figure out how a bass-playing sound guy could have no idea how to run a bass through the PA system. He always wanted to EQ me at the board and then would claim I was too "bassy". Sheesh....
 
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