Mack Hoover is maker with stupendacular service.
Having interacted with both, I’ll chime in and say that David and Jessie are both great people to deal with in my experience.
I ordered one of David’s early whistles, mentioned something that I didn’t consider a flaw, just something I asked about, and a few weeks later, recieved a whistle that had been completely redesigned and was just, well, more advanced. He told me to keep whichever I liked. I kept the later one, which had a higher sale price listed on his website, and offered to pay him the difference, which he declined.
I don’t know how many instruments I’ve bought from Jessie, but I think you can’t count them on one hand. I’ve also had many other interactions with her, seeking advice, etc. I’ve had nothing but positive experiences with her.
I like them both, and I think and hope they’ll work this all out.
I’ve been corresponding with Mr. Boisvert for several months via e-mails, and well, being a working man who slaves over the lathe t satisfy our musical needs it is understandable if he takes a bit of time to respond. E-mails can get messed up and stuff, the internet ain’t perfect! As soon as a fellow completes the transaction for my buying my Jeep I will be doing business with Greenwood Pipes. Pipemakers are busy peope who don’t spend a terrible amount of time on computers like we do, so give him a break.
-Mike
David has answered every one of my emails over the past few months.
I have had wonderful customer service from him, and I would encourage anyone who is looking for a new whistle or set of pipes to give Greenwood a try.
Mukade
All of the responses seem typical of what I have experienced across the board.
I think it’s important to consider, as some have suggested, the nature of email. I get a lot of email. I miss emails that are sent to me from time to time. Emails I send to people are occasionally filtered out by spam filters, because some of my email addresses are flagged as the source of spam, on a account of the fact that the newsletter goes out to multiple email addresses, I guess.
More importantly, I think there is a level of demand for rapid response to all email that’s unfortunate. (I’m not judging the particulars of the situation that started this thread.) I sometimes get nostalgic for snail-mail.
A phone call could have resolved it.
This was rude.
I made the preliminary request last summer, you wrote back that you were waiting to get more lemonwood, I didn’t hear from you for about 5 months. I wrote to you again to ask if you’d gotten lemonwood and didn’t hear back. About a month later, you wrote to me and told me you’d been putting off responding because of the special requests (to which you could have just said no), but that you wanted to do it. So I told you exactly what I was looking for and how I wanted them voiced. You wrote back that having the slide match the ferrules (in color) would be difficult and I wrote back and suggested plating of the slide. I didn’t hear back from you. A month later, I wrote to you to cancel the whole thing because you had never given me any formal information or pricing and I didn’t want to have some open-ended project in the works, especially since I have been losing interest in whistles. You wrote back that my timing was strange, because you had just gotten plated tubing back from the plating company (I didn’t know you were having it done). I wrote back that, in that case, I’d like to go ahead with it and I asked if you were comfortable with my requests about voicing. It was a month ago. I never heard back from you. I never got a price (how could I send a 50% deposit, which you never asked me to do, if I didn’t know the price?) or feedback of any kind. I’m glad my experience seems to have been unique.
Clearly, you are not interested in making any more whistles for me and I am ok with that.
If I didn’t already have an order in for a set of O’Riordan’s (since Sept. 2000) I would definatly get a set of Davey’s whistles. Two months would be a very, very, short waite. If Patrick doesn’t come through I know Davey will!!!
Thanks for putting up with us at C& F!!
Nate
I had been hoping to see this final response - “See what can develop when communication is not there? Well, life is about going forward. I am (a) still interested in having my special whistle made and how can we improve our communication to make that happen or (b) moving on without that special whistle, due to my changing interest in whistles, and hope that you were not inconvenienced.”