Carvin Customer Service

[Metal Dan]

Needs a freaking overhaul. My Carvin DC400 is seriously the sweetest guitar I have ever tried and I certainly want more from that company. I want to even be endorsed! But the people they've got working there don't know their *** from a hole in the ground save one guy named Marco. If you get anything from them call Marco

I'm not even going to go over that past problems I've had. Let me just tell you about my recent adventure. I recently got my guitar refinished with a new paint job that took well over FOUR MONTHS. It was one of those things where is was like "Oh the guy who does the respray will be on Thursday so it'll ship on Friday" .... "Oh it didn't ship on Friday because the inspector won't be in until Thursday so it will ship then".... etc, etc....

So it took them forever. No big deal right? I'd rather have it done right...
But they decided to give me a new case because mine had gotten rather banged up over the years. How nice of them. Guess what they forgot to put in it when they shipped it. Imagine my excitement when I see the UPS guy lugging that big Carvin box up my driveway only to find out that the case inside is a little too light, and opening the case confirms my horror that there is nothing inside it....

I think I made up a lot of new words that day

But they gave me their most expensive case for free out of the ordeal... and this time my guitar was in it... It just confuses me greatly that someone can be dimwitted enough to forget to put the guitar in the case... I seriously shiver everytime I think about it...

Not to mention I had to argue with them for over month because everytime I talked to someone I got a completely different price for the refinish

/rant

[Black_the_Sky]

Needs a freaking overhaul. My Carvin DC400 is seriously the sweetest guitar I have ever tried and I certainly want more from that company. I want to even be endorsed! But the people they've got working there don't know their *** from a hole in the ground save one guy named Marco. If you get anything from them call Marco

I'm not even going to go over that past problems I've had. Let me just tell you about my recent adventure. I recently got my guitar refinished with a new paint job that took well over FOUR MONTHS. It was one of those things where is was like "Oh the guy who does the respray will be on Thursday so it'll ship on Friday" .... "Oh it didn't ship on Friday because the inspector won't be in until Thursday so it will ship then".... etc, etc....

So it took them forever. No big deal right? I'd rather have it done right...
But they decided to give me a new case because mine had gotten rather banged up over the years. How nice of them. Guess what they forgot to put in it when they shipped it. Imagine my excitement when I see the UPS guy lugging that big Carvin box up my driveway only to find out that the case inside is a little too light, and opening the case confirms my horror that there is nothing inside it....

I think I made up a lot of new words that day

But they gave me their most expensive case for free out of the ordeal... and this time my guitar was in it... It just confuses me greatly that someone can be dimwitted enough to forget to put the guitar in the case... I seriously shiver everytime I think about it...

Not to mention I had to argue with them for over month because everytime I talked to someone I got a completely different price for the refinish

/rant

I doubt if this is the case but did you end up with two cases after it was over? I'm thinking I read it wrong but that's how I interpreted the story. Also how much did the refinishing cost? And do you have a before and after pic?

[Metal Dan]

I unfortunately do not have a pic of the guitar before... I will get one posted here today of what it looks like afterward. All I did was add a black burst to it and changed out the gold hardware for black. It is a ruby red stain on quilted maple.
I was first told the refinish would be 600$.... but I was told it could be up to $1000 or even more by some other representitives. So I had a bitch session and got the refinish for 600$ + the new hardware

[Metal Dan]

And I did end up with two cases but they wanted the cheaper one back. I said I should get that one as well because of all the trouble I went through. They didn't respond well to that, lol. So I just bought it.

So I have two now.

[Koala]

Case, no guitar... shocking, and to think we put our money is these guys hands.

[Metal Dan]

Case, no guitar... shocking, and to think we put our money is these guys hands.

What the hell was going on with my guitar while the case was en route? Was it just sitting under a conveyor belt or something? In some guys office?

[Koala]

Maybe in some guys home. Or maybe in some other case flying to pittsburgh

[Metal Dan]

hahah maybe. But it was still there apparently because they 'upgraded' to three day shipping and sent it out ASAP.

[LarryJ]

Carvin is a very small operation, they probably have their hands full making a few hundred more guitars for people or amps for steve vai. 4 Months does seem ridiculous, but I wouldn't expect to have the hardware changed, and the paintjob in any less than 3 weeks from a major company. If you sent it to gibson or something it'd probably take a year with all the stuff they have going on.

[Metal Dan]

I was mainly griping about the fact the guitar wasn't in the case

[Carvinite]

Carvin customer service was the best ive EVER gotten.....fomr ANY guitar company....and there are countless other's that will say the same

[Metal Dan]

Answer this though: have you EVER dealt with them AFTER the guitar was purchased? You know, follow up services? Sure they were great getting the guitar into my hands, but once it needed work that was covered by the warranty it got pretty dismal pretty fast.

[Koala]

Carvin customer service was the best ive EVER gotten.....fomr ANY guitar company....and there are countless other's that will say the same

Hey Ryan, no need to take it personally, Metal Dan´s just letting us know about the bad experience he had. I have no doubt some people have also had great experiences with Carvin.

Its actually good to hear these stories so we all know how to deal with Carvin customer service, and to know this CAN happen and how others have dealt with it to their benefit.

I know you love Carvin and I understand why and all, but lets let Dan make his point.

I can now feel the love in here

[Metal Dan]

I love Carvin guitars, no doubt. But I can't help but feeling raped after all I went through. This was only ONE story like I stated above. It's been an absolute nightmare getting them to honor the warranty on many cases... but like Koala said... this was my experience and I'm sure there are other people had no problems.

And Marco at Carvin basically bended over backwards to fix everything for me while a lot of other representitives did little more than blow me off.

[gabsabs]

Was this a change in your original order during the 10-day trial period, or had you had the guitar for some time and decided to make changes? Because I wasn't aware that you could make changes like that after the trial period unless there was a defect.