MS Band Director

For music educators - By music educators

Music Vendors Nationwide

Directors,
In efforts to keep standards up across the industry, I would love to encourage directors to share their success (or otherwise) stories about National music vendors in this discussion. Perhaps if enough of us get together and the folks at these companies read this forum, some kudos can be exchanged as well as some concerns.

Tags: infrastructure, music, national, stores, vendors

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Permalink Reply by Russ Weaver on May 14, 2010 at 6:19pm

I'll begin by saying that this National trend of having fewer and fewer music professionals manning the music stores makes it really difficult to spend money on music gear any more. In fact, it makes it difficult to recommend stores to potential parents and students as well.
Case in point. I bought my first tenor sax from Dennis Bamber back in 1983 when the Woodwind Brasswind was a small outfit and have been shopping there ever since, but through the mail.
Attached are the photos of the Bari WTII Tenor sax mouthpiece that arrived today. As you can see, the tip has a flaw in it! A large flaw that came out of the box that way. No way mail delivery could have done this, it simply was not checked by a professional before shipping. (Hey they might not check, right?) So I gave them a call.
They could not access my account (5 minutes), and I asked the clerk what it said about my history with the wwbw. Did it mention that I was a 29 year professional musician? (no) Did it show how much money I had spent over the past 3 decades at wwbw? (no) Did it show what instruments I play or where I teach? (no) So I asked to speak with a manager.
I was then transferred to Jack at extension 9022 who was in charge of customer service, but did not know much about tenor mouthpieces. I asked him who the professional was in charge of woodwinds and he told me I could talk to James at extension 3305. To save time I asked Jack who packs the mail order boxes and decides which mouthpieces get sent to the professionals and he informed me that the mail orders are sent from another State! And that hourly employees are the ones that fill those orders and that he could try and arrange to make sure that a good mouthpiece is sent out but he couldn't assure me that the woodwind professional would decide which mouthpiece gets sent to the pros. This is a concern that, I believe, my colleagues on MS should know about and I, for one, will have to think long and hard before ordering from wwbw again.
Oh, by the way, Jack is sending out another WTII tenor mouthpiece but wouldn't be able to insure that it was a good one because the woodwind specialists are not in the same State as the shipping warehouse. How is it that we spell "restructure" anyway?
So... I am looking for my colleagues on MS to recommend a suitable replacement for this situation. Are there any National companies out there that have personalized attention for professionals or is this a dying art? Help.

Frustrated.

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