Not So “Sweet”water

Scribbled by Lethal Illness @ 11:33 PM on May 27th, 2010.

This is about my experience with Sweetwater. While you may not experience the same treatment and fuckery I did, I’m sure many of you have. Basically, the message is use them at your own risk.

Last month around the same time I purchased my Macbook Pro, I was trying to order something for my studio. I tried to get what I needed through a source of mine for three weeks and after many failed attempts I decided I would just buy it on my own with no special discounts. For the last year or so I’ve been hearing nothing but good things about Sweetwater. I figured since I remembered about them that this time I would order from them since they had a decent price for what I needed.

Long story short, my bank account was having problems so I couldn’t use my card nor PayPal to purchase what I needed online. Well I had a bright idea, so I called up Sweetwater and asked their billing department; “I am new to Sweetwater, I am trying to buy something but currently don’t have any cards to purchase with. Would I be able to buy a Visa gift card in my amount and use it?” so they said yes and I went on to my local CVS to pick up the card. At CVS they didn’t have a custom amount card so I had to buy two. Before I purchased the two Visa cards, I once again called Sweetwater to double check. Once again they told me it was fine.

Finally, [two Friday's ago] I had my two Visa cards and phone in hand to order. I called Sweetwater and placed my order with some not-so-bright fellow named Keith, but it was 5 minutes before their closing time so they asked me to call back Monday morning and they’ll finish my order. Okay, I thought I just caught them at a bad time I guess. Monday morning I called and the guy asked me if I had an account with Sweetwater. I told him I am a new customer and then he finished the order, the guy told me could be up to 24 hours for an invoice. I thought that was pretty easy, awesome. Tuesday, I wake up and check my email for a confirmation of the order, no invoice, no anything from Sweetwater. I call back up and some other “sales engineer” tells me that there was a problem with one of my cards so I called of Visa and the money was all there. They said it went through later that day and that if there was any other problems they’d call me that day. Next day, still no invoice I call again and there is another problem. They tell me “the card is invalid”. Fine second time there is a problem with the card, let me go down there and see what the problem is.

On the CVS receipt it states; “Vanilla Visa Gift Cards may be returned by 7/13/10“. That’s a little less then 2 months from the time I was going to return it. I walked in there and some pointy-nose asshole who claimed he was the manager told me there is nothing he can do about it. He called Visa and they said all the money was there. The asshole tells me “the money is there and I can’t do anything about it”. I proceeded to tell him that I bought two cards look at the receipt, one worked while the other didn’t. The asshole just gave me an attitude acting like I never used one before and told me to enter in the information correctly. The boiling point when I was there was when he told me I couldn’t exchange it and proceeded to demand me “to sell it to someone for the cash”. HELLO ASSHOLE WHAT PART OF IT DOESN’T WORK DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND. Before I jumped over counter to stick his head up his ass I left CVS. Long story short of that, I went back to CVS later and the real manager came down and not only told the asshole to get away but gave me another card out of the stores money. Thank you mister CVS manager and I hope you didn’t get fired, but I hope you did fire they pointy-nose asshole.

So I called Sweetwater back, gave them the new card. They said they’d call me with anymore problems. Next day again, guess what? Same problem, no call. I screamed and yelled to later find out, new customers can’t purchase with Visa gift cards. Wow, okay I’ll take my money and go else where. NO! They already took the money off of both the cards. Who takes money off cards without shipping the item? No other place online I know of does that. Not NewEgg, Tigerdirect, Amazon, GuitarCenter, MusiciansFriend, Zzounds, Music123, Apple, Dell, GameStop or any other place I’ve ever ordered from. EVER! They were telling me they couldn’t do anything and I had to call Visa to request a reversal. Visa told me I had to ask them for an Authorization number. The game went back and forth for a few hours and was supposed to take 7 days til I got my money back, completely ridiculous from Sweetwater making the mistake repeatedly. In a complete outrage I demanded a Sweetwater manager and told him the story of how they have been dicking me around and then told me they couldn’t do it almost a week later. Not to mention they made me get another card when it wasn’t even the card it was their system rejecting it because I am a new customer. Plus their lack of customer service never calling me back when there was a problem. The manager agreed and told me he would call me back he was going to see if he can pull some strings. Well he actually DID call me back in about 20 minutes and informed me he will ship my item since they fucked up big time.

Although the problem was resolved without me killing someone (I was almost there though). I would never ever order from Sweetwater ever again. Why? They truly lacked the customer service skills they claim to have. They couldn’t communicate properly to even tell me my card wasn’t going through. They took money before even packing my item to ship. Most importantly they took almost a week to even get there story straight and actually ship my package and that’s because I demanded a manager.

To a happy yet comically sad ending, Monday I received my package with the item I’ve been trying to get for almost a month and a half. When I opened it there was candy in it!? Yeah, why the fuck was there candy in it? Maybe they were trying to poison me? Either way I threw them out because they were all wrapped candy like tootsie rolls and shit and they weren’t sealed.