The Gibson ES-335

I don’t generally re-run a post (except for the Christmas poem) but when I tried to write a new Mothers Day post, I couldn’t do much better than the one I wrote 8 years ago. Here is a post about my Mom.

Did your Mom yell at you to turn that thing down? Did she tell you that there was no future in being a guitar player? That maybe you should be a doctor or a lawyer or maybe a nice accountant? Mine did not and that’s just the beginning.

My mother had nine children (all boys in case you think it was going to be easy). She’s been gone since 2011 but I think of her much more often than one day a year in May.  She always encouraged her sons to play a musical instrument. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was mandatory. We had a spinet piano in the living room which she played often and competently. She could sight read like you read the newspaper but she would never be mistaken for a musician. Still, there were show tunes coming from the living room. Each of my brothers played at least one instrument. None of us were good enough to make a living at it but most of us stuck with it. I took violin starting in the 4th grade. I wasn’t very good. My parents added an organ to the living room when I was around ten (not a chord organ either-a real dual manual, no fooling’ around full pedal board pro Allen) and I took lessons on that too. I wasn’t very good. My oldest brother, Ben-who also played violin, took to it and then there was Bach coming from the living room.

The Beatles showed up in 64 and I bugged my father endlessly to get me a guitar and he came home one day with a flattop Kay that cost $15. I started guitar lessons and quit the organ. I still had to play the violin in the school orchestra (I switched to upright bass that same year). Mom made sure I practiced like she did with every other brother and every other instrument. The big surprise was that I was pretty good at it. They agreed to get me an electric guitar (Fender DuoSonic and Princeton amp in 1964) and my younger brother, Brian, who already played the oboe, albeit not that well, took over the Kay. He would take over the DuoSonic when I got the Fender Jaguar in 65. I would often practice in the living room with the amp turned up to somewhere around 11. And then there were Beatles songs coming from the living room. My Dad would come home from work and yell at me to turn it down but Mom never did.

When she was in her 50’s, Mom decided it was time to learn another instrument. She asked me to help her find a cheap and playable guitar and we ended up with a German Framus flattop that had good action and she taught herself to play. I helped her with chord charts but she wouldn’t have it. She had to read music – not some chart. That was cheating. Just the notes please. She never got that far but she was never one to shrink from the task at hand. Mom had no fear. She learned to windsurf in her 60’s, built a path down to the lake behind our house, wallpapered the bathrooms, made a quilt out of my Dad’s old neckties and about a zillion other “projects”. She never excelled at any of them but showed a level of determination and ingenuity that has influenced me throughout my life. If someone says that something is so simple “…even your Mom could do it…”, they didn’t know my Mom.

So thanks Mom. Thanks for the encouragement, your example and your unwavering support. And thanks to my wife, too, for carrying on the tradition of superb mothering. Our son is a pretty good guitar player and can play the piano better than my Mom thanks to the support of his Mom. In our house, there was Chopin and Gershwin and Lennon and McCartney coming from the living room.

So, if you read the first installment of Fedex Follies, you know that Fedex somehow misplaced a 50″ box. Or maybe there was an airline strike that only affected large boxes or USA bound shipments or some other not too credible excuse. It was missing and unscanned for just about a month. It arrived a month and a day after it was shipped so all’s well that ends well, right? Not quite.

It is never easy to get a refund of any kind from Fedex. And, to be fair, it is hard to get a refund from any service company. Fedex does have a guarantee but they don’t make it easy to use it. If you call and say my package was late, they will immediately start making excuses-weather being the most common. Then, they will tell you that no refunds are processed until the invoice has been sent. Then, if it’s more than 14 days after the invoice has been sent, they will disallow the claim. Dem’s da rules according to Fedex’s “Terms and Conditions”. We’ll get to those terms later.

The guitar, a 60 ES-355 finally arrived on April 22nd which was a Friday. I went through the guitar over the weekend and put in for the refund online on Monday April 25th. My claim was denied because Fedex says the invoice was more than 14 days old. Wait a second. I just got the guitar on Friday, so how can the invoice be 14 days old. Well, as it happens, they processed the invoice on April 12th a full ten days before the guitar was delivered. I get and pay the invoices online so it wasn’t sitting in a pile of invoices on my desk. I was not happy. I called Fedex.

Them: “We’re sorry about the delay but we can’t issue a refund if the invoice is more than 14 days old”. Me: “But the package was just delivered a few days ago. How can the invoice predate the package by ten days?” Them: “We can’t issue a refund if the invoice is more than 14 days old”. Me: “Connect me with your supervisor”. Then they cut me off. I called back and asked for what they call the “customer advocate” who is supposed to be on your side. She started the same script and I stopped her. Me: “Would you look carefully at the dates?” Them: “Oh. I see the package was delivered on the 22nd”. End of conversation. They approved the refund. It took about a dozen phone calls to try to find the guitar and to get my refund. Time on hold was probably at least 90 minutes. I should send them a bill.

Terms and Conditions. Who reads the terms and conditions? Every time you buy something online a box pops up and you immediately scroll to the bottom and check the box that says “agree”. Nobody actually reads the text. But in the case of Fedex and vintage guitars, it’s going to cost you. When you enter the value of the guitar into the shipping form, you expect that you are buying insurance for that value. $25,000 guitar coming from EU? They’ll charge you $306 for “insurance”. But the terms and conditions state clearly that the limit for guitars more than 20 years old is $2000. If you pay the $306 and the guitar arrives safely, you think nothing of it. You paid for insurance and you didn’t need it. Always the best outcome. But what if they lose the guitar or break it? Fedex has a decent track record with guitars that I’ve shipped. They have lost one and broken four in twenty years. At the time of the first broken guitar, I hadn’t read the terms and conditions. When I put in the claim for half the value of a broken 64 SG, they told me they would cover up to $2000 but only the repair-not the diminished value. Them: Read the terms and conditions. So, they will take your money for so called insurance with no limit. But try to collect and the limit is $2000 no matter how much “insurance” you bought. I have asked Fedex to add a pop up box telling you about the limit if you enter more than $2000. They haven’t done so. Don’t give them your money for nothing.