"I purchase an instrument from them a week before my daughters birthday. Receive all of the necessary responses and thought everything was fine. The birthday came and went and still no instrument. I emailed them for a week and finally when I said I wanted to cancel the order they responded saying that it was out of stock and would be in in 2-3 days. I said okay. Another week went by then another and I kept contacting them with no responses. Finally, I said that I was going to dispute the charge on paypal. No response, so I did and ordered an instrument from another vendor. I finally received the instrument 3 days after I received the one that I ordered from another vendor and then paypal closed the case in Instrument Alley's favor. Apparently, the paypal dispute got them to ship the item. Now I would like to return it, but I think I would be less frustrated if I just smashed the instrument against a wall. They charge a 4% fee plus I would have to ship it back to them and then... Well, I couldn't get them to ship the item in the first place, what chance do I have of getting my money back. UNBELEIVEABLE! I run a business and if I treated my customers like this I wouldn't have one anymore and I don't think they deserve to be in business either. I guess is for their customers to vote on."
"I agree with the other post saying instrumentalley
Won't even talk with a buyer. Their is no one on live chat, and they don't reply to questions. Must of emailed them over 10 times and tried live chat over 2 days. Came here to read reviews to see if I should just place an order. Glad I didn't.
Other review that matched my recent experience this year 2017:
"I had a miserable experience with Instrument Alley. I had a simple question for them about a product I was considering buying and tried for days to reach them via phone and email and got ZERO response. I literally called over 20 times over a 3 day period (all within their business hours) and sent them emails as well. I STILL have not heard back. Unacceptable and I will never consider them again. ""
"I went into IA (reading my of the reviews), expecting poor service, long wait times, and testy responses. I got none of this--Dave and Ben responded quickly by email (same day or early the next, if I was emailing later in the evening). The wait time for them to ship out was longer than anticipated--it says 1 to 5 days on their website. I ended up waiting 7 business days for them to ship it out. The guitar case that I ordered with my LP took a while to get...this leads me to my main point:
From what I can tell these guys are brokers for the most part, and carry some stock but not everything on the website.
For the extra 2 days I had to wait for my order to ship, they sent picks and a chromatic tuner, which is above and beyond my expectation.
The reason this is not a 5-star review is because their communication is poor in my opinion--you really need to stay on top of these guys to make sure you know what's going on, because I'm pretty sure that if I didn't reach out to them I wouldn't have heard anything from them."
"12/7/2016, I order a banjo that says it is in stock, only place online that shows that, so figure... why not. I get an order confirmation, which is great, but I don't get a shipping notification. I wait a few days, nothing. About a week into it I get suspicious, so I check the site and it says 'processing', and I go to the listing and it has flipped to 'Pre Order'. There is no indication anywhere of how long that will take, and over the course of several months I have emailed them over and over again(at least once a month) and did not receive a response from them until the beginning of April 2017. They said something along the lines of 'We spoke with the manufacturer and we should be getting more in on April 28th, 2017. Okay, great... 4 months beyond Christmas for when it was needed... but sure, I'm glad it is coming in. Well, it is now May 19th, 2017... and I have not received further communication, site still lists it as 'Pre Order' and as per usual, they never respond when you try to use online chat, email, or phone call. I inquired in one email about how to go about cancelling an order since I'm sick of waiting and every other site on the planet has the banjo in stock now, yet they still don't. I never got a response about it, and their site says something about a $10 cancellation fee? Yeah... no. I'm activating my new card and just letting the old one get declined. This company has taken 6 months to provide me with nothing on a product they said was in stock, and have a support department that could care less about their customers. They are truly scum and should be ashamed of their practices."
"I am never one to leave reviews, good or bad...but hopefully I can help prevent someone else from getting burned by this horrible company. I ordered a Washburn mandolin in "trans-blue". I had actually done a google search, specifically looking for trans blue, and instrument alley came up. The price was great, and I'll admit, the picture looked a little black to me...but my monitor has been known to mess colors up. Immediately, I got an email confirmation for "Washburn M1SDLB A-Style Mandolin - Trans Blue". Sounds good, right? Well, I got shipped a black mandolin...but check this out, the packing slip even said "Trans Blue". So I have to try several ways to finally get touch with someone and they would never admit to a mistake. According to them, it was my mistake, I should have asked questions. They don't have any trans blue in stock so I should just be happy with the black. I'm sorry, what?! No, I was specifically looking for trans blue. So, I have to spend $40 to ship this back, and I am charged a restocking fee for their mistake. Never, ever again will I shop at Instrument Alley. "
"i NEVER post bad reviews. EVER. but felt obligated to do so because of my experience with this shop. so, i placed my order. got a confirmation of payment, but never a shipping confirmation. waited a couple of days, registered on the website in hopes of seeing my 'order tracking'. didn't work. emailed them. called them. left a message. online chat was never available ... every day that i checked. i NEVER heard a word back from these guys. in the age of excellent & on-point customer service from companies like sweetwater, reverb, and even amazon, this is just unacceptable. here's the crazy thing: the order showed up a few days later and even appears it was shipped on time. but with NO customer service, no order tracking, and absolutely NO communication from this shop, i had no way of knowing that. i had literally started doing research to see how i could cancel/reverse my order through paypal because i was worried i'd never see my order...or it would show up in 6 weeks. it's a shame b/c their prices are great...but unfortunately that doesn't make up for the bad experience i had with them. i would avoid this shop until they learn the value of communication and customer service. "
"The great prices were a winner for me. So I bought a goodtime 2 banjo. The second day after I placed the order I realized that the address was incorrect as I put my home address and not my college apartment. So I tried online to change it, but failed. I called both numbers a literal 45 times across a two day period during their business hours. Nobody answered or responded to my voicemails. Two days later I finally get an email back from Ben. He refused to change the address even though it was still on backorder and hadn't been shipped. My shipment should arrive here soon, but I won't have it since he wouldn't change the address. This is absolutely unacceptable. They don't care about your requests, just that you press the place order button and they get money. They're the literal definition of a joke.
PS. In case you didn't know, FedEx won't change the shipment address for you unless you get signature from the shipper. Hahahaha goodluck with that! "
"I had a miserable experience with Instrument Alley. I had a simple question for them about a product I was considering buying and tried for days to reach them via phone and email and got ZERO response. I literally called over 20 times over a 3 day period (all within their business hours) and sent them emails as well. I STILL have not heard back. Unacceptable and I will never consider them again. "
"I ordered a violin for my son for xmas and we were VERY disappointed in the product when he opened it for xmas...It was very poor quality and 2 of the strings were broken...it took me a couple weeks to even get in contact with anyone from the company and i left several messages, tried to live chat but it wouldn't connect to anyone and left a few different voicemail...was only told i shouldn't expect anything special for the price i paid....$70 for a childs violin isn't cheap...now having to return my child MAIN xmas gift as they didn't have any resolution for us
"
"I purchased a Vega banjo. I asked them to add a couple of spikes and I asked for a lower setup. I dealt with Ben and he took care of all my needs. It was shipped to me quickly and everything was as promised for a very good price. I would not hesitate to purchase from them again. I am very pleased with the transaction and my new banjo. Bum ditty! I was not asked to give this review."
"I chatted with Dave over the net about purchasing a cherry burst Resonator RD 40 guitar because I had seen both positive and negative reviews. He was extremely helpful and they delivered the guitar quickly. Everything was perfect when it arrived, even the set up was good out of the box. I would recommend ordering from them. Have been meaning to write this review for a while. They didn't ask me to do it. "
"I got a Italia Mondial guitar at a considerable savings from Instrumentalley.com. There were a couple little snags that IA immediately took care of. They were concerned and thoughtful. I will definitely do business with them again! You'll love the company, products and savings!"
"I bought an Oscar Schmidt OD312CE 12-String Cutaway Acoustic Electric Guitar on a "Pre-Order". The seller supplied a tentative ship date. While it didn't make that date, the seller did inform me that it looked to hopefully be the following week. The guitar did come as promised, and it looks as they went out of their way to fill this order, as the guitar came from a different area. I had also ordered a hard case that shipped from their store.
I had a positive experience with this seller. I will be back and purchase from them again!"
"I always research the instruments that I buy online. I found a great Mandolin on Instrumentally.com in my price range. Unfortunately the one I picked was out of stock - and might not come back into stock. They immediately sent me an e-mail offering me to upgrade for free to the next model in the series. I accepted the offer - but thought there must be a catch! Well there wasn't! I received my Beautiful Upgraded Mandolin in a couple of days and it was FANTASTIC - both in looks and in tone! Pristine Condition! The Customer Service was wonderful and very communicative. I will definitely buy from Instrumentally.com again. In fact, I already have another instrument in mind that is on there site! Buy with Confidence from Instrumentally.com. "
"I bought and pad for almost 200.00 worth of stuff and was told it would be 1-2 day delivery time, well that was on the 2nd of March this is the evening of the 18th and I still have not gotten my stuff I will never buy from these morons again they may have good prices but so do lots of other suppliers that actually deliver when they say they will, not just take your money and deliver 1/2 a month later"