CS final inspection question

[VinceV]

I just received my CS order this morning after a 16 month wait. To others that have recently gotten theirs, what was your final inspection date on your hangtag? My is dated 8/6. I'm not complaining or anything, I am just curious, if that means this guitar was finished in early August and has just been sitting in a warehouse waiting to be shipped for almost 5 months.

[dannyr]

It was probably stitting for 5 months waiting to ship. There seems to be a several month period between when a guitar is completed and when it ships. I haven't ever heard a good explaination as to why it takes so long to ship.

[shreddermon]

Yep, pretty much. I've had this happen to me at least twice now, maybe three times. IMHO, it's pretty crazy.

In all fairness, though, I also have to admit that the overall order-to-delivery time for two of those three was very reasonable. Even with the shipping hang-up. Nonetheless, they really ought to fix the shipping issue.

[pebber]

just an idea, we prefer in our company (gift & awards) also to wait until a certain bulk level of packed goods is ready before shipping, instead of shipping them piece by piece.
In terms of (labor) cost, much more interesting.
In all fairness, our max delay however is 6 weeks, not 5 months.

[shreddermon]

I think the max I've paid to ship & insure a guitar via ground, coast-to-coast, was about $35. Let's call it about $50 with packing materials and labor time? It should be standard, but if they offered a $50 option to avoid the multi-month shipping delays, I'd gladly pay it.

[pebber]

no, I mean labor cost.. we ship around 2500 gifts per quarter, so if we do that in 1 handling batch it's like 5-10 working days per quarter;
if we ship them one by one, the same logistics people would be occupied with that pretty much every day of that quarter, making it very inefficient.

again, just an idea, as I don't know what volume we are talking about.

[vwall]

Not to down the company you bought this from, but most manufacturers will not ship to their dealers (no matter what industry) if they are put on credit hold due to not paying their bill on time or regular late payments until their account is current...

Again, not saying this is the case, but that's my 1st suspicion....

[VinceV]

I can understand the idea of waiting to have so much inventory before bulk shipping, but to have items sitting around for months and months, that doesn't make any sense. These are also companies shipping, they pay much less to ship than an individual. Seriously add $30 to the price and ship it when it's done.

[shreddermon]

I understand, pebber. All I'm saying is how much money can they possibly be saving by the bulk shipment method? And is it worth the perceived trade-off of providing poor customer service? i.e., Adding months to an already long wait time for a custom guitar. If that's truly the cause of their shipping issues, IMHO, it's classic "penny wise and pound foolish". I'd gladly pay a little extra dough for the better service, and compensate for whatever small cost savings they're gaining.

[MountainDog]

My CS Charvel Mahonany Strathead with Single/hum was shipped to me the day Music Zoo received it: Dec 12th. The hang tag says 10-24-06 final inspection.

My USA select Jackson RR1T was purchased by me one day after West Chester Music in PA received it a couple weeks ago, hang tag has 10-09-06 on it.

The only thing I can think of in these two instances is that Jackson/Charvel waited until the dealers paid for the order in full before shipping.

[pebber]

First, I agree with vwall, we never ship out unless the amount due is under a certain limit. That's a general principle each company will apply.
We still have orders in our warehouse 6 months post orderdate, simply because of lack of payment.
(To be honest, sometimes in that situation delays are caused because our accounting doesn't book payments correctly or communication intra departments fails)

Second, in terms of cost saving, again, it's not on the ship, it's on the labor time (and cost) involved in shipping either one by one (adhoc) or in a periodical timeframe.
For our company, this means a few 1000's of EURO's on employee cost per month.

On our customer perception, it all depends on the intial agreement: if he expects a certain turn around time, we try to repsect that delivery wise.
Could he receive things quicker? yes, he could if he would pay an additional handling fee on top of the shipping fee. Does he want that? in general, no (because he has come to terms with the turn around time initially communicated).

Again, I'm not in the same business as Jackson is, so I only try to indicate some possibilities equal to our situation.

[ewright]

So what are you supposed to do? Call every dealer and ask if they owe Jackson money before you order the damn thing?! If above posts are really the case, then there should be some way for the BUYER to pay Jackson direct for the entire thing up front whether there's a dealer involved or not!

I don't know about you guys, but I seriously can't fvcking wait even when all I'm buying is a standard production-run Dinky and I pay for the fastest shipping method possible...so I can only imagine what it must be like to dream of a beautiful CS for over a year, jonesing for the thing every single time you pick up another guitar, only find out later it was done but sitting in a warehouse for months.

[vwall]

Jackson does not take orders from the public direct.
Thats like saying can i buy from my local grocery stores suppliers etc..

Its the dealers or sellers responsibility to hold their credit accounts in good standing. If they dont pay, the manufactures dont ship. its regular business.
Same with a credit card, if you stop making payment,s that card will be dceclined until its current...

I understand your frustration, but most repuatbale comapnies you deal with wont have this problem.....

[Mikernaut2]

I was curious about this aswell, the date on my hang tag was 10/16 and I just received it the other day.

[shreddermon]

Well, considering that my - and others' - dealer has repeatedly and consistently been getting new Jackson and Charvel stock arrivals over these same time periods (not to mention stock from other manufacturers, too), and has been posting those new arrivals here, it's clearly NOT a dealer credit account standing issue.

...So let's just cut it out with those cheesy-ass false inferences, huh?