idealassets
Senior Member
Just to be clear, my personal experience here was that you buy the item first to get it delivered to your local GC (or any GC you want - I bought something online from my home in MA and had it shipped to Emeryville, CA where I was visiting). It's clearly not the same as just trying something that's "in stock" in a store. That said, as we all know, there's a very lenient and easy return policy if your real intent is just to get something into the store so you can try it out. I don't know what GC does if you "return" the item. My guess is they just ship it back to whatever distribution center it came from, but perhaps they put it up in the store. Dunno.
Don't know about new guitars, but in my experience GC does not have an easy return policy. They prefer to send the guitar directly to your address, then you drive it back to a nearby store- which the store of origin gives you with a computer search. Its all so easy until you have to explain to 2 managers "what is wrong with the guitar", and that I preferred a refund.
In my case it was an overpriced used "mint" JF65-12 that when it arrived needed a neck reset, had excessive top bellying and was missing some side braces that were removed or had come unglued. It also sounded bad and muffled. I brought along my Guild F512 so they could A-B the 2 guitars, and resulted in creating a scene right in the middle aisle of the store. I explained that the condition was not quite as described, (but still had a "mint" nitro finish), and very likely (from experience) would end up with costly and undesirable repair results. After a long wait, being the bearer of bad news, even though the guitar "looked mint, just like new" I got my refund.
I was also informed that my local GC store was getting stuck with this guitar, would absorb the monetary loss, and it was not going to be sent back to Connecticut where it came from. It was then priced for sale at about $1000 less than what I paid for it, and it sat in the guitar room for nearly a year unsold, with the end game unknown.
After some time has elapsed I hope all is well with my local GC store. Although for today I am hesitant to risk having a repeat of my first experience.
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