There hasn't been a more frustrating period of time compare to what I've been through for the past 2 months in my quest to acquire my new 'mistress'. Just when I thought it was tough getting my lefty Fender Jaguar with block inlays more than a year ago, having to engage a 3rd party middle man to help purchase the guitar and have it shipped over from Japan to Singapore, this is like...100 times more frustrating!
Well, I'm still in the process of getting this baby into my hands, so I'll update along the way with new progresses. Here's what went on so far...(long, boring entry of non-exciting details, so if you're keen, just click to read more...but at your own risk)
21 May
Emailed Guitarsale.com with the enquiry of whether there'd be a lefty version of Gibson ES-339 and got the news from John Boles (custom shop manager of Guitar Sale) that Gibson has no plans of making lefty ES-339s for this year at least. That news kinda killed my enthusiasim for the ES-339 but sparked my comtemplation to go for the similarly shaped but much more expensive CS-336 instead.
23 May
Emailed John again with more enquires, like whether they accept international sales, whether they can ship to my Vpost USA address, and the possibility of adding a bigsby to the guitar. A prompt reply from John assured that the former 2 options were no issues and that he could check with Gibson directly whether they can install it for me right from the factory. That kinda got me really excited.
27 May
More correspondence with John with regards to the bigsby installation but he had not heard from Gibson yet. Subsequent emails to him saw that he was out of office till 5th June.
13 June
Waited for a while since John has been in an out of office for some time. John mentioned there was still no news from Gibson and he'd call them personally to check.
18 June
Emailed John again to check if he managed to check with Gibson but was told that the Gibson representatives were all busy with their Summer NAMM show. Bummer!
24 June
After more than a month of email correspondence and waiting for Gibson to get back to John, I've decided to just make the purchase from the website and get my own Bigsby from Ebay and ask the local tech to install it. However, I ran into lots of problem shopping on their website, causing me to start 3 different accounts just so I could properly try to checkout of their shopping cart! I've written to John about this problem and unfortunately he was out of office I think. So, I wrote to another staff in Guitar Sale.
28 June
After several calls (YES, I CALLED THEM UP!) to Guitar Sale, and speaking to their customer service officers, I've come to conclusion that somehow, I couldn't get my Paypal to work (damn weird) and that Guitar Sale doesn't accept Mastercard issued by non-US banks! PFFFFFFF! So, I was advised that Western Union may be the solution to transfer the payment. The instructions given to me weren't clear and I was unable to chose the checkout option with Western Union and I had to call them up to request for more information. And so, one fine Saturday, I went down to my Post Office to do the Western Union transfer, only to run into the problem of NETS and ATM withdrawal limits! URGH! Luckily the counter lady was kind enough to accept $2000 cash and $1678 payment via NETS (so now you know how much the guitar costs).
After a seemingly relieved moment after doing the transfer, I checked the MTCN number given to see the status of the transfer and guess what...the website showed an invalid entry!!!! *tears hair out*
1 July
After several days of wondering (and checking of the Western Union website) and having no leads on whether my Western Union payment got through, I finally saw on my Guitar Sale account that the payment verification was completed!! Finally! A tinny light at the end of the tunnel! In the meantime, I quickly emailed Vpost and send them the order invoice so that they can match my item when it arrives.
2 July
I wrote an email to John out of courtesy, informing him that I've made the purchase of the guitar and asked him to help me set it up properly (since he's a lefty as well) and also for the dimensions of the box the guitar would be shipped out in, so that I could calculate the cost for the Vpost shipping. He finally got back to me with the information I needed (though the guitar was set up by another fella since he was out of office by the time the guitar was shipped out). At the same time, I received the customer service officer's email stating that the guitar is shipped, together with the tracking number so that I can track its shipping. Naturally, I got more and more excited.
Despite the progress in acquiring the guitar, they made the mistake of forwarding me the tracking link on FedEx's website instead of UPS which they used =_= Duh. For a good moment, I was cursing and swearing how come no results showed up on FedEx's tracking page!
3 July
Vpost wrote to me requesting for the completion of a document call the Shipper's Export Declaration form (SED) by the merchant, which is required for goods more than US$2500 to be shipped out of USA (for your info, the guitar's pricetag is US$2699). Urgh! I foresee potential delays!
I immediately emailed the SED form to the lady (Vanessa) whom I have been liaising with in Guitar Sale for her completion.
7 July
My guitar is slated to arrive at Vpost USA on the 8th and I've not received any replies from Vanessa on the SED form yet! I called her up but she wasn't in till afternoon, so I decided to ask for some details from that operator who picked up my call, so that I could fill up the form myself. Howeveer, I was refused to be given the info as she said that it is their agreement that they will not ship the guitar out of US, and that I should get Vpost to fill it in!! *Urgh! more hair-tearing!!!* I told her Vanessa agreed to fill in the form for me and she said Vanessa probably didn't get back to me cos she probably knew that it was not allowed. Pffff!
8 July
I was at my wits' end. I couldn't get hold of Guitar Sale's EIN number (their business registration number) needed to complete the SED form. I figured out the rest of the needed information via online...I'd tell you, I had to go through US's commerce website, searching for the some damn Schedule B number and ECCN number just to make sure the guitar is not some controlled item that couldn't be shipped out of US! Geez. Finally, Vanessa replied...just to inform me that she can't fill in SED form due to the agreement that they are prohibited to ship the guitar outside US, and that I should get Vpost to fill it instead! *... ... ...loss for words*
I didn't care anymore, I managed to find their EIN number, after subscribing to some free trial EIN finder thingy online. And realisd that it was more complicating than I've thought. I couldn't find Guitar Sale's company listing, only to have realised that they're a sister company under Woodwind and Brasswind company, which in recent years, was bought over by Musicians' Friend. So, I figured it'd be okay to put Musicians Friend's EIN number down *wipes sweat from brow after all the sleuth work*
9 July
First thing in the morning, I completed the SED form myself and sent it over to Vpost USA in the hopes that they'd just get on with it and send my guitar over. I called Vpost up after sending in the email to check if everything's fine and that they received whatever they need to process my shipping. When questioned, I submissively confessed that I filled up the form myself as the merchant declined filling in the form. Unexpectedly, the kind lady at Vpost agreed with me that such high value purchases are very troublesome and suggested me to send it in and wait for their response after they've checked with the US customs. She told me the worse case scenario would be to engage FedEx/DHL to ship it over if Vpost doesn't approve my shipping. *slaps forehead*...I hopped over to FedEx's website and did a rough calculation...at least US$200/300+ for shipping that guitar here...geez.
Hopefully good news will come to me soon. Oh, the guitar reached Vpost USA already and is there awaiting for the right documents. I just hope it doesn't get stuck there, incurring more storage costs from Vpost...*crossing my fingers*
Misc frustrations
These things don't just stop there, does it? To ease the heavy payout from this purchase, I had to make a painful decision (no, I'm not selling my kidneys or blood) to sell away my Fender 72' Custom Tele reissue. Initially priced at $1000 with the vintage pickup (worth $500) installed in it, the potential buyer said it was out of his budget, thus I had to remove the vintage pickup and lower the price. After his agreement to buy the guitar, I proceeded to list my vintage pickup on ebay to sell it. Guess what. Ebay's website gave me some 'technical error' message whenever I tried to create a seller's account!!! @#$#$%@%&!!! After weeks of contacting their Live Help chat for like, a gazillion times, and having done like, 10000000 things they suggested, from clearing my cache, deleting my cookies, creating an account from ebay.com.sg first, trying to access the page using a new browser, new computer, etc, the stupid error message is still there!! My bro's Ebay account showed up fine though...and after emailing Ebay (I hate it when such big companies don't have specific email/phone contact persons to liase with), I was routed all over the place just to have any Tom, Dick and Harry customer service officers replying to me and providing useless 'guide links' and suggestions which don't work at all. I give up trying to sell on Ebay now...making it my first and last attempt. I'm gonna ask my bro to help me list it on his account instead. Sad sad case man. What's wrong with these big companies like Ebay, Western Union, etc?!!
P.s Paypal on the other hand, had pretty good customer service when I called them up to change my Paypal account name in the hopes that I could transfer the sale money to my local bank account. After 2 or 3 phone calls and faxing, my Paypal account name was changed without a hitch :) (though it's pretty much useless since I still can't sell on Ebay)...bleah.
