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

[dhgrind]

for the charge back option you usually only have like 30-60 days depending on the card issuer. there are also stipulations for what they require alongside the chargeback. I was close to doing a chargeback on my Kiesel as well but my card issuer required a "professional opinion" with a letter including letterhead or business card stating that the item was insufficient.

Sorry about your guitar though. That agile does have a sick paint job. maybe you could just spend the money to get the agile put up to par with the kiesel for way less money probably. idk just shooting an idea out there. I've thought about taking my RGD to get repainted instead of selling it.

 

[Emperor Guillotine]

mod edit: you've been warned before, inter-forum / group drama and discussing banned members isn't allowed here

I don't have IG but you are welcome to throw it up there. The fact that I'm getting harassed like crazy on the fb page has me disgusted. One guy even crept through my profile and started posting pics of me. What a pleasure to do business with kiesel

Typical Wired Guitarist antics. (The Music Discussion and the Kiesel group. Both run by WG.) Loaded with immature children and admin-ed by equally immature individuals.

Yeah, FB is like wandering into a psychopath ward. Zero empathy, and a lot of frightening aggression. I'm afraid to post anything these days. Saying, "I don't care for mint chocolate chip ice cream" is enough to get death threats.

You might try creating a profile on carvinbbs.com and posting there. Things seem to get looked at closely there, and are generally dealt with well. The guys there are huge Carvin fans, but are also super supportive and laid back.

Amen.

Apparently there are some huge FB groups which have Carvin-Kiesel employees as admins...that would explain quite a lot.

One of the guys who runs Wired Guitarist is Kiesel's social media guy. (Thus, the thread deletion everywhere and the brainwashing that Kiesel is this "end all" company that takes place in that group and the subsequent related pages/groups.)

Didn't it happen some weeks ago with a similar thread? Can't sem to find it anymore

Flint757 posted Google Cache versions of the pages from the thread after it was deleted. (Hopefully Google Cache hasn't deleted them yet.)

Hold up:

Page 1

Page 2

I assume these are the pages in question.

 

[dhgrind]

mod edit: and you stop instigating... if you can't operate within the defined site rules you will get banned. Talking about banned members and stirring inter-site crap is against the forum rules.

watch out emporer you might get erased =P

 

[JSanta]

Option 50 is inherently non-refundable correct? I could understand Kiesel's stance on 99.9% of issues, but the finish is beyond the pale in terms of what you were looking to get, and against the pictures you sent them. I've been a long time Carvin player, but their group of FB is quite hilarious with the amount of brand defense and derogatory back and forth because the company screwed up. Hopefully, you will be able to offload the guitar, but it might be priced a bit high on the second hand market even though it is essentially brand new.

 

[Fred the Shred]

#nailedit

Sucks that things turned out this way, man - here's hoping a proper solution is found.

 

[SnowfaLL]

EVERYTIME I've asked for photomatching, they told me specifically "there is no guarantee it will turn out exactly how you want, it will be our best try but dont expect it to be perfect, and there is no refunds" - Did you get told that? Thats usually what they say when you ask for it.

Either way, I promise you that after this incident, photomatching will never happen again at Kiesel.

 

[Mattykoda]

I don't have IG but you are welcome to throw it up there. The fact that I'm getting harassed like crazy on the fb page has me disgusted. One guy even crept through my profile and started posting pics of me. What a pleasure to do business with kiesel

I was meaning it more towards Kiesel to put it on their own IG. I have a DC7X from them that I have become quite fond of and have been thinking about ordering another guitar from them for a while but with all that I've seen here lately my money will without doubt go elsewhere.

 

[oneblackened]

So, things to do:

Blow up facebook/IG/Twitter with this. Absolutely unacceptable, considering the shape of the first guitar you received.

Do a chargeback if you can.

 

[KnightroExpress]

Damn, I really hope they reverse course and help you out.

 

[Tisca]

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I wonder how that would go down in the EU, now that they deal direct to Europe. IIRC return policies are not optional here, and you have to accept returns for any reason up to 14 days or something.

In most cases of custom products the customer protection laws are void, which makes sense. It's not EU law but country specific afaik.


$2400 for a custom guitar sounds really cheap. I guess you get what you pay for.

 

[Mangle]

I guess refinishing it, in the long run, is looking like about the only serious option. Sorry to hear about your bad luck OP. But I want to say thank you for posting about your problem and all the shenanigans you're having to go through.


Kiesel seems to be headed out of their depth with this product line expansion and it's leading to a serious decline in the company's ability to (a.) properly produce it's product (b.) police it's production procedure and (c.) understand it's own problematic situation.
You see this over and over in the maverick owner as visionary/company saviour scheme. The innability to recognize the snowball effect with "issues we'll surely avoid thanks to my innate brilliance" and because "it won't happen on my watch".

Was looking to place an order for a DC7X (after much debate/decision making over semi-custom 7 or 8 from Carvin specifically). But, after seeing the problems as they are developing? In real time over the past few weeks? It's like asking for trouble.... when what you really want is a nice guitar . F*ck these guys and their sh*tty company anyway.

 

[Señor Voorhees]

The burst is a little thin, but the colors look pretty spot on. (considering OP's photo looks pretty over exposed, my mind might be playing tricks and over-adjusting.) It looks like they didn't darken the figuring though.

I got an op50 color recently, and they were pretty straightforward in telling me that it's non-returnable. Not only that, Chris was pretty up front with letting me know that the color might look slightly different on arrival.

This isn't so much a flaw, but a roll of the dice. It sucks it didn't turn out how you'd like it, but it does sort of hammer home that if you're not willing to take risks, you'd best stay away from option 50's.

I hope it works out for you man. Regardless of who is or isn't at fault, it's never fun to wait forever and get something that doesn't meet your expectations.

edit: Just checked my receipt and it does in fact say "ANY GUITAR WITH 50 OPTION IS NON-REFUNDABLE NO 10 DAY TRIAL - NO RETURN - NO EXCHANGE."

 

[russmuller]

That really sucks.

It's not just that you don't like the finish, but how in the hell can you call THAT a photo-match? You straight up did not get what you paid for. That's really, really disappointing to hear.

I had two good experiences with Kiesel in the past 3 years. I've seen a lot of people hating on them lately and I'd yet to see any evidence, but this is the first that I've actually come across of straight bad business.

I hope you get it sorted with them one way or another. Because if you have to sell it, you're gonna take a big hit.

 

[ramses]

The first build had a long deep scrape in the front of the fretboard, paint missing off the point of the headstock and body binding bleeding through, showing on the top side of the neck where it was supposed to be black.

They may be trying to grow too fast. Hopefully Kiesel will stop adding new models for at least six months.

 

[Andromalia]

In most cases of custom products the customer protection laws are void, which makes sense. It's not EU law but country specific afaik.

I don't think a company policy can state "law X is void in this case" without having serious problems with lawyers pretty fast in the EU.
In France you can return *everything* purchased online with no reason needed, but you are responsible for the shipping costs if it is just a change of mind and not a fault with the item. AFAIK it's a european law that should be transcribed in all the national legislations at this point.
The situation when the seller is outside of EU is a bit unclear, but a chargeback has been known to motivate companies to do the right thing. There is absolutely no problem in doing one if you're not a regular labeled as such by your bank. All the chargeback costs will be billed to the offending company, too.

 

[Señor Voorhees]

I don't think a company policy can state "law X is void in this case" without having serious problems with lawyers pretty fast in the EU.
In France you can return *everything* purchased online with no reason needed, but you are responsible for the shipping costs if it is just a change of mind and not a fault with the item. AFAIK it's a european law that should be transcribed in all the national legislations at this point.
The situation when the seller is outside of EU is a bit unclear, but a chargeback has been known to motivate companies to do the right thing. There is absolutely no problem in doing one if you're not a regular labeled as such by your bank. All the chargeback costs will be billed to the offending company, too.

Not sure how it would work outside of the US, but that seems kind of mind boggling in this case. Option 50's carry with them a sort of "contract" that says they are non-returnable. If you buy something and you sign a contract of some kind/agree to the terms, you're bound to that contract/those terms. You can return a faulty product. A twisted neck, frets popping out, missing parts, etc, are all defects the factory is responsible for. A color being different from what you expected is not grounds for a factory defect.

At this point, if they give a refund/accept the return, it's well above what they should be required to do.

edit: As an example, let's say some guy orders from kiesel. He litters the build with option 50's (including a color) and decides later that he would have rather kept the money. It would be asinine if all it took was a "this color looks nothing like what I expected, give me a refund" complaint to bypass the agreement. Then Kiesel is out of a bunch of money for doing things that are not standard. If we seriously complain too heavily about things like this, then they'll just end up taking op50's away altogether to avoid the whole issue altogether. Again, if you don't want to risk things, then don't get an option 50.

 

[Rev2010]

Yeah, FB is like wandering into a psychopath ward. Zero empathy, and a lot of frightening aggression.

Well, I also got torn a new one on here when I posted my really upset NGD about Carvin completely missing the spalted maple photo match on my DC800. I know spalted maple is harder to match, I wasn't expecting an actual "match" of course, just highly figured with as little flame as possible. The neg rep comments I got were just... wow!

I was actually thinking about getting the red/black two-tone finish I've dreamt about for a while now on another DC800. After this I think I will no doubt be passing on Carvin/Keisel. I've also read of so many flaws recently, seemingly due to the ramped up production - which also boggles my mind cause prices now are noticeably higher, closer to getting a custom through some other luthiers.

I also asked about getting the originally offered active pickups, since they now include passives, and was told it's an additional $150. Why? They have the program and used to do actives on all their DC800's. And to think I would just pull out their pickups anyway and put in EMG's (another almost $200) it's just a waste of money.

Sorry to hear of this OP. Truly sorry to have to read this. BTW, I'd also like to add to ShadeOGreen's sentiment that it would be good to see some better pics. Looking at your original it's easy to see by the headstock alone that the pic is way overblown in contrast. Not challenging your issue, not at all. I'd just think a better picture would be good to have posted.


Rev.

 

[Konstantine]

I'm going to have to take a temporary break from the Internet due to the sheer amount of spam attack messages I'm receiving from complete strangers for complaining about this. Are people that brand devoted and brainwashed? I didn't get an emailed receipt pdf for the second rebuild either....

 

[narad]

Not sure why everyone's quoting the no returns on op-50 policy. The point is that this finish (currently) appears so far off from the photo that one could argue that it's not what the OP ordered. If OP ordered a vader and was delivered this instead, would they still be like, "yea, dude, we tried to make you a vader but the CNC machine was already setup and anyway, there you go - we did our best!" No, you'd say, "that's not what I ordered."

Could we some less exposed, soft natural light photos, OP?

I actually have a guitar with the type of finish this appears to be, and similarly I'd not have accepted it if it came out looking like the Agile (though that guitar looks fantastic). It's just not what I ordered:

Picture 077 by Jason Naradowsky, on Flickr

I asked for natural->blue burst. OP shows greenish-blue->blue burst. I'll hold my judgement until there are more pics, but from the current post it looks more like flat-out the wrong finish than a poorly-executed correct type of finish (not that either are great options!)

 

[SnowfaLL]

I'm going to have to take a temporary break from the Internet due to the sheer amount of spam attack messages I'm receiving from complete strangers for complaining about this. Are people that brand devoted and brainwashed? I didn't get an emailed receipt pdf for the second rebuild either....

While I don't agree with people bugging you, every opt 50 is non-returnable if you just "dont think it looks right" - ESPECIALLY choosing a completely different type of wood, you shouldn't expect an exact result.