Complaint Review: Guitars Garden - None Given None Given

On January December 31, 2023 I placed an order with Guitars Garden for a guitar that was on sale for $139.91. Several YouTube videos were recommending this company and its guitars. I'm 76 years old and bored since I retired so I thought this might be a good hobby to take up - learning to play the guitar. So I ordered a semi-hollow FF338Pro Full size guitar.

The only method of payment this company accepts is through PayPal. I have a PayPal account linked to my credict card so I placed the order. The charge was approved and I received a tracking number showing that it was shipped from California. I have reason to believe, based on some YouTube videos, that this company is actually based in China but they give NO address or telephone number on their website. I should have taken notice of that but was too excited to get the guitar and start my new hobby.

The guitar arrived and in unpacking it, I noticed that the pick guard had some sort of defect. I sent customer service an email about it and the next day they emailed me back saying that it was just a piece of celephane plastic that had to be peeled off.

I was able to peel it off but after doing so, I discovered a scratch on the pick guard that the celephane was hiding. I also found that the defect was still visible as an abrasion type of mark on the pick guard. Nevertheless, I didn't want to make a big deal about it so I started trying to play the guitar. I should have taken my age into account.

I had a lot of difficulty pressing the strings down because I have arthritis in my fingers, hands, and wrist. I could not bend my wrist at the kind of angle needed to press the strings down. I sent customer service another email and told them I had changed my mind and wanted to return the guitar. I sent them pictures of the pickguard and explained my arthritis.

On January 16th, a woman named Cathy replied. She sent me a return FedEx label and instructed me to return it back in just 2 days. I packed the guitar back up in its original box and original packing material and took it to a local FedEx drop off store. I sent Cathy the tracking number.

Needless to say, the guitar reached the address on the label on January 21, 2024 which is a Sunday. The tracking showed a photo of the guitar box sitting in front of a double door. It was then that I became rather suspicious. The double door looked lika residential residence, not a business.

I looked the address up on Google Maps, and sure enough, this was a residence. The address was 621 Crestview Dr, Diamond Bar, CA 91765.

I looked this address up in a Google Search and it came up on a number of websites. It was purchased on April 30, 2019 for $1,250,000.00. The website https://www.fastpeoplesearch.com shows that Jia Liu lives at that address since June 2019.

I have sent several emails to "Cathy" at [email protected] about my refund of $139.91. She has not answered any of my emails. I filed a complaint with PayPal but am not happy with that service because you can only make such reports by choosing answers provided in a controlled picklist and none of them fit my situation. My situation is that "Cathy" sent me a FedEx label to return the guitar which turned out to be the residence of someone named Jia Liu. That person now has my guitar and I am out $139.91. On top of that, PayPal shows that the purchase I made was paid by [email protected]. I looked up aliyun.com and found that it is actually Alibaba Cloud Computing Services. 

I just want to make it known to people that they should be very aware of Guitars Garden if they're thinking of buying a guitar from them. I'm going to try and report this ripoff/scam to my credit card company because I don't think PayPal is going to do anything about it. Buyer beware.