NBD Fail - Musician's Friend sending me damaged crap from GC

So, my 12 year old daughter has been showing interest in picking up Bass, something I fully support! My 34" scale felt too big for her though, so I started looking at short scales. Decided on an Ibanez GSRM20 Mikro in Starlight Blue, which seemed to be out of stock everywhere. After a week of checking, Musician's Friend finally showed stock and I ordered it. A few days later, received a ship notification originating from Guitar Center #769 in Atlanta, which I thought was odd (later found out this is common now). Yesterday, this beat up piece of junk showed up on my doorstep. No Ibanez box, no retail tags or paperwork. Just a beat up bass wrapped in bubble wrap... Box even had someone else's invoice attached (for a TMB100) to the outside, with my shipping label on the other.

Note there was no damage to the box, and no paint chips in the box. They literally packed up this piece of crap and sent it to me as a new bass. Called yesterday to return it and after 30min they said they'd emailed me a return label. Still no email from them, so opened up a dispute with my credit card company. I'll never do business with them again, this is ridiculous.
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“Epic fail” is too kind to describe that situation, much so less of the salesperson that thought doing a transaction like that was in any way, perfectly okay.

Edit: I hope for their sake, that this was a mix-up in the shipping department. That would be only redemption for such misconduct, if there was any...
 
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So, my 12 year old daughter has been showing interest in picking up Bass, something I fully support! My 34" scale felt too big for her though, so I started looking at short scales. Decided on an Ibanez GSRM20 Mikro in Starlight Blue, which seemed to be out of stock everywhere. After a week of checking, Musician's Friend finally showed stock and I ordered it. A few days later, received a ship notification originating from Guitar Center #769 in Atlanta, which I thought was odd (later found out this is common now). Yesterday, this beat up piece of junk showed up on my doorstep. No Ibanez box, no retail tags or paperwork. Just a beat up bass wrapped in bubble wrap... Box even had someone else's invoice attached (for a TMB100) to the outside, with my shipping label on the other.

Note there was no damage to the box, and no paint chips in the box. They literally packed up this piece of crap and sent it to me as a new bass. Called yesterday to return it and after 30min they said they'd emailed me a return label. Still no email from them, so opened up a dispute with my credit card company. I'll never do business with them again, this is ridiculous.View attachment 3915535 View attachment 3915536 View attachment 3915537
I've never had a problem with Guitar Center itself, at least 10 basses, but I can't tell you how many times I've heard that Musician's Friend is the worst.
 
Wow. That is obviously awful damage. I’m more willing to believe that either the person who took it off the wall and packed it somehow didn’t see the damage/didn’t look it over, or it was already packed in a box for whatever reason and when you ordered, they just checked the serial and sent it out. It seems crazy that anyone would knowingly ship that as a new bass.