Hollowway
Extended Ranger
So, if anyone follows Chondro Guitars on FB, you've likely seen that he closed his physical location, and moved to online-only. Apparently, all of the companies he works with are fine with that arrangement, but ESP canceled all of his custom shop orders, and cut ties with him, since he no longer has a store front. There was a huge dust up (read: angry customers emailed ESP) and now ESP will work with each customer directly, but Chondro needs to fully refund the deposits to each customer, and ESP will work with them directly to come up with a solution.
I didn't have a guitar on order with Chondro, but I have ordered from dealers before. I ordered a custom BRJ (pre Black Friday) from Nick at The Axe Palace. When the order dragged on and on beyond the due date, and it became clear what was happening with BRJ orders in general, I reached out to Nick to see if I could get a refund, or stop the order, etc. He said that it was between me and BRJ, and there was nothing he could do.
I later did a couple of the Ibanez runs through Nick. I got one of the unclaimed Rhodonite Pink 7s he did with Ibanez, and when I received it I noticed that the headstock color was way different than the body color (the headstock was a way redder colored pink). I asked Nick, and he said they all came like that, but that it couldn't be returned to Ibanez, because Ibanez said that it was within spec. So I ended up exchanging it for completely different guitar he had in stock.
So, now I'm wondering: Why would anyone order a custom from a dealer, as opposed to a company directly? As far as I know, you can order from the bigger companies direct, and do not need to use a dealer. I would have assumed you'd have more protection from a dealer (from something going wrong), but apparently it's the opposite. If you pay a dealer, they keep the money until the guitar comes in. So if anything happens to the dealer, you don't get the guitar. And, it seems that dealers have no more pull with the company than any individual client would. If the dealer has no more pull with the company than I do, is the one holding my money during the whole build process, and is only another possible break in the chain, then what's the point? I've got to be missing something here, but it seems in all three examples I listed above the dealer had no pull, and the relationship was still between the customer and the company, with the dealer kind of just in the middle holding the money?
I didn't have a guitar on order with Chondro, but I have ordered from dealers before. I ordered a custom BRJ (pre Black Friday) from Nick at The Axe Palace. When the order dragged on and on beyond the due date, and it became clear what was happening with BRJ orders in general, I reached out to Nick to see if I could get a refund, or stop the order, etc. He said that it was between me and BRJ, and there was nothing he could do.
I later did a couple of the Ibanez runs through Nick. I got one of the unclaimed Rhodonite Pink 7s he did with Ibanez, and when I received it I noticed that the headstock color was way different than the body color (the headstock was a way redder colored pink). I asked Nick, and he said they all came like that, but that it couldn't be returned to Ibanez, because Ibanez said that it was within spec. So I ended up exchanging it for completely different guitar he had in stock.
So, now I'm wondering: Why would anyone order a custom from a dealer, as opposed to a company directly? As far as I know, you can order from the bigger companies direct, and do not need to use a dealer. I would have assumed you'd have more protection from a dealer (from something going wrong), but apparently it's the opposite. If you pay a dealer, they keep the money until the guitar comes in. So if anything happens to the dealer, you don't get the guitar. And, it seems that dealers have no more pull with the company than any individual client would. If the dealer has no more pull with the company than I do, is the one holding my money during the whole build process, and is only another possible break in the chain, then what's the point? I've got to be missing something here, but it seems in all three examples I listed above the dealer had no pull, and the relationship was still between the customer and the company, with the dealer kind of just in the middle holding the money?