I bought something a couple years ago from Sweetwater. They do offer good deals on a wide variety of music gear, and they have a wide selection. When I made my purchase, they dutifully assigned me a “Sales Engineer”. I began to receive regular emails from this person and Sweetwater, long after I had no more interest in hearing from them.
Spam emails are annoying enough, but then he started to phone me. I finally managed to speak to him and told him that I didn’t want phone calls. He fought me a bit – you know how salespeople can get – but he finally relented. Problem solved, or so I thought.
Just today I got an email from a fellow, let’s call him “T”, who was supposedly my new “Sales Engineer”. I simply deleted it. To a very small degree, I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. Big mistake. After getting the email today, I noticed that I had a voicemail. It was the very same “T”, who lead his pitch with “I know you don’t want be called, but your email bounced..” That’s all I would listen to before deleting it, and I was very angry by this time.
This type of outmoded, moronic high-pressure sales technique is something I’ve written about elsewhere in this blog. You can almost hear some clueless sales manager hounding these newbie salespeople saying “don’t take no for an answer, keep calling again and again, it’s a number’s game, sell, sell, sell, if you don’t meet these numbers you’re fired!!!!” Or maybe T himself is an imbecile, maybe having read the book “Keep Calling, Whining, Hounding, Spamming, and Not Listening, Until You Make The Sale!” He’s the type of guy phone number blocking was invented for.
Nowadays, when you go to business school, it’s well-known that the old foot-in-the-door technique no longer works. They have you establish a relationship with a potential client based on respect – that way, you have a chance to have a lifelong client. Sweetwater did not get this memo. I had no idea that buying something from them would get me a stalker who would not be removable with an Exocet missile.
I tried to deal with the company rationally and politely, giving them another chance for my business. At this point I’ll simple delete my account with them. There are other good alternatives for music gear, such as Zzounds, AMS, Musician’s Friend, and many more. I normally wouldn’t do any pimping for those other companies, but Sweetwater is striving to alienate me as much as possible, so that’s what they get.
Sweetwater Sales: FAIL
Update: One day after writing this article, I receive a note from a manager at Sweetwater. He was very contrite, and assured me that I would not be receiving unwanted phone calls. He added that it was not Sweetwater’s intention to treat customers this way. I applaud him for being helpful, and I will now be willing to consider Sweetwater again when shopping for music gear. I’m reasonably confident that I won’t be getting the foot-in-the-door treatment anymore – we’ll see.
On a side note, it’s great to see that my blog is highly visible. Nowadays publishing on the web has become the most effective way to get results from customer service problems. I’m fortunate to have this resource – the technologically-challenged will often not have as good a result going through traditional channels, and I would say that this applies generally, not specifically to this company.
Though I do express my opinions pretty clearly, I don’t usually write something that’s this nasty. But when a problem keeps recurring, I might lose it! Fortunately, this rant ended up having a happy ending!