Chicago Music Exchange Reviews

Still Waiting for a Cheap Item After Three Weeks We ordered an $8.95 accessory and we're now three weeks in with no delivery. How long can it possibly take?

Disappointing Interaction With Sales Staff I reached out to Chicago Music Exchange on two occasions about getting a discount on a bass. The calls were about eight weeks apart, and I spoke with the same person both times. Even a small discount like ten percent was off the table. What really bothered me was that when I turned down their offer and thanked them anyway, they never acknowledged it. That felt kind of unprofessional to me. The whole thing made them seem pretty disconnected from customers. Not impressed with senior sales specialist David A.

Think Twice Before Buying Their Heavily Marked Down Guitars A year has gone by since I purchased a guitar from CME through Reverb, and I'm finally writing up my thoughts. It's complicated, to say the least. I grabbed a Gretsch G5622 after they offered it to me for $625 when the usual retail price sits around $799. The deal looked too good to pass up. It's been about a year now and the guitar itself is fine, though I did end up needing a replacement. Here's my concern though. I'm pretty sure they're selling refurbished or damaged stock with these major discounts. The first one had a pretty bad paint defect, and even the replacement had some paint issues, though not as bad. You might wonder why I'm upset if they helped me out. They did fix it after some back-and-forth, though they tried to get me to settle for just ten percent off the original guitar. You could also say that getting a discounted guitar with warranty coverage is way better than buying refurbished items that typically have no manufacturer warranty. Here's what I think is going on. This retailer seems to be clearing out hard-to-move refurbished stock by marketing them as special deals without being upfront about their condition. That feels dishonest to me, and it's a real problem because accepting flaws on a discounted purchase feels way different than unknowingly getting an off-brand item.

Still Waiting After Two Weeks for My Order I've been waiting longer than two weeks for some basic items to arrive. To make matters worse, their customer service team hasn't been getting back to me.

Frustrating Experience With Shipping and Service I decided to try them out because of their selection and because they're a Chicago-area shop like me. I bought an audio interface from them. Normally with UPS or Fedex here, you get next-day service locally. Instead, they chose to use regular mail, and even though they emailed confirmation before noon, the post office didn't get the package by that evening. Now it's the next day and still nothing, so clearly the shipping didn't actually happen when they said it did. When I complained, they told me it was a "small order" and those go out by regular mail. I wish they'd mentioned that upfront because I would've gone with Amazon or Sweetwater, both offering better service for comparable prices. Trusting this place was a mistake in my book. They just don't seem to care much about customer satisfaction. Sweetwater, on the other hand, treats every order the same regardless of size and shows actual respect for buyers. When I pointed that out, I was basically told they're a bigger company. Maybe that's exactly how they became bigger in the first place, by treating people right. It's too bad the Chicago area isn't getting that same level of service.

Outstanding Help From the Team I've had fantastic interactions with the CME/Reverb staff on two separate occasions when I needed assistance. The most recent one was absolutely incredible. I placed an order for two items but had them sent to a mail forwarder abroad rather than straight to my place, both to cut shipping expenses and because one item doesn't ship internationally. I got two separate tracking numbers back really fast, which surprised me since I thought they'd ship as one package. My forwarder charges per package with a base fee each time, so this would've cost me extra. I reached out to CME about options and got a quick reply. Turns out the products were in separate locations. The staff member actually coordinated with both warehouses and managed to move one item so everything could go out in a single shipment. I honestly can't recall a customer service rep going above and beyond like that before. Huge thanks to Joseph! Since I'm always shopping for gear online from US retailers, CME is definitely going to be my go-to place from now on.