Prince Music Company

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 9, 2016/02/17) */
[redacted] Additional information also attached [redacted]
February 14th, 2016
[redacted], Mediation Coordinator
Revdex.com of Minnesota and North Dakota
220 S. River Ridge Cir
Burnsville, MN 55337
RE: Case # [redacted]:...

[redacted]
[redacted] purchased a cello from us on August 13th, 2015. Four months later during Christmas break in December, her husband came into the store to return the cello. In good faith, we issued them a check and did a return on the cello. Upon closer inspection of the cello, the bow they had returned with the cello was not from our store. We put a stop payment on the check and informed Ms. [redacted] that morning about the mix-up and asked her to return with the voided check.
She responded stating she felt they were entitled to keep the money and would come in to switch out the bows. They never came back to return our bow. We attempted to contact their music teacher regarding her letter and received no response. In the teacher's letter she stated the bow had eight hairs that fell out. The carbon fiber bow they had returned had eight loose hairs on it. Because of the bow mix-up, the return was voided. We cannot do returns on merchandise that did not come from our store.
I have enclosed a PDF file which includes 6 pages. The first two pages are of the receipt. The second three pages are of the emails we sent back and forth. The final page is the letter from the music teacher. I have also included two photographs from our store that show the locations our return policy.
Thank you for your consideration in this matter,
Initial Consumer Rebuttal /* (3000, 16, 2016/03/02) */
Prince Music is absolutely correct - we accidentally mixed up our new bow from Schmitt music with the bow we purchased from Prince last summer. We purchased a cello and bow from Schmitt music in early December after realizing the Prince Music cello was absolutely impossible to keep in tune and our daughter had her first concert at school quickly coming up. So we had 2 cellos and 2 bows in our house for a few weeks before we returned the Prince Music cello at the end of December. When my husband went to Prince Music late in December to return the cello he grabbed the wrong bow and put it in the Prince Music cello bag. It was an honest mistake, regarding an item that cost $25 (and was not the focus on our concern - we actually didn't need to return the bow at all - it was a separate purchase). But there's absolutely no way the cellos were mixed up. The Schmitt cello is worth $1600 and has very distinguishing features, including a stamp inside the instrument that says, "Paul A. Schmitt Violin Shop" and then two ID codes. The Prince Music Cello does not have any type of stamp like this at all (which, when Schmitt Music looked over the Prince Music cello they indicated that was highly unusual not to have a stamp inside the instrument - usually all manufacturers have a marking here to identify the instrument). They said they found this strange and a "bit fishy." Reputable manufacturers always mark their instruments. We are happy to supply photos of the insides of both instruments if that's helpful. We also have photos of our daughter with the Prince Music Cello from August shortly after we first purchased it, and before it was taken out of the house to school, etc. We always kept a luggage tag on the case. And the other students in our daughter's lesson group all had rented cellos from Schmitt Music which are marked as such and of very high quality. Our daughter was the only one with a cello from Prince Music and it has many distinguishing features which make the instrument stand out (in a bad way). If someone accidentally picked up the Prince Music cello they would know it in a heartbeat because the cello would never stay in tune - the pegs slid out constantly.
Also, an employee at Prince put white tape on the Prince cello finger board for us in November - and our daughter's cello was the only one with this white tape. Everyone else in her lesson group had a rainbow colored sticker they purchased at Schmitt.
So, while it is absolutely certain that the cello we returned to Prince Music is indeed from Prince Music, somehow the mix-up with the bows got the store thinking we had mixed up the cello itself. I guess, for them, it was their way of getting out of the return, to focus on our mix up of the bows. We purchased this bow the same time we bought the cello; the bow cost about $25. But this entire return transaction had nothing to do with the bow - it had everything to do with the cello not staying in tune. We paid $350 for the cello, and they offered us refund check for $300 for the cello, after carefully inspecting the instrument at the store, in front of my husband. They wrote us a refund check, and then quickly voided it a day later. What's interesting is that while we purchased the cello on a debit card, they didn't do the refund on our debit card. They issued a return via check. It's like the store knew in advance they would void the check as soon as we walked out of the store.
Yes, we accidentally put the wrong bow in the case. But the store is flat-out lying about our daughter mixing up the cello itself. They are focusing on the wrong thing here. We were not concerned about the bow working or not working - it was fine - we were concerned with the shoddy cello that wouldn't stay in tune.
The other thing I find absolutely incredulous is that we DID come back to return the bow on January 13, but at that point Prince had already stopped payment on the refund check. We wanted our Schmitt music bow back, which Prince gave us - along with the Prince Music cello. At that point, we felt we had to take the instrument since we didn't have our refund money anymore. So now we have 2 cellos again at our house, the Prince one and the Schmitt one. I wish I could at least sell the Prince one on Craigslist, but I can't in good conscious. It's the quality of a toy, not an instrument students can actually learn on.
Also - our cello teacher is more than happy to weigh in on this discussion - if it's helpful to hear from her directly, she would be more than happy to help and answer any questions the Revdex.com has. We hope that by filing this complaint we can prevent other families/young music students going through what we have experienced with this company that is thoroughly devoid of any morals, manners and understanding of customer service.
Final Business Response /* (4000, 18, 2016/03/08) */
Again, I apologize for the confusion and miscommunication. Unfortunately, this is way past the warranty period and no additional insurance was purchased on the instrument.
I hope you accept either 20% off your next cello purchase, or 30% off a music lesson package. When you are ready to upgrade your cello, and your daughter has a little more playing experience, I hope you consider us. Some people like to bring in their music teacher or a musician friend to test play the instruments. I assure you that we have taken this matter very seriously and now mark all of our stringed instruments, and offer a variety of styles including an economical student cello, and intermediate cellos with ebony parts.
Again I do apologies and I hope this is satisfactory to you. We are owned and operated by musicians who teach for the love of music.