Hi,
I play the concertina mainly, and Lark's pricing is much more noticeable to me. When they mark up an instrument by 75%, they mark it up by a couple grand! It's easy to compare the prices in their catalogs to the prices elsewhere, and find discrepancies of thousands, as in more than one thousand, of dollars.
I've had only positive experiences from them in terms of service, support, etc. Their reputation, I believe, comes mainly from their sometimes unusual pricing.
Hi and I forgot to add,
Every time I visited the Lark SF store, they had a "Jeffries" on display---a very valuable and sought-after brand of concertina, an expensive antique.
Point for Lark: they let me test-drive it. Woo! Point against Lark: it wasn't a Jeffries, but a modern replica. Boo! And the price was much higher than a sane person would pay for either.
It also had a bad reed (probably fixable, but boxes shouldn't leave the store in that condition.) All in all, I'd say the people were very nice, but had no idea what they were selling, and consistently erred on the side of overpricedness.
On 2002-11-21 04:11, Jens_Hoppe wrote:
Chris was disqualified for foaming at the mouth and for gratuitous Phil Hardy bashing.
Yes, it does get old, doesn’t it? I don’t have any feelings one way or another about Phil Hardy, but I do get tired of the endless repitition. :roll:
Just to add to this chaos, I don’t trust Lark, and here’s the reason why. On their whistle page, they have a small section for the Howard Brass D whistle, and the comment is that “These are some of the best D whistle we have ever played!”. Well, more than a year ago, Ive bought such a whistle, and it was one of the worse whistle Ive ever played… Howard was kind enough to reimburse me, and that shows that Howard is a maker than can be trusted. But since then, I don’t trust anything that has to do with Lark. Maybe the whistle itself had a problem, but I really, really doubt it.
Quit being so petty everyone and let a guy make his living. Be wise and you stand a better chance of not being stung.
[ This Message was edited by: Paul Reid on 2002-11-21 09:30 ]
On 2002-11-20 01:44, Wombat wrote:
Celtic Southern Cross…Here’s a link. It’s worth checking out, even if you never intend to do business. (And no, since you asked, I’m not on a percentage.)
OK, I’m getting slightly off topic here, but isn’t that a pure black Clarke in the Victorian Singing Games box, better known as “Dale’s Naked Black Splendour”? It says silver in the blurb, but it looks black to me. I’ve never seen one “in the flesh”, I thought it was just a rumour.
The 2-piece whistle at $22 is a Clare, but they don’t mention the name in the blurb.
Paul,
If I didnt know better, I’d think your words are full of wisdom. I’m so sick of this “let a guy make his living”. We are just stating personnal experiences with Lark, should we shut up just to let a guy make a living? Heard it all before, but it freaks me out everytime. I honnestly don’t trust them, but I’m not saying that they are evil: that, I reserve for another shop.
My 2 cents: I don’t see any reason why folks shouldn’t be allowed to express their opinions on the Board- that is one of the reasons that the Board exists- to facilite the free exchange of ideas and experiences. In this case, some have had a bad experience and others a good. Both have expressed their views- that works for me. If I was considering buying from this particular vendor I could see the experience of others, both good and bad, and make my own decision- a decision that is now more informed because of the previous discussion.
Keep this sort of discussion happening, I say.
All the Best, Tom
I appreciate people here like Chris who risk being attacked for the way he expresses his feelings about his bad experiences. (No Chris, please don’t feel this wasn’t worth your time!! I used to think it was me–over a thousand dollars later I learn it was Shark in the Morning selling me crap I couldn’t play because it was crap, ie flutes and stringed instruments.)
If a business happens to grow beyond its ability to be fair and deserving of a clientele, no one person is ever to blame entirely–that is what makes dealing with it so treacherous. In another thread, I quoted T. J. Tanning about how the percentage of profit can drive organizations further and further away from ethical practices. To me, Lark is just behaving according to its nature, like the proverbial scorpion that stung the turtle and drowned them both.
Some of us want so badly to believe that we are being treated fairly that we won’t see when we aren’t. That was me. I feel bitter about it now. I was more underhanded about it than Chris has been. He came right out with his feelings. I just instigated a thread about Larks mark up and stepped back to watch the fur fly. I was more sincere about the camp thread–really was just curious, and then glad that someone told it like it was. I needed help in kicking the Lark habit.
I got the Lark holiday supplement a few days ago, recalled Kim in Tulsa’s sharing about not being able to put the thing down, saw the Sindt mark up, and did’t just want to get even, I wanted to see some truth in print to match the lies in that catalog.
There it is.
Lisa
As a 20-year long employee of HMT (House of Musical Traditions), I certainly have no love for Lark in the Morning, but I understand what some others are saying. A while back, HMT was being dragged through the muck on the flute forum for not filling Olwell flute orders on time, and for selling inexpensive Paki cane flutes. One person reached the unfair conclusion that we were a bunch of ignorant incompetents who didn’t care about customer service, and were deceptive to boot. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Our staff includes a flute builder and expert player of all kinds of wind and percussion instruments (Stream Ohrstrom), several people who are competent to test flutes, several decent whistle players, and a prizewinning whistler, teacher, and recording artist of many years experience. All this does not mean that when you call, you won’t be answered by one of our weekend part-timers, temporary holiday help, or a recent hiree who hasn’t learned the ropes yet. If you want the best service, you have to ask for a specialist in your particular area of interest; and if you insist on speaking with the untrained person that answered the phone, be prepared for the possibility of misinformation. Everybody here is anxious to please you and make a good impression, especially the new help, and it is understandable that sometimes erroneous information is given out. I’ve overheard our salesclerks, even experienced ones, telling customers that a particular book was out of print, or that we didn’t carry a certain item, when I had several of them in stock.
Now, those of you who have purchased whistles and stuff from HMT know that we are very customer service intensive and very concerned that every customer have a good experience with us. However, people are human, and mistakes are made. For example, we made a couple of big mistakes several years in a row by hiring mail order personnel that was, frankly, less than competent, and made the further error of not providing sufficient supervision and support staff, in our desire to get rid of red ink on the cash flow sheet – a small customer service oriented business in a small market such as ours is very labor intensive, and we are always tottering on the brink in lean times.
As a result, under the pressure of our peak shopping seasons, several of these employees became overly concerned with filling new incoming orders as quickly as possible and severely neglected customer communication on the difficult cases, particularly Olwell backorders. The backorder situation itself was clarified in a post to the flute forum made by my boss, Dave Eisner, and text was added to the web page so that anyone placing a new order would understand the situation from the git-go (see http://www.hmtrad.com/instr/winds/flutes/flutes.html )
As to the Paki flute complaint, which was patently unfair and ridiculous to boot, I immediately corrected that by adding tailor-made explanatory text to the web page (http://www.hmtrad.com/instr/winds/flutes/flutes.html#other ). If you go there you can let your imaginations fill in what the actual complaint was.
My main point is, the more employees you have, the greater tend to be the possibilities for customer service and communication trainwrecks.
I take my own little squeezebox department very seriously, and all the staff here has received Pavlovian conditioning so when they hear the word “accordion” on the phone, they immediately respond “You need to talk to Wendy”. It’s a reflex now, all the customer has to say is “I play accordi…” and the HMT person will call out “Wendy!” It’s really funny to observe, unless you’re me and you already have 3 Salvadorans who don’t speak a word of English looking at the 3-rows, and 7 other people lined up, hopeful of selling me some smelly mildewed Accordion-Shaped Object they dragged out of grandma’s basement.
My other point is, my boss is paying me a decent salary for me to spend time looking at the 7 mildewed A.S.O.'s that come in here every week, and explaining as gently as I can to their owners why we aren’t interested in buying them, and why they shouldn’t waste their money paying me to appraise the M.A.S.O. so they can sell it on eBay. So much of customer service has nothing whatsoever to do with sales income, and the more the balance tilts from money-making activities to those that do not lead to sales, the harder it is to pay the rent.
In my fantasies, I am the only person working at HMT, and I clone myself and then train my clones in different specialties so that I can leave the day-to-day business to them, make a fortune and retire to a sunny location somewhere in the Mediterranean.
B sharp, C?
(edited to put a space in so a link would work properly)
[ This Message was edited by: klezmusic on 2002-11-21 12:18 ]
[ This Message was edited by: klezmusic on 2002-11-21 12:19 ]
klezmusic, I appreciate your up-front review of the wholesale music business and support you all the way!!!
~Larry
I think Howards are very good low Ds,
overall. Dale calls the ‘underrated,’
in his review–though they aren’t
some of the best around. The old
mouthpiece wasn’t so good and that
may have caused the trouble; and
it may be that the one you bought
had one. I’ve owned three Howards.
You know it’s a matter of degree
and emphasis. You can sell to sell,
and it doesn’t matter so much what
you’re selling–underwear, BMWs,
or flutes–or you can have a real
feeling for what you are selling
and want to sell it, too. A lot
of Lark’s problems flow from
being closer to the first sort of
place (as opposed to dishonesty,
I think) and not to the second.
Even the second sort of place
will have its problems, occasionally,
but, as said, the name of the
game at Lark appears to be
RETAIL. That isn’t dishonesty…
or where I would necessarily prefer to do
business, either.
House of Musical Traditions Rocks! I had an excellent experience there trying out all their whistles and buying a couple.
I have one of their cane whistles, and while cheap and a little buzzy on the bell note, it sounds really nice and is easy to play. So those don’t all suck, in case anyone’s interested.
And in conclusion, I have learned from direct experience and your notes:
LITM is a good place to get a wide variety of cheap whistles and sheet music and miscellaneous percussion.
Best not to buy a premium or expensive instrument. you can try the fancy whistles and if you like it buy it but do your price homework first.
It seems irrelevant to point out that I have only had good experiences at SF store, but I was NOT trying to buy an expensive guitar or concertina or anything.
For all you squeezers who might come to Bay Area, there is a guy name Boaz that has an awesome accordion/box shop in an edgy part of town in South Berkeley. he is a true ambassador for these instruments and can fix em right.
But LITM does spread a certain joy about music-making to the tourists and are way better than all those damn tshirt and gray-market camera joints at Fishermans Wharf.. I am glad they are there and hope they continue and maybe improve their will with you all.
Just want to throw one more experience on the fire here.
When I first started looking into playing the flute I went into the Seattle shop and asked if they carried Olwell bamboo’s. The person working there said they did and brought out a bamboo flute that looked like it was put together by my daughters pre-school class. It was basically a piece of bamboo with holes in it with a wine cork glued (you could see the glue) on the end. I told him this didn’t look like a Olwell because I had seen pictures of them and they were completely different. He proceeded explain how many of the experienced flute players in Seattle were very disappointed with Olwell flutes and that they were way over-rated.
My response was that Seamus Eagan and Matt Molloy seem pretty happy with them.
When I ordered my flute from Olwell I related this experience to him and he said he wasn’t surprised at all and had heard similar experiences from other stores.
By the way Chris mentioned earlier that he had played a Dave Williams at LITM that he was pretty impressed with so he seems pretty open-minded to me.
Anyway I alway’s refer everyone that show’s an interest to research the individual makers and order directly from them. They’ll have a better experience, a better product and don’t need to worry about their money going to support Islamo-Facist slave labor in Pakistan.
Music expresses that which can not be said and on which it is impossible to be silent Victor Hugo
[ This Message was edited by: CraigMc on 2002-11-21 13:04 ]
Jim, I was talking about the Howard High D by the way…
Lisa, I really liked the way you expressed yourself in your post about Lark. 
Wendy, thank you for telling us what it’s like behind the scenes at HMT. I have visited HMT twice (you were not there either time, though I was looking for you - hmph!) and have had great times there (and have come away with some nice instruments). I bought my first Copeland whistle (Low D) there and my first flute (Olwell cane) there. I also got a digeridoo lesson - I was (am) hopeless!
Jessie
Martin-
re. the Celtic Cross stuff-
The Victorian whistle looks like an Natural Original to me, just a dark photo. The black would probably be almost invisible, as the one shown is pictured in the box.
And the $22 Clare looked expensive to me (considering The Whistle Shop chages a lot less than that) until I rememebered how Australian dollars compare to US. Then, I thought about trying to convince my wife I need more whistles…
-Patrick
Thanks for the encouragement, JessieK!
And AaronMalcomb, we know what it’s like fresh off the turnip truck and we don’t want to see others taken advantage of like we were. High five at you.
Retailers should not be excused for playing up strengths and playing down weaknesses. If they have to play down a weakness, then they are asking too much for it. Just because they got stuck with something doesn’t mean it is right to stick someone else with it.
We sell a variety of turquoise in our rock and jewelry shop, mainly because customers ask for it. Many customers are attracted to the “stabilized” turquoise rather than the natural because of its more vivid color. We explain to them exactly what stabilized means, that essentially they are getting a form of plastic, yet this almost never hinders the sale. These people probably wouldn’t know the difference in the first place, but that doesn’t mean we should respect them any less.
Lisa
I would really like to think that the gay porn mailing lists and dummy ads on AmericaMall Classifieds that someone signed me up for today had nothign to do with this thread.
:roll:
