Re: Clunkers we have known and loved….

[Kathleen Clark]

Jerusha, I totally believe this is what happened to me. I had to send
back TWO new harps. I felt totally taken advantage of because I was a
newbie who was not able to travel. The first came with a cracked
soundboard and the second was not put together with enough glue. Until
a company tech rep could okay the warranty issues all I could do was
take notes and photos, and in the case of the glue issue, made weekly
pencil rubbings on a piece of paper to highlight the separations.
Measured the widening cracks on a weekly basis. Made charts, diagrams,
documenting everything week by week. Took a whole year before my second
harp was okayed to be sent back.

As a newbie I did not know what to look for or what was wrong, but my
gut instinct was that something serious was wrong with both harps right
from the start and I was right. The third time my husband and I were
taking no more chances and sent my harp teacher across country to personally oversee
and select my harp. All did not go smooth as the transaction itself
went haywire and took months to sort out and get everything in writing
to protect ourselves (thousands and thousands of dollars of
overcharging). We are not wealthy people. If the harp center had not
been overseeing everything and constantly going to bat for us I don’t
know where we be or what we could have done.

Because what got me the most was the arrogant attitude. Oh, nothing
could possibly be wrong, it must be me. I really felt like they dumped
two new clunkers on me and expected me, as a newbie, to just take it or
not recognize what they were trying to do. There was an eight month
delay between my second and third harp, so I was essentially harpless
at that time, went to the Harpfest in SLC and discovered there that I
was not the only one that this was happening to. I confronted one of
the harp maker representatives personally about what had happened to me
and the reply was that it was no big deal about returning those harps
because if I didn’t want them “then someone else would.” That is a
direct quote. Talk about adding insult to injury. Even after taking a
clunker back on warranty (and it is not easy to return anything on
warranty) the attitude was still that someone else would be inexperienced or fool enough
to accept it.

I never want to have to go through this again. My heart just aches for
anyone going through this expensive ordeal. Oh, and another one of the
‘attitude’ things that irked me through this whole process was “each
harp has its own personality so they are all going to be different.”
Yeah, well, that is true. That is why I have more than one harp. But
when harp manufacturers use that line to force defective merchandise
onto anyone, especially newbies who they hope might not know better, it is unethical. I for one am glad to
have a place where this can be discussed openly so that people have
support and can be forewarned. The support is not going to come from
the manufacturers. I found that out the hard way. Note that I said
“manufacturers” plural. Sad to say, it isn’t just one of them.