Zodiak

But not overseas, AFAIK. Not to Portugal, at least, as per their website...

Well, Thomann offers free shipping for orders over 200 Euros, while DV247 charges 16 quid + VAT, so it's a no brainer for orders outside the UK. Even if it's not a lot of money, it's still nice to get a deal like that.

I placed an order yesterday (Friday) and no news whatsoever yet (Sunday, early morning). I guess they do respect their weekends. Can anyone confirm? Nothing gets done on weekends? No worries from me, just curious.

[quote name='molan' timestamp='1377988494' post='2194522'] Thomann are great for 'commodity' items that will always sound the same wherever they come from. They seem to be going through an 'expensive' period at the moment though and have become a lot less price competitive than they used to be. Their historical strength in pricing tends to give them good listings in Google search but you can find lower prices on quite a lot of stuff at local UK dealers at the moment. [/quote] Probably has something to do with the recent high taxes (at least here in Southern Europe).

Well, I guess it's just harder for beginners to get through to him, if you know what I mean. Which is fine, since his area of expertise is high end gear anyway. Don't get me wrong, I didn't and still don't want to bad mouth BassDirect. But I still feel I'm not being unreasonable in what I have previously stated. For instance, Mark's cold attitude towards Fenders and MMs manifested in a (one-liner...) response to my question about the characteristics of the basses I was looking at: "You know, there are other basses than Fenders and Stingrays out there". And that's it! Fine, I mean, the man knows his stuff better than I do, so I should trust that there are other basses. But which? You see my point here, I did ask (many times) for recommendations and he did go far enough to say something like this, but stopped right there. He didn't say "...there are other basses... Have a look at a beautiful Mike Lull TC4 we have in stock, it seems to fit the kind of instrument you're looking for" (by the way, had he actually said that, I would have seriously considered that very bass, even though I probably wouldn't be able to sell it as easily if need be). You see, that's all I ever wanted, essentially. I was honest and open right from the get go that I knew very little compared to him, I wasn't arrogant and didn't try to hide my lack of knowledge. Besides, it's more than fine to have strong personal preferences and opinions about basses, which Mark does, but for a knowledgeble person it should still be easy to say whether a given guitar, favourite brand or not, is a good guitar or isn't one. I might hate many things, but I can still tell quality from lack thereof. I guess all his basses are quality, though, since that's kind of the point :-) P.S. Ironically, I am, at this very moment, looking at some stuff I'll be ordering from him. As I said, the shop is great and everything, in the end, is done in a highly professional manner. The rest is, or rather should be, just the icing on the cake anyway.

Again, I'm sure if Mark ever reads this, his side of the argument would be that he helped me more than enough and did what he had to. And that's fair, I guess. The problem, though, is that as someone who does sales (he may be a bass enthusiast who just happens to own a shop, but nonetheless), he has to know a bit about people and psychology. If what I did was write long letters with many questions (be it reasonable or not), and if he did want to sell something, all he had to do for someone like me was take just 7 minutes out of his busy schedule and write a proper detailed response, even if in his opinion that would have been too much or outright bollocks. But that's what you do. It's easy to give the impression that you're nice and helpful when the issues are minute, just as it's easy for me at work to be polite when there's simply a "Yes/No" answer. The real test of character, though, is when there's a tough issue, or a... person who doesn't quite understand stuff or is being slow, that's when you have to have patience and spell it all out. Most of the stuff I have to explain is already written on our website and the rest can be deduced easily with a bit of thinking. Furthermore, I'm not even in the service sector per se so I don't HAVE to explain anything or be nice. Yet I do, because is there any other way? And I apologise if expecting the same from a shop doing online sales of expensive gear is too much. It's easy to be nice with something like: "Hey Mark, what's up, I want this bass, can you send me the invoice?" or "Hey Mark, do you have La Bella flatwounds blah-blah-blah? You do? Cool, send me two packs". It's a lot harder when there's a stupid guy like me poking around and asking many questions, wanting to buy a brand you don't like (yes, I think he has a strong preference for the less well-known custom brands and it shows, the problem, though, is that I won't be able to sell it as easily in my country as a good custom shop Fender, if such need ever arises). Anyway, in the end, I trust the majority in that he's a great guy and knows his stuff, has a great shop with really high-end stuff, and 99% of the feedback he gets is positive. Whatever I say doesn't matter one bit. But it's situations like these that show the true nature of someone. Of course it's pleasing to deal with someone you, let's say, get along with and are on the same page. But that doesn't always happen. As for the pickups, again, I didn't see the need to bring this up because: a) I was swapping them anyway Didn't want to go deeper on this. It would have been way too much hassle for nothing, even if Mark would have agreed to... I don't know what, compensate, fix or whatever. Something tells me he would have asked to see the bass first, given his initial lack of trust in me. Furthermore, it's a second-hand bass which entails all sorts of dodgy conditions (legal, sales, warranty etc.). I never even bothered to ask about this, that would clearly have been too much :-) The problem wasn't the pickups anyway. Who cares. The problem was that I have specifically asked about the bass, I have asked to check the bass, to set it up a certain way, to at least hold it on my behalf longer than five seconds and tell me something about it. Ok, he seems to hate Fenders and Music Mans and couldn't care less about them, but I wanted one for various reasons. The pickup issue simply illustrates that he never cared enough to double check it FOR ME before selling it, even though I asked, numerous times. By the way, I may come off as a jerk here, but I was VERY polite, VERY considerate and spent a looong time trying to get something out of him.

It's just a shame because, among other things, I specifically asked about 6 times whether there was anything I needed to know about the bass (previous owner, why he sold it etc. - all reasonable questions that I see asked all the time when selling/buying used gear), anything wrong with it, and all my questions were pretty much ignored or I just got one-liners (and a photo of the mark on the finish). Had he told me about the pickup (I doubt he knew, but I sure as hell couldn't try the bass and see for myself, the problem is immediate right after plugging in, and it's not both pickups which could be mistaken for a feature but just one), I would have bought the bass anyway. But saying it's immaculate is pushing it too far IMO. Look, in the end, it all boils down to this: he never took me seriously right until the bank transfer cleared. I'm sure he thought I was just wasting his time asking all these questions and going nowhere. What was I supposed to do, send him a photo of my salary? That's what disappointed me. There's no way to show you really mean it over emails. But that's why I expect shop owners to treat everyone as if it's their last customer. This elitism is evident in music shops more than in many other places. If I'm not pro, if Im asking questions, that doesn't mean I'm broke and don't want a good piece of gear.

No. I see no point. It's damn hard sending something like a bass back across Europe. And, I'm being honest here, I would have swapped the pickups anyway. And I mean, what's the point? I can't prove anything. I didn't want to complain just for the sake of it. Besides, as I have said, my experience buying the bass wasn't that pleasant, I felt it would only get worse once I complained. I just took it to the best tech in the country whom I've never ever seen in my life and he confirmed it's faulty. So I thought "Oh well, wanted different pups anyway, so the fuss isn't worth it". I do like the bass, it's a damn fine instrument. P.S. Funny that the only thing Mark did point out about the bass (a small mark on the finish) was easily cleaned off :-)

I happen to work with people a lot as a part of my job, though I'm not in sales so there's absolutely no personal interest or gain in it for me. And I have to explain the same things over and over again 300 a day. Yet, bad day or good day, I always try to help people, be polite but also, more importantly, try to anticipate what needs more explaining, which issues generally cause trouble etc. I'm sick of this, the people are mostly idiots and they can pretty much burn in hell for all I care, since I don't get any profit from them. But I always try to do my job well becuase what's easy and boring and mundane for me, is of vital importance to many people and they need my help. They count on me. Just as I counted on Mark's help, knowledge and expertise, buying blind online. Be runs a shop and, theoretically, wants to sell stuff. I was 100% interested and ready to spend. It's his fault if he thought otherwise. Yet he seemed to show no interest whatsoever in selling anything to me. Our "conversation" ran over the course of 2 weeks, so it wasn't just a bad day. Again, I'm sure he's a great bloke in person or to people he knows. But he chose to provide the option of buying online. And having done that, isn't it natural to expect more obnoxious questions than from people who can actually visit the shop and try everything out. IRL I hardly ever use shop assistants because everything's there to see. But online it's a different story. Plus he sold me a bass with a faulty pickup. Just sharing my recent experience. No Internet bashing. And I will order more from Mark because he has a great shop. But I expected more for my money, especially from a "small independent business"

I'll share my own experience that was kind of a mixed bag. I was buying online because I don't live in the UK. Was looking at an expensive-ish bass, had it narrowed down to either a Stingray Classic (2k) or a second-hand Custom Shop Jazz Bass, and an amp. To cut the story short, over the course of the purchase. I wrote to Mark many long detailed letters explaining my logic and reasoning, which might have been flawed but at least I was open. Buying something this expensive (for me, anyway) online is a daunting task and all I wanted was some help from Mark who is infinitely more experienced and knowledgeable than me and runs the shop for profit which I was prepared to give him. Instead, all I ever got from him were one-liners with very little information about what I was asking. I understand he is a busy man and I was asking waaay too many questions, I guess they were the "wrong" questions to him, as someone here pointed out, but still, all I needed was a little proper help, not just one-liners to my long and detailed questions. I obviously couldn't try the basses, nor see them, nor have a proper conversation. I did buy the used JB just because I thought it was the best option I could find, despite the lack of customer service. Maybe he thought I was wasting his time? I wasn't. I had the cash and was ready to pay given just a little bit of help. I got the feeling he wasn't interested in selling at all and was just doing ME a favor. I probably wasn't the most exciting customer for my lack of knowledge, but still... He did give me a small discount, but no deal of any kind for guitar + amp + pedals + accessories. His right, but I only got the bass because of that. Also, strangely no option to pay by credit card which took a surprisingly long time to get cleared even though it cleared instantly on my part. Futhermore, the bass arrived with a faulty bridge pickup. It's still at the tech's a month since, waiting for the pickups to arrive. Im not mad only because Im strangely happy to get new pickups anyway. But Mark never mentioned this. I guess he never checked nor asked the original owner why he was selling the bass in the first place. Maybe because of the broken pickup. It's definitely not "immaculate" as was written on the website. To be fair, the bass was set-up well and arrived fast and packed really well. So the bottom line is, he may be a great guy in person, but online, with someone who is maybe not that interesting to him, he's totally indifferent and doesn't care at all. I wasn't buying a freakin pack of strings, I was buying a high-end bass. So yeah, never would have done business with him if it werent for the fact that the bass he had was the best option. No offence intended. I was just glad it was over.