First and foremost let me clarify some important issues:
1) We're a small company and our potential in matters of time and energy is obviously limited and cannot be compared to the big brands guys out there
2) We're truly passionate on what we do and that is why i am also answering emails at this time of the evening, because we do not want to let down anyone
3) Custom orders quotes requires a lot of time and energy because there are a lot of things that must be considered just for one instrument, not to mention the cost of every element from wood to hardware and labour, everything should be perfect (as we think that you care at least as much as we care for every custom instrument that we make). Some brands even require a deposit just to make a quote, however we don't.
We've been contacted by ... from Austria that wanted the custom guitar i have attached in this email.
When you're doing the job that we do you can immediately recognize a seriously interested person from someone that is just writing emails to waste your time...however, as i said, we do not want to let anyone down, so he contacted us and sent us a really considerable amount of email and messagges on myspace. No problem on that, as a custom orderd can involve a lot of details and emails but he flooded our myspace with about two or three full pages of incoming messages with stuff not relevant to his custom order.
So we got thru the details and some different options like the guitar attached but with a different pickup and/or custom graphics (first the word "MOSH" on the back, then his band logo on the front and back of the guitar), we gave him the final price for all the options and said that the price is valid for 30 days as some components and/or wood can cost more or less.
He said us "OK, confirmed, i will pay you the deposit on friday (it was monday if i remember correctly)". Friday came and he sent us an email saying "I am really sorry ! I will pay you on monday or tuesday since i have a lot of things to do" and we said "Ok no problem just drop us a line when you're done". At this poing we already knew what would happen: this means he sending us an email cancelling his order.
As i said when you do this job you can recognize if someone is interested or just wasting your time for his personal pleasure (like posting a mock-up on a forum just to tell someone that you ordered a guitar, but in fact you never wanted to do so...) so we were just keeping "idle" his order until receiving the deposit.
Then today (monday) an email of ... comes and says "I have got an accident and cannot pay for the guitar, i have to cancel my order" ...pretty classic excuse.
At this point, considering all the time and energy spent on this project (that we really liked also) that could have been used for other guys waiting their custom quotes, our answer has been:
"Hi ..., you made us work for nothing, we spent time and energy on that project, but no problem, please do not contact us anymore. Best regards, Michele / Emperionguitars.com"
Can this answer be considered rude ? Maybe yes but we haven't offended him, if you consider all the time we put into this project and the enormous amount of messages he sent us we just asked him to do not contact us anymore as we are not just one of those companies interested in pulling junk guitars to make cash out of kids, we would gladly spend even a month with a customer designing a custom guitar if there are some serious intentions.
After that he sent us two or three emails with a lot of "sorry" and saying that he made us a lot of good advertising and saying that he had not the money for a different reason stated in his previous email (so you see...something is just "fake" ?).
So we replied in the most polite way possible "Hi ..., no problem, thank you for your support. Best regards, Michele / Emperionguitars.com"
I think that's all the story so far. Best Regards
Michele / Emperionguitars.com