Not so happy new gear day, kiesel photomatch gone wrong - FINAL UPDATE: 5-3-16

[laxu]

I like how you didn't even bother to post the finalized guitar

Looks great, and people are just out on a witch hunt at this point. Not to ignore any of Kiesel's hiccups, but there is far more to be upset about in the luthier world. Like builders ignoring customers and stealing their cash without a single bat of an eye.

It looks a lot better in this second pic as you can actually see the transition between the colors. Personally I would've gone for something akin to the PRS posted but maybe this is how the customer wanted it?

 

[Lemons]

At what point are we debating if the PRS looks better than the Carvin? Seeing as neither of them have anything to do with the origin of this thread.

 

[Randy]

This thread has become #thedress of guitar finishes.

 

[Fred the Shred]

I haven't been a mod in there in months, and he who shall not be named left WG for a job at Kiesel long before that.

Just imagined Voldemort doing marketing for guitar companies!

 

[Ordacleaphobia]

This thread has become #thedress of guitar finishes.

Randy, please, save us from this.
This thread was over at-worst 2 pages ago. We can move to the luthier section at this point lol, talking about proper fading technique.

For the record, the blue Kiesel was my favorite of the two posted above. Definitely well done. Like we've all said, they can do great things, its just a question of whether or not they will....

 

[Jonathan20022]

Yeah, Jonathan, I was wondering why you defend Kiesel at every turn, myself. You even started an account at MG.org just to get into Konstantine's thread over there and defend Kiesel. I don't have a particular problem with it, since I like their guitars as well, but if you do have some sort of particular reason you defend that brand specifically, you should just point it out. The last thing you want is for people to speculate that your reasons are insincere for some financial interest or something. Cuz if that's not true, it would be a sucky rep to get stuck with. You seem like a cool dude to me, but it even looks to me like you're hunting for people with negative opinions about Kiesel, and then arguing against them.

I defend them no harder than I've defended Ernie Ball, Strandberg, Mayones, Jackson, Aristides, etc. I've been posting here for awhile, and when I'm a fan of a company and I've owned several of their instruments and have had a positive experience, I'll totally chime in with that too. I'm certainly not unreasonable about how I approach it, but when I see people saying "QC must be going down the drain" when they see what, a sample pool of lets say and stretch it to 5 guitars on a single forum? I'm sure mbardu feels the same way, also why would Kiesel or anyone give a discount to a nobody like me? Calling me a mod on WG is an overstatement, since all I really did was help around cleaning up spam and BS whenever I had a few spare minutes. Also my post on MG was hardly a defense, just threw my 2 cents in there saying that there is outrage for certain companies, and for others you'll get a dozen knights stand up and brush off your experience because they had single good one. For example, I wonder how people would react if I posted a thread here saying that The Axe Palace screwed me for over a year. They even sent me a guitar with their "pro setup" which immediately needed a brand new nut because their tech decided buzz everywhere was a compromise for low action. It's all a matter of proportion, meanwhile Darren abandoned ship over here and stopped commenting on the Decibel thread while communicating in just about every other location on the internet, criticizing other luthiers

But lately, if you see Kiesel do borderline anything, wether it's annoying marketing antics, designs people don't like, a screwup (Which is warranted, mind you). You see a thread with double digit pages of people dog piling on them, not even Gibson gets this much flack

Just imagined Voldemort doing marketing for guitar companies!

 

[Randy]

Randy, please, save us from this.
This thread was over at-worst 2 pages ago. We can move to the luthier section at this point lol, talking about proper fading technique.

FWIW, with the last thread about a messed up Kiesel being deleted (which none of the mods had any involvement in), we were taking a lot of flak about bias/favoritism toward Carvin/Kiesel and being accused of muzzling people with legitimate complaints. Both my comments to 'calm down' in the official Carvin thread and in this one yielded several complaints that were "doing it again" trying to let Kiesel off the hook.

Meanwhile, everything I've said and done has been totally consistent with my 8 years of volunteering (as in I've never been paid or gotten a kickback to do, ever) to moderate on this forum. When a thread gets popular and a lot of views on it, everybody starts piling onto eachother to score 'internet points' and things become uncivil and bloated with nonsense quickly. By allowing threads to spiral out of control 1.) people hold grudges with one another and the incivility spills into other threads 2.) it's assumed posting non-sense is now legitimized and you get a strong uptick in pointless posts/threads, which make navigating the forum unnecessarily difficult.

I've had a fairly consistent ideology on this. The thread happens, let the storyline play out. OP and the related parties have a right to have the story heard and to reach some kind of resolution. Likewise, it's a community and there's nothing wrong with the members joining in and building a consensus. However, once you get to the point where a solution has been found or there's an absolute impasse, and people unrelated to initial matter start bumping the thread with OT or regurgitating points that were made several days/weeks previously, the thread has officially met it's shelf-life. That's where a lock usually comes in. The thread still has utility for anybody who should happen across it by searching the internet, so it should be preserved to mark what happened, in context... I also leave open the option for OP and other parties directly involved to PM me or other moderators to post relevant updates, possibly re-opening the thread if something new of substance comes to the surface.

In this case, with all the criticism over how "we" handle Kiesel on here, I decided to let everybody have a chance to see what a thread looks like when the members are allowed to govern themselves, unfettered. Regardless of what position we're in on the mess of a thread, I think we can all agree we're sick of everyone else in here and long overdue for a lock.

As I stated previously, if OP or other individuals directly related want something added, PM me. At this point most or all of the conversation going on right now would be better served in it's own thread.

 

[Konstantine]

***Final update 5/3/16***

I made one last attempt today to reconcile this whole situation with Kiesel over the phone today (5/3/16) asking if they would please just refund the $300 price of the photomatch like I had asked in the beginning since it was not a photomatch at all so I don't get killed on trying to resale the guitar. I feel bad for the customer service guy stuck being Jeff's messenger as he was at least polite talking to me although he had to be Jeff's mouthpiece on the phone.

After telling customer service what I said above about a refund for the photo upcharge, he informed me that Jeff had gotten word of what happened on the fb fan page which seems like would've made Jeff stand by me to make things right at that point and save face, considering I (a paying customer mind you) was fiercely flamed and personally attacked by fanboys on there) but no, jeff was upset that I took to the internet to complain and could care less about the treatment I've been getting through this whole ordeal.

I reminded the customer service rep that I had spoken with them numerous times to try and work this out and just get a refund for the photomatch before resorting to social media to voice my disappointment.

This next part is almost comical at this point... He then told me that my account is flagged and I am forbidden from ever being a customer again because Jeff "does not want to do business like this". Gee, that seems like quite a mature response, good thing I don't even want to be a customer ever again after this. For the amount of money spent and the amount of time I patiently waited to receive this item (more than half a year when considering the wait for the first flawed guitar), this has to be the worst customer service experience I've ever had. I STRONGLY caution anyone to take a hard look at how this owner handles his business before spending your hard earned money with them.

A synopsis will be added to the first post with this update included to save people time reading through this whole thing. Thanks again for giving us, the consumer, a voice against utterly poor service. /thread.