Official Daemoness Guitars Thread

Dibs

 

I feel like you're probably going to end up paying more than £500 to travel from Tucson to Bristol. Like that's at least two flights and some trains each way.

 

a refund...

 

I think this is going to come down to

a) whether there's a written legal contract signed by both parties

b) what that contract actually says

c) whether Daemoness can be bothered to fight it for £500

d) if they do want to fight, whether the OP is willing to hire a solicitor to try to reclaim the money likely to cost a LOT more than £500

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you can't afford to lose the deposit, you can't afford the custom guitar.

 

I'm sure they run the business how they want, but maybe not raise cost of build. Maybe have a more formal written contract and terms and conditions when submitting an initial deposit outlining things such as expected time of completion, unforseen delays, changes to timeline and costs due to changes in orginal build specs, policies regarding refunds or partial credits due to delays, imperfections etc. Terms outlining dispute processes, warranties and so forth. It would be an initial pain to get it all together and probably take a couple revisions but would ulitmately feel more professional and leave no doubts as to expectations and possibly make it less stressful or in limbo for both parties. I always was nervous with custom builds because of the risks involved. That's why on the last one I did with a builder known for allegedly ripping people off (Sims) I made sure to handle everything within the dispute process period and pay via credit card. When the run around started happening I disputed it and got things handled properly.

 

This is pretty much the situation in a nutshell. To OP:

I recently had to look for a solicitor (and wound up not needing them, thankfully), but this solicitor was an average firm and consultations were £200/hr before they'd even do anything on your behalf. That's a very typical cost for legal services in the UK.

A solicitor wouldn't take this on anyway. Even if the dispute were between two UK parties and Dylan didn't have a 'non-refundable' clause in his contract, the solicitor would just tell you to file a grievance via small claims court rather than use their services. As you say, the legal costs will quickly outweigh the potential gain from recovering the money. Here's the instructions on how to file your paperwork for small claims court; for sums greater than £300 but less than £500, the fee is £35-50 depending on whether you file electronically or not.

The reality is that legal battles are time-consuming and exhausting for all involved, let alone a needlessly complicated way of solving problems between parties that are willing and able to communicate with one another. Your time is worth far more than £500 vs. how long and how much energy it'd take to fight this...legal action would be futile here.

I'd just ask Dylan nicely for a refund and if he says no, move on. 1) He didn't exactly steal the money; 2) there's no practical way of recovering it given the terms that were agreed to upon surrendering the funds; 3) legal help is not practical in this situation, so you'll have to proceed via small claims court and; 4) small claims court is probably not an option you can pursue as a non-UK resident with no one to act as your legal agent (see my above comments about solicitors turning down this case).

On second thought, if Dylan won't refund the money, the easiest way out of this is to sell the build slot to someone else for £500 (or less), if Dylan allows it. Barring that, I don't see how you're going to get this money back.

 

Not allowed. I mean, there's nothing stopping you from doing this behind the scenes I guess, i.e., person B says, "Hey, if you order these specs, I'll pay you the deposit now and the rest of the money for the guitar on completion" but as far as I'm aware, there's no overt selling of slots in the queue. Naturally that would open the door for profiteering.

I was trying to buy someone's slot before, so, I know

 

Back on topic

 

Did you buy the old seafoam one?

 

Nah it's owned by a guy in Japan. Do love that colour though

 

I always thought "non-refundable" meant you won't get your money back even if you really want to. Something like buyer beware or try this at your own risk.

 

There are legal protections to make sure you don't get truly scammed, and they can vary significantly by location, but even then, it's pretty hard to recover anything less than whatever the local amount that qualifies as criminal.

Homeboy trying to get his 500GBP might be legally obliged to, but there's absolutely no way to collect it from the other side of the planet without paying more than that.

 

For my build I'm going to have one of those hand-painted mural bodies of this guy charging at Dylan and Barnes across the grounds in front of Daemoness HQ. He'll be carrying on a banner emblazoned with "500 GBP!!" and they'll be shouting "No quarter!!!". It'll be an alright pun.

 

Nah, it has to be a recreation of this:

 

Honestly that's basically what I do. Get roasted by some guitar brand and it'll just be my signature for a long time.

 

I actually sold that too him.i regret doing that.but stuff happens.

 

Y’all are a bunch of clowns.

it’s not “I can’t afford to lose a 500$ deposit” it’s “you can’t keep my money, and I’m no longer interested in your products because your build quality is visually deficient and not worthy of the price”

I also didn’t say he stole my money, but he’s not keeping it because like I have mentioned No work has been performed, no materials procured and no money will be lost by removing my guitar build slot from the queue. That deposit would be their if - I started my build, picked wood, hardware etc and work has been started.

I’m specifically maintaining I have lost faith in this builder due to provided evidence on this very forum that I will not receive a product warranting the price. On top of constant growing queue times from the initial estimate.

Y’all can go on being bootlicking fanboys Now. My excitement for this brand has ended.

 

This is so bizarre. Let's put aside the fact that Dylan acknowledged it was sub par and took it back, so no one received (in any sort of permanent way) a "visually deficient" guitar. I'm not going to talk about "warranting the price", since that's entirely subjective, but how can you argue that you will receive a problematic guitar when all the guitars posted prior to you placing your order were presumably good? And the set of recent ones that are mindbogglingly good (visually)? Just statistically, how are you going to make that argument?

In other words: can everyone who was forced to accept a "visually deficient build quality" Daemonesses raise their hands? ::crickets::