A Question of Ethics or Business Sense?

[Professor PT]

I was in my local mom and pop music store today buying some picks, and as I was leaving, a guy walked in and asked about guitar strings. He told the salesman he was a beginner and that he was missing one string. He asked, "Do I need to buy a whole set or just one string?" I chimed in and said that they sell singles. The salesman shot me a dirty look and continued on about how buying a set would be "cheaper." Well, per string, maybe...I just couldn't help feeling like the guy was misleading the customer. I know he has to make some money; it just seems dishonest. And he told the guy he had to buy the most expensive set as well. The singles sell for a dollar, and the set he sold him was ten bucks. Man, maybe Guitar Center isn't so bad after all( ? ).

[glauber]

Sounds like a job for the Pie Man!

[Steve Cantrell]

I feel the same way. You can't fault the guy for wanting to put some money in his pocket, but if there's nothing wrong with it then why does it seem so questionable? Err on the side of caution, I say. If it seems shifty, it is shifty.

[blammo]

Hmm…well, at least the mandolin will sound much better with a brand-new set of strings instead of one new one & 7 crusty ones.

At least, that's probably what the store owner is telling himself. Woulda been nice of him to present the options & let the customer decide though.

[John Flynn]

From the seller's side, while they got a few more bucks out of that customer, that day, when said customer wises up some months down the road, he may well develop a resentment to that store for making a fool of him and take his business elsewhere. That future business might have included the purchase of high dollar items like new instruments. I have had this situations somewhat like that with music stores in the past and I will not buy at those stores again, ever, and I will always speak ill of them. It seems short-sighted for a store to trade off thier integrity for a few bucks.

Also, I wish it had been me the salesman shot a dirty look at for trying to set a customer straight. Me and that salesman would have had words over that look and I would have gotten a great deal of satisfaction out of it.

[jmkatcher]

Compare that with my local guy who checked intonation and tweaked my setup for free. With that sort of service, I'm happy to pay a premium for strings over mail order.

[357mag]

To me, its just representitive of greed. If he would stick it to an unwitting customer over a ten dollar set of strings,imagine what would happen if dealing with a two thousand dollar mandolin. If I was the customer, I would never buy a thing from him. If I was the boss I would fire the salesman. And the salesman was the boss,shame on him!

[Ted Eschliman]

Let me pose another perspective, from one who spent 25 years on the other side of the counter.
The majority of customers looking for one string think they want one string. They're putting it on an instrument that the rest of the set is years old. In those cases, it is a disservice to NOT inform them it's better to have strings that match age and wear.
Newbies aren't like you veterans who know better. To them, if it isn't broken, it's an intact string, whether it can hold intonation or not. I don't consider myself a snob (or a crook) for making the suggestion to get a whole new set. They may not know it at the time, but likely they will be much happier if everything is fresh or at least consistent, plus we discount heavier on sets than casual singles. We owe our customers a better value and a more pleasant playing experience.
Now the story here may well be the clerk trying to make an extra buck, but more often than not, if they aren't replacing a fresh string that was recently broken it's doing the customer a favor.
A good salesman will give the entire information, and ultimately, let the customer decide what's best.

[BigJoe]

There is not enough money to make a differnce in anyone's life between a single string or a complete set. Many stores (including the Bluegrass Showcase) don't even stock single strings anymore. It is too expensive to handle the strings and deal with the time it takes to sell a single string. Economically it is not cost effective to handle singles. Secondly, in most cases, as spoken above, the consumer really needs a whole set anyway and it is far better to give them the whole set than to sell a single, have them have another break before they get it all in tune and then be mad at the dealer for not selling him a complete set. There was a day when sinlges were a good idea for both consumer and retailer, but those days are pretty well gone unless you are a very small store with nothing else to do with your time. I don't know either party involved, but I would suggest the real issue is not the profit, but the excess cost of dealing with single strings. Just my opinion.

[ShaneJ]

I agree. Cheaper is VERY often not better. A purveyor of products/services with the customer's best interest in mind will steer the customer to the best value, even when it's not the cheapest alternative.

[jim_n_virginia]

Some of us are assuming the guy had 7 crusty strings and one missing.

What if he just put on a new set and overtightened an A or E string and it broke?

Now he has and incomplete set that will float around in a desk drawer forever.

This happened to me last week on my fiddle. I just had it set up with a new bridge and had new strings put on. While tweaking the tuning (my fault overtightened) I popped a string right there in the shop.

Luckily the shop owner sold me a single string and not the set of Thomastic Dominants

[mandocaster]

As another guy that spent years behind the counter (5th String in Berkeley and Rockin Robin in Houston) I don't blame the salesman for the dirty look. A retail store is not like a public street - it only exists because somebody was willing to put their money into the very shakey proposition of a small store. If you get between a salesman and a customer and try to talk them out of a sale you can bet you will get a dirty look.

[Professor PT]

I didn't even mean to cause a stir; I honestly just said what was a well known fact to me. I have bought many single strings from this shop for guitar and a few for mandolin when some freak tuning accident happens. By the way, the guy was buying a string( well, he ended up with the set ) for a guitar, not a mandolin. He said he had received it as a gift and one of the strings had broken when a friend was playing around with it. So, I would suspect that the strings on it were fairly new. In the end, I think it's weird to offer singles if you resent selling them to anyone but veteran musicians. This place also wants over three grand for a Weber Bitteroot( w/ maple upgrades ). I would obviously shop elsewhere for a better deal. I still believe in the small store, and I do pay eight bucks for my J74's at this shop instead of five at Guitar Center. I guess I expected them to be a bit more honest in such a situation. The guy just didn't present the full story on the strings.

[Harry H]

First of all, I've worked retail and the salesman was probably doing what
the boss told him to do. Which doesn't make it right, but that's probably
the way it went down.

Second, I imagine there are four or five different ways to have made
the described situation a better deal for everybody concerned.
Here's an example,
"hey, man, I'm charging you $10 for the strings, but bring the guitar in
#and we'll give it an inspection for free."
That way, when the customer brought in his grandfather's 1964 Martin, the
store could have traded him for a brand new shiny Takamine. Wouldn't
that have been better for everybody?

Third, there are still reasons to keep 'singles' around; for customers who
build their own custom size sets, guys who break a lot of strings, even as replacements for a batch of bad strings from a certain manufacturer, etc.
The reasons for keeping a stock of single strings revolve around the concept of Customer Service. I've never been to Gibson's Bluegrass Showcase,
but I certainly won't go there with the expectation that I can buy a
'single string'. Thanks for the heads up on that, Big Joe.

Fourth, I like the way Mandohack explained it. Mandohack, from now on,
I'm placing all my single string orders with you.

Fifth, this is my 100th post on the Cafe.
I've enjoyed hanging around here a lot, so maybe I'm just having a bad day or a bad week, or something, but don't you good folks think there may be something better to do with our time than talk about whether some pimply-faced salesman shook $10 bucks out of someone's wallet for a set of strings?

I mean, wouldn't we be better off 'practicing mando' for 15 minutes instead of
worrying about this stuff?

Oh, anybody who disagrees with me should go read the last four pages of the latest Folk of the Wood thread for a Refresher Course in Music Retail Ethics.

There, I feel a lot better now.

[Doug Edwards]

Providing the benefit of a doubt, maybe the salesman knew his stock and was providing the best alternative for the customer. I've bought single strings before that were corroded from years of sitting around. From a business stand point, I would not want to sell faulty product to a customer. It is not a good practice to vocally run down the product you sell.

[Celtic Saguaro]

It goes both ways. The customer wants a great deal, but the store either makes a profit or goes out of business and everyone loses. #Now I know, I can order any string set I please on-line, but sometimes I like to give the locals a little business. Not every store is going to carry 'specialty' string sets and for good reason. I've had stores suggest buying 4 individual strings for my Irish tenor banjo when I knew I could get what I wanted cheaper buying a guitar set they had even with throwing two strings in the trash. #I don't blame them for trying. I certainly don't blame them for not knowing every possible string combination.

The problem is I buy strings sets in batches. I don't do business with my favorite local music store every month or even every other month. #They do recognize me, but I'm not sure I'd qualify as a regular customer. #I'm not sure music stores have many 'regular customers' at all who aren't actively taking lessons. #That often makes for a poor business attitude on the part of the store and unrealistic expectations from the customers.

[picksnbits]

newb cust: "I broke a string, do I need one to replace it or a whole set?"

sales guy: " I can sell you one or a whole set. What brand and gauge are the existing set and which string did you break?"

newb cust: " Uh?...."

[Nathan Sanders]

I see guys coming in all the time wanting to buy a single string at my local guitar store hangout. I've been told by the shop owner and salesmen that quite often some of these single string guys are probably using them for tattoo work.

While hanging out at this particular store, I usually stay out of conversations between salesmen and other customers though, unless they ask for my opinion on something. For instance, one day I walked in and they were helping a lady who was buying a Pac Rim mando for a friend as a gift. She did not play and couldn't decide between two models. The sales dude asked me to play them for the lady to help her decide. Usually I do not see this shop trying to talk a person into a whole set of strings when all they want is one. Sure, I usually change the whole set, but there have been times when I broke a new string while changing the set. Fortunately I had another set on hand and just pulled the one I needed.

[Stephen Perry]

Generally getting between store staff and customers is a bad idea, unless saying something like "I think you sound much better on that one" pointing to the more expensive instrument. If this is true, then that's about all I'll say!

[A9cp]

My take, honestly will usually get the customer back, you screw them their not coming back. The store dude missed the boat.

[gnelson651]

It seems the favorite past time around here, besides play mando, is to speculate a situation based on incomplete and opinionated information. We obviously don't have all the facts and jumping to conclusions either for or against the business is not productive.

I agree with Harry H, life is too short to debate this drivel. Go to your room and practice your mando NOW!!!! #

[mrbook]

Yesterday a customer was buying a nice (and fairly expensive) item in my store, and by coincidence was buying it in front of another customer who could have bought it a month earlier if his accountant had released money from his trust fund. When I sold it, the other guy, who is not malicious but severely deficient in social skills, said, "You must be happy to sell that - you've had it for years, haven't you?" He might have deserved a dirty look, but it was better for everyone to handle the situation with humor. I think that if you want to wait on customers you should do so in your own store.

On the other side of the coin, I used to poke around in a local music store while waiting for my Chinese food order, but found it frustrating to listen to the "deals" offered to customers on starter instruments. I would have loved to comment but couldn't, so now I kill time in the dollar store.

[Roydw3]

I was looking at mandos on musiciansfriend and music123 today. I saw a MK Solid for 224...listed as c stock...I called to get more information about C stock. The salesman said, "If you want to know the truth, we call them boomerangs...they always come back to us." He told me they are not instruments that people are glad to receive. Now for $224, I wasn't expecting much...and after previous bad experiences with music123, I was pleased to have the honesty from the salesman. I was lucky to talk to this guy...even a blind squirl finds a nut once in a while.

[RolandTumble]

I don't want to get into the "ethics" quetion, but a couple of brief stories about single strings seem to be in order:

I recently bought a set of JM-11s from Mandohack. One of the A strings snapped at the loop as I was doing the initial tuning-up. When I let him know, he said it was an early production problem, now solved, and quickly sent me a#replacement single (well, "single" pair), no fuss, no muss. I'm a very happy camper.

Second, I went to one of my local stores looking for single strings to make up a set for my tenor guitar (just try buying pre-made sets locally, in most localities). I knew the gauges I wanted, but they didn't have them all in stock. At the salesman's recommendation, I wound up buying a set of regular guitar strings, plus a single to be the one that the set didn't include. Came out at no more than four singles would've, even with three strings unused. I could've fudged & gone with just the set, but it didn't seem "right".

There's still a real value in stocking single strings, from the customer's point of view.

[RBM]

A good salesman would explain the benefits of buying a set of strings over a single string. he would give the customer enough information for him to make an informed decision. He wins a long term customer this way, he has a happy customer who can feel that he was treated right. So it becomes a trade off for the store - Can the store afford to slowly build a good customer base or do they out of economic need -need to make each sale for maximum dollars.

The negative wrinkle for the good retail salesperson is the time one spends educating a customer who then leaves the store and buys on the internet to save sales tax on the item. It is a bit frustrating but at the same time it is the only thing that distinguishes a small store from a big box or an internet store. I live in a small town and am happy to pay the local music store anything they want to charge because I am not sure where I would go if he went out of business. Heck if it was simple we would all be rich!