The Whole Story

When my Lâg Guitars dealer saw my website, he sent me an email‍ in which he:

said his Lâg Guitars distribution rep was furious when he saw the website.
said the website was unfair to him, the distributor, and Lâg Guitars.
demanded I either shut down the website, or add the fact that I had refused their offer of repair or store credit, and had decided on my own to keep the guitar.

I wasn’t surprised at (1), disagreed with (2), and was very puzzled by (3). My Lâg dealer knew very well why I had refused repair or store credit, and those reasons did nothing to cast him, the distributor, or Lâg Guitars in any better light. Coincidentally, those reasons had just recently been added to the website, so I simply directed him back to that. I haven’t heard from him since. I later expanded on those reasons in order to provide a more complete recounting of my experiences with the dealer. So here we go…

My Lâg guitar dealer is also a lawyer

I had returned the Lâg guitar one week after I’d bought it, wanting a refund, which the Lâg dealer refused to provide. When I asked why he couldn’t give me one, he pointed to my barely legible receipt and the “no refunds” printed on it, which I had not noticed earlier. When I replied that it seemed unreasonable to advise a customer that way, without having said anything before taking their money, he provided a rationale that went something like this :

Quebec law gives him the right to refuse a customer request for a refund.
the law is something everyone — especially consumers — should know, and would know if they took the trouble to,
so the question of how, when, or even whether or not, he chooses to mention his refund policy to a customer is irrelevant, because if the customer didn’t know the law when they came into his store in the first place, it’s their own fault for having neglected to find it out on their own.

At that point I decided it best for my own sanity not to pursue that particular line of inquiry.

The lawyer negotiates

He went on to explain that the law entitled him to offer alternatives to a refund, which he subsequently did, but none of which were reasonable under the circumstances:

Replacement with another Lâg guitar (at the manufacturer’s discretion). To my mind, this was too high risk an alternative. With 40 years education and experience in engineering, I know a likely systemic defect when I see one, so no way was I going to accept a potentially defective replacement in lieu of a refund.
Repair. This seemed to me an astonishingly complicated, impractical, and inadequate proposal in lieu of a simple refund, particularly given the shocking amount of repair work required. If I had wanted such a patched-up Lâg guitar, I would have looked to Facebook Marketplace rather than pay full MSRP. Moreover, I didn’t purchase a new Lâg guitar expecting to wait some indeterminate time while some technician of indeterminate skill completed an extensive repair of indeterminate quality; I purchased it expecting to take it home and enjoy it.
Full store credit. In general, I find the “store credit” to be an altogether extortive practice, and even more so in this case. I purchased the guitar as a result of Lâg’s great success in marketing their guitars as high value-for-dollar instruments, and the dealer had no other guitar to offer that met my needs and budget. The sole purpose of a store credit is to hold the customer captive, in this case with the intent of eventually forcing me to buy a guitar I either didn’t really want, or couldn’t really afford, or both.

I had argued those three points then and there, though of course not as comprehensively as presented above: I was still reeling from his “no refunds” explanation, which hadn’t left me in the best state of mind for calm, clear and articulate expression of my thoughts.

The lawyer interrogates

It was at around this point that the Lâg dealer asked if I kept my house humidified. I said “What?!? What’s that got to do with anything? I’ve only had the guitar for 7 days!” He said he just wanted to know if I keep my house humidified, so I told him yes, I keep it humidified, and I have acoustic guitars I’ve owned for 30 years that are still in mint condition.

Having not gotten the answer he was looking for, he then changed tack: “How did you pay your bill?” I told him I paid by debit, and explained why I chose to do that rather than use my Mastercard. The grin came so quickly to his face, he couldn’t turn away fast enough to hide it.

The lawyer wins

In the end, I decided I had no choice but to surrender to the dealer’s extortion store credit, and to use it as best I could. I noticed he carried Yamaha guitars. In my research I had come across reviews of the Yamaha LL-16-12 A.R.E. 12-string, which looked very interesting, but which I had decided against because it was 40% above the budget I’d set for myself. At this point though, it looked like the best option for making use of my money that the dealer was holding in his hands. He did not have that particular model in stock, but would order one for me to try out.

The lawyer loses

Unfortunately (at the time, but fortunately in retrospect) the LL-16-12 option did not work out, as explained in my April 3 email to the dealer.

As to the main point in his demand, i.e. that I had decided on my own to keep the guitar:...

As explained in my April 7 email to him, I decided to keep the guitar because my experience with the Yamaha had “highlighted how impractical, uneconomical, and overall illogical” it was for me to accept a store credit in lieu of a full refund. His reply to that was to say:

a) “in the worst case” – whatever that meant – he’d give me a refund, and
b) if I wanted to keep the guitar, he would handle the repair himself – whatever that meant.

Anyway, regardless of what he meant by any of that, it was too late: I had already committed to this website project, and I needed the guitar as evidence.

- - - End of dealer-demanded background explanation - - -

Of course, I wouldn’t expect you to simply take my word on any of that — you haven’t really gotten to know me yet — so I’ve created a Correspondence page to let you decide for yourselves how it all went down.

So what do you think? … “The customer is always right” ? …or… “Once you’ve got your hands on the customer’s money, never ever let go.”