When I buy digital music downloads from places like iTunes and AmazonMP3 the music is available, as expected, for download right away. This morning I bought an album in MP3 format from an indie rock artist, Heavy Jack, from CD Baby. Believe that this was my first ever CD Baby purchase.

One of the things I like about CD Baby is they take a very small percentage of the money from the sale. Via their artist signup site:

For digital sales, we keep only a 9% cut, paying 91% of all income directly to the artist.  For physical CDs, we keep $4 per CD sold.

Good deal for artists/bands, I’m there. So yesterday I checked out this music discovery service and came across Heavy Jack. Loved their song Fly Away (Black Crow), particularly the Hendrix-like vibe, embed is below for readers from the blog (won’t show in RSS feed):

Good stuff, I wanted to show them some material ($) fan love and thus went to their website this morning and saw I could purchase their album in CD or MP3 format. I went for the MP3 format which cost $9.99. I used PayPal and received confirmation that CD Baby was paid right away at 7:02am PST.

What I didn’t receive as expected was a download link from CD Baby or explanation of when the download link would be coming. I waited. And waited. Waited. Started to wonder around 10 minutes if the order didn’t go through on CD Baby’s end. Hey, sometimes things happen.

30 minutes later I decided to write an email to CD Baby with a copy of the transaction number and ask them how long it took to get the download link? I didn’t expect to receive a response to this email right away. If I got a response by the end of the business day, I’d be happy. Through experience have learned to set expectations lower when emailing customer service of any site online. It’s a pleasant surprise when somebody responds right away, but a business day is reasonable.

49 minutes after the sale, I received an email with the subject line: "CD Baby loves Tdavid" and order # confirmation:

Nevermind being anal about their script failing to capitalize the ‘D’ in my name, that’s just nitpicky, what does matter is that the download link they provided in their email didn’t work. The page just errored out. Waited a few more minutes, figuring maybe there was another delay before the download link was activated. As silly as that seems, have seen that situation before. Nope, didn’t matter, still didn’t work.

In their ‘love me’ email they added the message:

If you’re not able to use that link from this email or just not
ready to download yet, you can always log in to your account at
http://cdbaby.com/account and find all of your MP3s in the "Your
Downloads" section.

Hello, I was able and ready 55 minutes ago. If you love me, just give me a download link that works already. Where is the music I paid for? WTF is up with this place? I don’t walk into a music store and pay them for a CD and then come back and hour later and still can’t get the CD to take home. This isn’t ordering a pizza on a Friday night when the parlor is getting slammed and they are understaffed, it’s an automated web order system for a digital download.

1 hour 25 minutes (8:27am PST) after the sale and all I see when I click the download link in CD Baby is this:

At this point I thought maybe, maybe the download link would work on another computer. Tried it on my laptop. No work in Firefox or Internet Explorer.

1 hour 42 minutes here I sit still unable to download music from the link. If I was into BDSM I’d try buying another MP3 download from CD Baby for a different artist just to see if this negative customer experience was an isolated case. Instead, I’m making this blog post for others to tell me their CD Baby MP3 purchase customer experiences. Did you get your MP3 download right away? Did it take more than a couple hours? Did the download link not work at first and work later?

1 hour 53 minutes. Still no working download. I’m getting ready to hit publish on this post. Some say you should never blog mad, I say when your wallet is impacted: screw that! This is a bad experience.

2 hours. Wow. The download link finally worked! I’m going to publish this as written anyway to see if this is the norm for CD Baby MP3 purchases. If this is the normal customer experience, CD Baby is one torturing lover. If you run a music delivery service, don’t make your customers wait two hours for digital downloads.  Two minutes, fine. Two hours and it’s time to hire new programmers.

Update 10:02am PST: Received an email response from “pony” at CD Baby apologizing for their servers being down this morning while they did some work.

Five months. That’s the average amount of time each Xbox 360 system has lasted before dying in our home. Yes, we use surge protection. No, we don’t beat up the hardware.

Now 2 of 6 our Xbox 360s have crapped out in the time since we’ve bought the PS3 and Wii.

The word ridiculous, maybe even astounding, comes to mind when describing how poorly the Xbox 360 hardware has performed for our family since April 15, 2006. I can think of only one other piece of gaming hardware — the Rock Band drum pedal — that has failed more than twice per year. We’re on drum set #3 since our first purchase November 2007, and I’m hoping Rock Band 2 drum kit which comes out soon will be more durable and have a longer lifespan.

At least two times per year our family is reminded of the lousy workmanship of the Xbox 360 hardware. Two times or more a year to say: “this sucks” or using today’s hot buzzword: FAIL.

You’ve probably guessed what the picture above means by now. Around dinner time last night we came home with Soul Calibur 4 and tried to fire up in my seldom used Xbox 360 Elite.

Three red rings. Nooooooooooooooooooooooo.

And here I was thinking the Elite would be different. This is a machine that had maybe an average of two plays per week over the course of 16 months. Still it holds the record in our home for the longest lasting Xbox 360, but that’s not anything to brag about. A discouraging 16 months before lighting up the three red middle finger salute. Thankfully we were smart enough to purchase the Best Buy warranty plan for 80 bones. We took it back and above you see me holding Xbox 360 #7 and Xbox Elite #2.

An now the history of our Xbox 360 carnage.

Xbox 360 systems that have died since April 15, 2006
#6: Saturday August 18, 2008. Three red rings of death. We used Best Buy replacement plan to swap out with brand new Xbox Elite.
#5: January 1, 2008 (Happy New Year, Microsoft!). Status: three red rings of death, unrepaired. Under warranty, Microsoft replaced within a month.
#4: Xbox 360 broken November 3, 2007. Status: broken disc tray, unrepaired. We replaced this system by buying a new Xbox 360 Arcade package (and yes, bought 2-year warranty).
#3: April 2007. Status: red rings of death, replaced three weeks later on April 23, 2007
#2: September 22, 2006. Status: red rings of death, replaced on October 20, 2006
#1: June 14, 2006. Our first Xbox 360 dies. Didn’t even make it two months.

Moral of Xbox 360 story: always, always, ALWAYS buy an extended warranty
I can’t recommend more strongly based on our own customer experience that not buying an extended warranty for an Xbox 360 is like having an orgy with a bunch of streetwalkers without wearing a condom.

The Xbox 360 still has the best live gaming experience out there, including the best selection of games to play online, and we will continue to replace the systems as they fail within warranty. But based on our experience to date, it’s reasonable to assume that out of warranty breakage heretofore could result in there being less Xbox 360 systems in play in our home. I love gaming and would replace dozens of game systems to play games that I enjoy, but having more than one of the same system constitutes a luxury and the Xbox 360 luxury tax has become very high.

Calculating an average of $300 per system and average Xbox 360 death rate of 5 months equals $60/month for the hardware cost only, not counting Xbox Live or the cost of buying games. Talk about an expensive hobby!

We still have 4 Xbox Live Gold accounts, although we’ve setup one of those to non-renew. Our oldest son doesn’t play Xbox enough to warrant having a Gold ($49.99/year) account. He’s 18 now, he can pay for it himself if he wants. If he looks at extending the life of his Xbox 360 he might be wise to play it only a couple times per year and maybe, maybe it will make it to his 21st birthday.

How long until Xbox 360 death #7 is recorded? Early 2009 if you play the averages, but wouldn’t bet against that happening by the end of the year. Double digits by 2010? Only the Xbox afterlife knows.

If I haven’t mentioned that the weekly Gibson newsletter is my current favorite email newsletter, let me share my appreciation again. I read this newsletter cover to cover every week and look forward to each new edition each week. Are they pitching me on Gibson? Absolutely. Is this old school marketing 101? You bet, it still works.

Last week I learned through the newsletter about Gibson having a cool presence inside Second Life and wrote about it at VTOR, this week I learned that Arlen Roth is offering free daily video guitar lessons. His first lesson is on the pentatonic scales.

If you want to learn guitar there are hundreds of different techniques. I think the fastest way to learn is getting a few lessons from another guitar player. Somebody who will show you how to play songs and techniques and teach you music theory, not only the latter.

I’m in the camp that says don’t spend too much time on learning the scales right away. Eventually scales will be your lifeblood, especially for things like improvisation and soloing, but when starting out you just want to learn to play something or it will be frustrating. For that, learn how to read tablature and pick up a handy tab read/writing tool like Power Tab Editor (freeware) or Guitar Pro (free demo, commercial). After that you’ll find tabs for popular songs all over the place.

Gibson provides a good business example website
Getting back to Gibson, business owners should look at how they have done their website as far as features, not so much as functionality. They are a fairly progressive company with links on many of their pages to digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, etc. They offer podcasts and blogs (kind of weak, from what I’ve seen thus far) as well as have wiki (generating a lot of errors, not so good) and fairly active forums community area.  Their newsletter provides a great example of how to soft sell with value both your prospective and current customers.

If you can hold your grudges over Metallica’s rocky past with the internet and sharing and look at what they are doing today with sharing their music online, it’s impressive. At LiveMetallica.com since 2004 you can buy Metallica concerts, often within 48 hours of the concert date in both MP3 ($9.99) and FLAC ($12.99) format. I’m not aware of many other bands that offer this much material, this soon, after concerts air. I still have my eye on buying the Key Arena concert we went to in 2004. These are mixing board recordings and the one in MP3 formath I have purchased thus far sounded good, albeit a bit disappointing at 128kbps.

At their newer site MissionMetallica.com you can register for free and gain free access to download several full past concerts plus get nearly daily updates on the upcoming album: Death Magnetic.

And speaking of Death Magnetic, the 7/17 update shares the album art for the new album (pictured above). You can download from MissionMetallica the album art in the following resolutions: 1280×1024, 1024×768, 800×600 as well as instant messenger buddy icons. One thing missing from the MissionMetallica.com website are RSS updates and podcasts. There are regular updates with some meat on the bones, check this screenshot out:

Optionally, you can choose to purchase three additional Mission Metallica experiences:

• Experience #2: $24.99 includes everything that Experience #1 (FREE) includes (whichI’ve written about in this post) plus download of Death Magnetic at midnight on street date at 320kbps + downloads of two entire shows from the summer tour + almost 2 hrs. of additional "fly on the wall" footage + 250 additional photos, ringtones of riffs from the new album + exclusive contests and $10 off merch or Fan Club membership at Metallica.com.
• Experience #3: $32.99 includes everything from Experience #1 and #2 + Death Magnetic CD with FREE shipping. I’ve got my eye on this one.
• Experience #4: $124.99 includes everything from Experience #1,#2 and #3 + a limited edition collectible 5LP 180 gram box with 5 individual sleeves.

Album art looks like Twilight Zone meets The Mummy. I’m psyched. I know, St. Anger was a letdown, but I’m ready for Death Magnetic and liking what the boys are doing with their music and multiple websites these days. If Death Magnetic is good they should go a long way to earning back some lost fans. Probably not the ones they were in favor of suing, but hey, it’s a start. Check it out.

Update July 23, 2008 8:16pm PST: The Death Magnetic complete track list has now been shared in the running order (10 songs):

That Was Just Your Life
The End Of The Line
Broken, Beat & Scarred
The Day That Never Comes
All Nightmare Long
Cyanide
The Unforgiven III
The Judas Kiss
Suicide & Redemption
My Apocalypse

Chris at Zune Thoughts is another fan of AmazonMP3 (emphasis mine):

Additionally, on Friday’s they offer 5 albums for $5 each. Sure, they might be taking a loss on some of these, but they are getting me in the habit of checking in daily to see what they have to offer, and of course as long as I’m there, I may end up picking up a song or too.

The folks at Amazon are smart, Chris. They have found a way to make money using Twitter, something that people have been wondering how to do since it became popular among the tech crowd.

AmazonMP3 is doing everything Chris mentions above in their Twitter feed in 140 characters or less. I’m sure this is 98% automated and a great example of how to use Twitter to keep people updated as well as to encourage shopping.

 
In the last week along I’ve bought a complete MP3 album and a couple individual songs that started the shopping from deals in the AmazonMP3 Twitter feed, something I can’t remember doing from another Twitter feed. @amazonmp3 is the only Twitter RSS feed I’m subscribed to in my RSS reader, as well to be certain I don’t miss a single message. Highly recommended for online music shoppers.

Don’t have much sympathy for counterfeiters, but I see a few problems with Laser Printers having special dots that reveal the serial number of the printer to the Secret Service. Why wouldn’t counterfeiters simply not register the printers? Or buy the printers second hand through a party that paid cash? Knowing the serial number and time/date sold doesn’t completely finger the buyer as the counterfeiter, does it?

“There’s nothing about this technology that limits its application to counterfeit investigations,” says Seth Schoen, a computer programmer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Some people who aren’t doing anything wrong may have their privacy threatened.” Schoen’s tests have found the dots produced by 111 color laser printers made by 13 companies including Xerox, Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Epson and Brother.

Privacy concerns seem not to be the biggest issue here. The bigger issue is whether or not this would actually help track down the counterfeiter. I’m not Perry Mason, but while the serial number might identify the printer used, it doesn’t mean:

1) the counterfeiter is the same person who bought the printer.
2) the store can identify who it sold the printer to. Does every store track the identity of the printer sold. I know if you buy a warranty or something, the store will get that information, but what if a warranty isn’t purchased?

Even though I’m not a counterfeiter and don’t plan on ever being one this gives me even more reasons NOT to register any laser printer I buy in the future, as well as give the store personally identifying information about me with my purchase. I don’t like how stores always try and identify me for every little purchase anyway. I’m buying a CD and you need my phone number? Why?

However I use rewards and cash back cards and those identify me, so my purchases are already being tracked and identified by several places. Go figure.

Bought my first album from the Zune marketplace this morning.

Wasn’t my intention to shop there as I’ve been enjoying shopping for DRM-free music at AmazonMP3, but decided to do some comparison shopping on the Whitesnake Live In The Shadow Of The Blues album between AmazonMP3, Zune and iTunes Music Store (iTMS). The AmazonMP3 price being higher was what motivated me to look around a bit.

The most expensive (not pictured above) was iTMS at $19.98 for 256kbps bit rate AAC encoded. Next was AmazonMP3 at $17.98 and the best price by a mile was 800 Microsoft Points ($10.00 USD) in the Zune marketplace.

I was somewhat skeptical of the Zune marketplace pricing being so much lower. What would be the bit rate of the files? Unfortunately, the Zune store doesn’t tell you — or if they do, I couldn’t easily find the answer.

I did some searching around and tried to find out what bit rate the Zune MP3 files were encoded at, but didn’t find the answer anywhere. I decided $8 or $10 was too much of a savings not to at least pull the trigger. After juicing my account with some more Microsoft Points I purchased the Whitesnake album. Then I went to Windows Explorer and right clicked on the properties of the track to see the bit rate was 320 kbps!

Very cool! I didn’t know the Zune store sold MP3 tracks at 320kbps bit rate. This will make a new spot for me to comparison shop for new MP3 music. I didn’t check Napster to see what their price and bit rate was like, but that’s another possible place to buy MP3 albums from these days legally. Too bad with Zune, iTMS and Napster you need to run their software to surf the store. Score a point for AmazonMP3 in the convenience department.

In the above comparison shopping the Zune store had the best deal, but I’m sure there are/will be other cases where the Zune store isn’t the best. For example, Whitesnake’s newest album Good To Be Bad is selling for $8.99 at AmazonMP3 and $10.89 at iTMS (iTunes Plus) and in the Zune store for 900 Microsoft Points ($11.25). Even though I prefer the 320kbps I bought Good To Be Bad at AmazonMP3.

My ears can’t tell the difference between 256kbps and 320kbps, but a couple months back I re-ripped our entire CD collection to 320kbps. I’m fine with anything 256 and above.

For those stuck on the Microsoft Points to $USD conversion, just multiply the points by $0.0125. I wish Microsoft would show the $USD price in parenthesis or something, but it’s not that big of a deal to use a calculator or remember that 100 point multiples are $1.25.

Another example of a recent purchase: Def Leppard Songs From The Sparkle Lounge bought from AmazonMP3 for $8.99. That one isn’t even available in non-DRM version from iTMS or the Zune Marketplace.

Don’t think that the iTMS is the only place to get DRM-free music these days. Comparison shopping is required to find the best deal. Too bad these online stores don’t put out an API so somebody can mashup a best deals for DRM-free music to save music shoppers even more time. There’s an idea.

Today I’m doing my first ever reinstall of Mac OS X. Why? Too many Leopard lock-up problems and crashes. I never had any problems with Tiger and Leopard worked good for the first month. Since then, nothing but problems. Unfortunately I keep running into the following error screen:

The first part of the error message seems self-explanatory: “The installer could not validate the contents of the ‘Essentials’ package.” It’s the second part that disturbs me: “Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.” So I’m suppose to call Apple and say? Hey, I need some help validating my package, my Essentials Package, you know.

Seems a little crazy.

To all the Mac gurus out there, what does this mean? Shouldn’t this ‘Essentials package’ already be stored on the Leopard disc? I cleaned the Leopard DVD and am trying again. I’m going to Google this as well. Got to be something simple like a dirty disc …

Update 12:18pm PST: Looks like RAM issues might be the culprit here.

Friday May 30, 2008 8:08am PST: Later yesterday I got the Leopard install working. I didn’t replace RAM, I just kept trying/retrying the installation. The 4th or 5th time (I didn’t keep count) it worked. The first thing I did was conduct all the updates and it is working good again.

Probably the coolest part of the OS reinstallation was being able to use a Time Machine backup to get back to a reasonably recent snapshot of what was on the system. Nice, I didn’t lose any applications, files or network settings. Time Machine is a lot like System Restore on Windows and runs on an external USB or Firewire drive. Very handy.

Many of the comments I’ve been reading about Microsoft’s Live Search Cashback program since the official launch yesterday have been negative. I’m not exactly ecstatic about the service, but can a service that is trying to help you save money be that bad?

Unfortunately, too many of these opinions seem to be coming from people who didn’t fully try out the service. Instead they seemed to have glanced the service over, whipped a post up as fast as they could and competed to write the best ‘let’s trash Microsoft’ posts they could so they could race to the top anchor spot on Techmeme.  If you go off hyperbolic headlines Microsoft is being accused of: bribery, stealing ideas and more. I don’t want to read armchair quarterback opinions about what this means for the future of Microsoft gaining search share from Google, I’d like to know if the Cashback service is worth using.

Fact: considering the Cashback program’s own FAQ states that it can take several days for a purchase to even show as "pending" there can’t be many true Cashback customer experience posts out there to draw from yet. Pure logistics.

Some commented on the shopping experience like Danny who points out that the Cashback team sort of went halfway by not providing important comparison shopping features like reviews. He also labeled the system "complicated." I think the word Danny meant to use based on his post was convoluted, not complicated.

Using Cashback is pretty non-complicated, just search for what you want, go to the store with the price you like — if you are logged into Cashback (and you only have to login once) then you’ll see a message that your shopping at the merchant’s site is being tracked for Cashback. Then it’s very much like any other shopping experience online. Danny’s fellow writer, Barry, has walkthru screenshots. Complex? Hardly.

Yesterday, I went through and searched for something I wanted to buy — and was available from a merchant using Cashback — and ordered. Other than having to fill out the necessary ordering details at the merchant’s site, the process was straightforward. Like any other online order. People like us who do a lot of shopping online are used to the process. The only caveat is that we go through the Live Cashback search first. Big deal? Not really.

Where is your favorite online store?
Now here’s a bigger deal when it comes to online shopping: what if your favorite online store isn’t part of the Cashback network (yet)? My wife complained that Cashback didn’t have her favorite online store: Bed, Bath & Beyond, so she wouldn’t be using it that much. They offer an A-Z list (search.live.com/cashback/stores) of what online stores they are partnering with and while it’s a decent list, it’s not all inclusive, meaning you won’t be getting any cash back from those stores unless they offer their own deals. Hell might freeze over before Amazon surfaces on the list.

This is a major flaw. How can any useful shopping search be valid if it only includes search results for stores that are being partnered with? Wouldn’t it be more useful to show all shopping search results and simply display 0% cashback (since the site isn’t a Cashback shop partner)? Allow shoppers to toggle on/off non-Cashback partners. Now that would be useful and empower the people. I like it. Do it, Cashback team, please.

Since Microsoft isn’t making any money from the deal, I don’t understand why this isn’t an option at launch. Fine, toggle it off by default, so you highlight your own partner list, but who do we want to help most here? The people in your network or the shoppers?

Cashback order price accuracy
Loren suggests offering free shipping, not cash back, a la Amazon Prime (emphasis mine):

For instance, I wouldn’t do a Detroit-style cash back program, instead I’d join up with UPS and FedEx and provide free shipping for everyone, or free shipping upgrades, if the company already provides free shipping. This is a lot easier to communicate I think than a nebulous price-oriented cash back program.

Loren, what is nebulous about the cash you get back? You see exactly what your rebate is before clicking through to the store’s website? However, I agree that the shipping and handling can add up, check out my order of Gibson guitar polish below, which is half the price of the item ordered (ouch):

There are a couple other problems here. Compare this order email receipt to what Live Cashback showed me:

Notice that Cashback doesn’t show any tax being charged. You’d think since Cashback knows where I’m located from my Live profile, they would be showing tax being charged. Second, and I’m not sure who to blame this one on. The guitar polish showed as ‘available to ship’ on the merchant’s site but when they emailed me a receipt see what word is hyperlinked: backordered. Huh? That’s a quick way to annoy your customer: by showing them on the website that something is available and yet sending them a receipt that shows the opposite.

Good news: this morning I received another email that the guitar polish had been shipped. I logged into Cashback to see if my $0.80 showed as ‘pending’ yet? Nope. Again, the FAQ says it can take several days and not to contact them until 7 days has passed. I will add another post or update this one below or in the comments if/when I’m credited with $0.80.

You like saving money, don’t you?
For me the bottom line is will I remember to use this? When I’m shopping online, I tend to have specific stores in mind. Stores that I trust and like doing business with while a number of the Cashback stores I’ve never heard about erodes my confidence. I don’t frequent the deal sites as much as I should, so having Cashback show me different stores comparatively helps, but as mentioned above I’d like to see the option to aggregate all the online shopping sites and let me decide if I care about the rebate.

One of the reasons that I use Google more than other searches is because it feels like it is giving me the most relevant search results. When I shop for something, I know what I want and don’t just want to buy it at the cheapest price, I want to buy it from a store that won’t give me service nightmares. Live Cashback is a start, but feels incomplete.

Finally, the title of this post mirrors my biggest concern with rebates: you have to wait for them. I understand that they can’t credit a sale right away because of returns, but I’ve become very leery of rebates. I won’t label them a ’scam’ but they feel like they are because of the length of time it takes to get the money back to you. If a store is going to discount me, then they should do so at the time of sale, not later. Mike at TechCrunch ran a few sales through and his rebate showed right away, so maybe I chose a slower site to report back to Cashback that I made a sale?

This negative connotation may not help Live Cashback gain enough traction. A system which minimizes the error correction and time customers wait for these rebates would help. If I were on the Cashback team, I’d be pushing to make this service as useful as possible for shoppers. It doesn’t feel there quite yet. What do you think?

Just got off the phone with a very nice, but stressed out salesperson. Deal taking nosedive.

He had to deliver me a message that the Sweetwater.com accounting department wanted to speak to my wife on a landline phone about a new purchase we were making for a guitar that cost $2,800. They said this was for our “security” apparently because talking to us on Skype / VoIP was a problem. Specifically they wanted to talk to my wife on a landline phone because we used her debit card (remember, we canceled our credit cards). Nevermind the fact that on Friday she talked to them over Skype and personally authorized the charge. Should have been end of story, right? Wrong.

WTF? I had to do a doubletake when the salesman told me this. And the more I thought about it, the more bothered I became, particularly when the guy told me it was for my own security? Huh? You don’t want to talk to me on the phone I called you for directly for the sale? Here are the problems with Sweetwater.com request:

1. I initiated the sale. How? By calling the salesman. Over Skype.
2. We do not have a landline phone at our home. We have *one* landline phone at our offline business. Since that business has nothing to do with a personal purchase, we’re using the phone we have: our personal phone. And it shouldn’t matter what type of phone we use to call in an order, should it? Why?
3. Our bank declined their charge and it would have been necessary for us to contact the bank and authorize the purchase this morning personally when it opened at 10am PST. In other words, Sweetwater wasn’t going to get any money from us without us contacting the bank directly to personally authorize the charge. How is that for increased security, already? Why would there be an additional step to speak to us on a landline phone?

You might be wondering why our bank might decline Sweetwater’s authorization? Maybe this sounds fishy. Were we trying to scam them or something? No. Our bank actually declined their charge twice. Once on Friday and once this morning. According to online account information plenty of money is there so it has to be some sort of internal bank thing. The bank the card is from is a local small town bank so it’s possible in the interest of protecting us from possible fraud they declined the charge.

The Sweetwater salesman said they’ve seen this before because some banks do not trust online purchases and customers need to authorize the purchases first. Fine, we were willing to call them and do that, but no, we weren’t also going to speak to their accounting department on our single landline phone. This isn’t a loan, we were planning to pay in full, essentially in cash. As customers we should not have to jump through (unreasonable) hoops to buy something. Screw that. The Sweetwater accounting department can stick it.

You might find the landline request dealbreaker absurd, but stop and think about this for a minute.

There’s a picture above and to the right of what I was planning on buying: a custom Gibson metallic green robot guitar that tunes itself. A limited edition of only 1,000 that are being made. Talk about technology, eh? This thing looks like a lot of fun. I thought it would be great to have for jamming with the boys so I could easily use alternate tunings, but if I’m buying from a company that doesn’t trust VoIP, or rather doesn’t trust talking to me using that, what happens when the robot guitar breaks down someday? Will they tell me I can only talk to them on a landline to put in a service request?

You might say this is a silly reason to kill a deal for the guitar, but to me, the sale is far and away not the end of the purchase. There is service that goes with it and if Sweetwater doesn’t trust technology for a technology purchase, then they can sell that guitar to somebody else who still has a landline phone in their home.

I do feel a bit for the salesman because he’s out a sale and like me depends on commissions, but I told him to go back to his accounting department and blame them. It wouldn’t surprise me if in 10 years it’s considered very normal not to have a landline phone.

Sadly, VoIP still has a long ways to go in the respect department. At least from VoIP snubbing accounting departments of online vendors.