Paying for service

After a year and a half of playing the banjo, my wife and I are upgrading to better banjos. Right now we have Deering Goodtime banjos, which are great to start on and we'll be keeping them, but it's time to move to the big leagues.

After I looked around on the internet for a couple weeks, and even bid on some ebay auctions (and avoided a couple of attempts of "second chance bidding" fraud), I went to a highly reputable local store and got a pretty good deal, combined with the fact that Stu helped me choose among a bunch of banjos, then got this one set up and hooked up the strap I bought. And now I'm his friend for life.

My wife, on the other hand, chose to purchase her banjo through GUITAR CENTER. Cheapo price on her desired Gibson, the brand she must get because she was born in Nashville, but so far, she has talked to about 4 people with limited success (yes, she's still in the middle of this). One of them said he'd call her back, but didn't after 45 minutes so she had to try again. A typical conversation has gone like this:

"Do you have any Gibson banjos?"

"Let me go check." Long pause. You'd think you'd remember if there were any Gibson banjos in stock. They don't look that much like guitars. "Yeah, we don't have any in stock. Let me check the computer.... OK, yes, we have two that you'd have to special order: [pricing and model number details]."

"OK, wow, that's really cheap--you're sure they're new? What is the difference between the two?"

"Well let's see...mahogany, some inlays, and the other one looks like the same. Hold on, let me get the guitar guy."

The guitar guy. Awesome.

Guitar guy: "Yeah, let's see, mahogany neck, what else...oh, the difference is that one has a case."

Glad we could finally get to Brian, the guitar guy.

I've already played my banjo at home. I love it. As for hers, I'm guessing it will work, eventually.

Update: She ordered the banjo. There was another minor detour, that you can't order over the phone because of fraud. Her response: "Well don't I have to come pick it up, at which point you could check my ID?" That seemed to appease them nicely. She asked if she'd have to string it, but they've got a guy who does that. I'm sure it's a talented guy, maybe even the guitar guy.