“Sales people and really don't know what they make out to know.
Also they try to be your buddy which is really annoying
I just want to order something and get it in reasonable time
remember there are other places even local to buy equipment!!!
I have enough friends already and I don't need a follow upon an order especially if its less than 25 dollars.......thats just wasting my time and company time!!
Ill have to think twice before ordering from Sweetwater again!!!!!”
“I have my sales representative Max rice always takes very good care of me if there's ever a problem he always takes care of it I think he really deserves a raise and you need more people like him very knowledgeable and what he's doing always prompt always calls back if I leave a message very very reliable employee and I would have nobody but him anyway I think he needs a raise so maybe you can give him one”
“Good quality products, ordered a ukulele from there and the quality was very good. Lasted me a long time.
But, I ordered a guitar from there 3 weeks ago. I placed the order then and was told it would take about 2 weeks to get here.
I call Sweetwater to find out why it wasn’t here yet.
Guy on the phone tells me that the order was never looked at and hasn’t even been shipped.
Work on your customer service!”
“I have spent thousands of dollars over the years with Sweetwater. Recently they recommended an interface that turned out to have extremely complicated software. They offered about 30minutes of time after which the technician could only partially fix the issue. Now, they refuse to offer any more support for the product. They just lost me as a customer.”
“Not exactly sending a good review like I would in the past. I'm not going to put up with my sales engineer pulling the attitude with me because I'm sending the third item in a row back! Everything was warped, or just sucked, and last night my 3 day old new Peavey amp blew up. I've had to send several guitars back because of warpage. I'm getting a little suspicious why they're equipment is always dropped in price 100.00 bucks off of the already low price, I think my returns are starting to explain it. Beware when buying from them now days. And some of the attitudes need some adjustments, or I'll shop somewhere else.”
“Price was very reasonable. Shipping was free.... idk if it was free bc I was a first-timer.... either way, my first order was free shipping. But what I liked most was their sales engineer, Bryan Spencer reached out to me the day I ordered and let me know he was there for any questions or concerns. He returns calls promptly. Sweetwater is at the top of my list for future orders.”
“Do not use this company as they make promise after promise only to drop the ball so many times and then blame shipping however and when you can't get a hold of the original sales engineer their assistants always mess up and then make excuse after excuse and they don't care because as long as they make their commission they are okay with that . The customer service department is about the only ones who actually care but even at that their hands are tied as they have no control over your items you order .”
“Ordering was easy. The transaction went well. Received what I ordered and even got some sweet treats! One of the team called and thanked me for my order and asked if they could do anything for me. Very nice and would definitely recommend this store!!”
“Ordered $1,600 worth of equipment from them just to have some items on back order . They claim they sold out so fast they had to get more items in stocks however I could have just went to the manufacturer myself and already had my items in hand by now but because it's my sweetwater credit card I had to wait so moving forward I will no longer order from Sweetwater just because their customer service is very poor and some sales reps are very rude .”
“I was a drummer in my earlier day with 2 kits total.. life got a hold of me and I sold my last kit in my 20’s. Then 44 years later got tired of drumming on my steering wheel and my desk and decided I was going to by a new kit. I bought a 5 piece birch kit with white birch wrap and the set is beautiful. I’m back to drumming again and 3 months into returning to something I love brown glue starts leaching out of the wrap seam on my 10 inch Tom. I called Sweetwater who told me not to worry, that they would call D Drum and forward pics of the discrepancy. I was told Sweetwaters offers 1 yr warranty and so does DDrum.
Few days later I get an email from Sweetwater stating D Drum does not warranty the glue job and neither does Sweetwater. Sweetwater said they would send the Tom to a repair shop
At my cost for labor and shipping.
I was so happy with the engineers at Sweetwater and their Sales Davy but as far as helping with a true problem in a matter of the first few months they are very disappointing. So bottom line… everyone I bragged to about Sweetwater will now be told not to deal with them at all.”
“I recently went through the process of exchanging a previously bought guitar for another. Huge shoutout to sales engineer Steve Wessing. He made the whole exchange process stress free and seamless. Sending my unwanted guitar back to Sweetwater was a breeze and the timely delivery of my new guitar was fantastic. The entire process took a little over a week thanks to Steve. Sweetwater rocks!!”
“I use to really like Sweetwater, but before a Management change, before Mike Clem, had some return issues. But resolved, but now, in the past 2 years, horrible!! Every web site I go to, Sweetwater advertisement are very deceiving. Pretty much of the stuff, isn't in stock, or on back order. So there grabbing your IP address, and advertising madly. All that matters that they get you to there site. Probably points on there company, regardless of a sell. BE VERY CAREFUL on the EZ Payments. In your account it show dates for payments to be received, there will be month/months, a line missing that doesn't show up, but your sales person will email you saying you have a payment due. I screenshot there payments, constantly. Reported to Indiana Attorney General's office, at this time, its being reviewed. Not knowing today, after all the gear bought, the inspection before sending you, was a farse, and see a lot of issue posted. But drowning your internet, with advertisement's, is horrible. Almost 8 out 10, the gear isnt in stock, on back order, or dont know when it will be in stock. Theres something wrong here”
“I ordered a boutique guitar amplifier from Sweetwater. I asked the Sales Engineer Halaj Mack if the amp would be factory sealed. He said it would be. When it arrived, it was not, with an envelope stuck to the top stating how it was "carefully double-checked and packed" by a Sweetwater rep. Not what I was promised. In fact, I believed it to be the “demo model” I had initially purchased, then cancelled that same day, since I preferred to have a brand-new product. Halaj Mack did not so much as apologize from the misrepresentation, just told me the shipping team said it was new, and not the demo model, contrary to the evidence. So, I went over his head, communicated how a Sweetwater representative had misrepresented the product, and managed to get the amp replaced. Sweetwater even double-boxed the amp in a snug double-walled box and sprang for expedited shipping without being asked. So, was I happy? Not as happy as I would have been if they’d just sent me a factory-sealed product to start with, instead of forcing me to push to get what I paid for, but at least I actually received a factory-sealed amp.
Anyway, moving on… a couple of weeks later, I ordered a second boutique amp, requesting expedited shipping and double boxing identical to the way in which the first amp’s replacement was shipped – in other words, nothing that Sweetwater hadn’t done before. I paid for the $150 additional shipping cost this time, and was happy to do so since I expected to receive the second order in the same condition as the first.
This did not happen. For some reason, the Sweetwater shipping department thought that double-boxing this 60-pound amplifier in near paper-thin carboard that exceeded the factory box measurements by 12 inches in length and 8 inches in height would somehow not end in disaster. When this catastrophe arrived at my home, the outer box had been torn from end to end, because the 60-pound contents was clearly too heavy for the outer box, and had broken through when handled by FedEx staff. I do not blame FedEx at all since a properly boxed item, such as the first double-boxed amp I’d received, could withstand the rigors of overnight shipping, and would have been delivered safely. I could not understand why they would use a box that was not designed to support such weight to ship a $3500 amplifier, especially when I specifically requested that this order be shipped in identical fashion to replacement amp I had received earlier.
So here I am, with two shipping disappointments from Sweetwater in less than a month.
Was the inner box intact? It seemed to be, aside from some bumps and scrapes, but since it had clearly torn out of the outer box, it may very well have fallen an unknown number of feet to the ground, perhaps on more than one occasion while the disintegrating outer box was being handled by various individuals during shipping. Since tube amplifier are notoriously fragile, and given the state in which the package arrived, I thought that it was entirely possible that the amp had suffered damage due to Sweetwater’s gross negligence. So, I demanded a replacement, providing the exact measurements of the double-walled outer box in which the first amp had been shipped, plus a refund for the $150 expedited shipping I had paid to make of for the distress and frustration they had caused me. I told the new Sales Engineer, Israel Hernandez, that if they refused, they would lose me as a customer. I told Sweetwater I would leave the amplifier untouched and unopened so they could sell it to someone else. They accepted my terms, and I shipped back the amp with a label they provided. The Sales Engineer then sent me the $150 shipping refund, and a promise that the replacement amp would be shipped per my specifications via free overnight shipping.
Anyway, of course, they no longer had any stock to send me a replacement! So, the Sales Engineer, Israel Hernandez, told me they were expecting a new shipment in about a week. There was no update the following week, so I reached out, and he told me I had to wait 3 weeks, which would make it an entire month since I originally placed the order. A couple of weeks later, I told them not to bother with the replacement, since the whole business had left a bad taste in my mouth, and there was way too much negativity attached to the purchase for me to enjoy it.
So, what do they do? They take back the $150 goodwill shipping refund which was supposed to make up for the distress and inconvenience they had caused me. This, despite me having told them that they would lose my business. The day before I cancelled the replacement, I had expressed interest in a different, pricier amplifier to the Sales Engineer, Israel Hernandez, but this promise of future business did not sway them. They only cared that I no longer wanted the replacement amplifier, which would have required them to absorb the cost of the overnight shipping.
I’m disappointed to say the least. Sweetwater is very good at pretending to care about customers, but in practice, they don’t. I was never adversarial, never rude, never unreasonable. I just asked them to give me what they had promised to provide in exchange for my money. And I think I was entitled to accept their gesture of the $150 shipping refund at face value: that they were apologizing for poor customer service. Please bear in mind that they were directly responsible for the disappointment I had to swallow not once, but twice in a single month, not to mention the time and fuel it cost me to drop off their amplifiers at the closet FedEx location, which is 30 miles away. For those of you who have invested money in high-end musical equipment, who have endured the wait and prayed that the equipment would arrive undamaged, perhaps you can understand my point of view.
I told both the Sales Engineer, Israel Hernandez, and his assistant Conner Verity, that I would be leaving reviews like this and filing a complaint with the BBB. No response, except that Israel Hernandez had himself removed from my account as my personal Sales Engineer (if you have a Sweetwater account, you’ll have an assigned Sales Engineer that you can contact from your profile).
Anyway, hopefully this will make you think twice about giving your money to Sweetwater. There are plenty of retailers out there, with the same range of equipment and pricing. Some may be more impersonal. But that’s just it. In the end, I’d rather deal with a company that doesn’t pretend to care about its customers.”
“I ordered a gooseneck from Sweetwater, as an extender for a mic stand. It didn’t fit properly. Sweetwater found the pieces I needed and answered all my questions from my email. Great customer service.”
“In my experience, their inspection process is almost worse than worthless. I say this because I recently received a poorly setup instrument from them that I had to pay a local luthier to sort out. Sweetwater's response was that a few duds are 'bound to slip through' and that they'd 'make it right next time' (i.e., on my next purchase.)
I have received poorly setup instruments before, but not that were obviously defective that I couldn't simply have replaced by the seller (either Musician's Friend or the manufacturer directly). In fact, Fender's Customer Support is so good, that I only by Fender items directly from them now.”
