Mr Kauer goes to the Fatherland- and gets screwed by customs

dougk

dougk

b00b
For those of you who follow me on FB/IG ect, you probably already heard that Theresa and I flew to Berlin last week to attend The Holy Grail Guitar Show. We've been working for 7+ months on 5 special edition guitars specifically for the show. Everything was on track, shipped and supposed to be delivered on a certain date.

Well, we walked into the show saturday morning for setup and our guitars weren't there. Due to a screw up largely committed by the shipping company and customs, they never delivered our guitars nor had contacted any of the four contacts listed to tell us there was a single signature missing from a single piece of paperwork. Bad luck.

So you can imagine how disheartened I was, not only having flown 6000 miles, spent a large sum of money to be there AND not having some of the guitars I was most proud of to display. Absolutely gutted.

BUT, when the show organizers found out about this, fellow builders and our german distributor they attempted to move heaven and earth to get our guitars for us. They worked tirelessly even though they also had the show to run. Any support they could offer they did. Ultimately to no avail but it was moving to say the least.

Here's what I love the most. Besides the outpouring of support and offers to help from our fellow luthiers (in arms!) I got a message from a customer of mine in Frankfurt offering to drive through the night with his guitar. When we told Nik Huber, he called our customer and had him meet Nik's wife and pickup his personal Kauer (he owns one of my Banshee's) as well. Our customer then drove SEVEN HOURS through the night to bring us a Banshee and his personal Daylighter Supreme.

I was appreciative beyond words and sentiment could convey. It is absolutely humbling to know that there are not only people this amazing out there in the world, but they are customers of mine. Going once again to prove to me that we are the luckiest people on Earth.

Being a Luthier for a living is an extremely tough, frustrating business. (People forget, it IS a business). I don't always have good days and I certainly have had tough customers in the past but this experience is a reminder that you take the good with the bad because the good, is better than anyone could dream.

-doug
 
I saw that on FB. You have some good customers. There isn't much that can get me to drive for 7 hours. :grin:
 
Wow dude. That sucks so bad. I was wondering why there were so few Kauers in your facebook photos.

I've had a lot of trouble shipping gear and other stuff to other countries this past year, too.

That's really cool that so many people came together for you, though.
 
bsman said:
So, who didn't "sign ze papers"? :wink:
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This is the kicker, no one really screwed up specifically on our end. Every guitar going to the show was sold to a store in Belgium. So we arranged shipping to the store, managed to wave "customs" on the premise that nothing was for sale AT the show and that customs would be paid upon entering Belgium.

What ultimately happened is our shipping company on 11/11 upon arrival in berlin emailed the store in Belgium with a customs form (waiver really) that needed to be signed. THEY thought it was for the post show shipment. Our company never pursued any of the 4 available contacts beyond this point to tell us differently.

So basically they screwed up 95% of it, our dealer 3%, I screwed up 1% and our distributor in Germany 1% for not checking in on them after they arrived in Berlin. (It was through an import company our distributor uses so I didn't have real time tracking to realize we had an issue).

Bad luck really.
 
I could always "Store" a few of your guitars and keep them in good playing order and scratch free over here in case you find yourself in a pinch some day.

Really good on Nick Huber to hook you up as well. But I could do you better in the long run.

Call me!
 
That sucks. A similar thing happened to Goodsell amps at the LA Amp show. UPS apparently screwed up his shipment and all of his amps for the show were trapped on a truck the entire weekend. He only had an amp that he personally had brought and he was frantically trying to sell it at the show to recoup some of his costs.
 
Mark Wein said:
That sucks. A similar thing happened to Goodsell amps at the LA Amp show. UPS apparently screwed up his shipment and all of his amps for the show were trapped on a truck the entire weekend. He only had an amp that he personally had brought and he was frantically trying to sell it at the show to recoup some of his costs.
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Yep. I've done this enough times to know someone always gets the short straw and it was just our turn. It sucks but I refused to let it ruin the trip. Had a wonderful time regardless.
 
I think it's a testament to just how damn good your guitars are and how good of a dude you are that so many people went out of their way to try to help you.

All the more proof that I really need to rob a bank and order a post-C&D Banshee.
 
GilmourD said:
I think it's a testament to just how damn good your guitars are and how good of a dude you are that so many people went out of their way to try to help you.

All the more proof that I really need to rob a bank and order a post-C&D Banshee.
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Couldn't agree more, on all counts :wink:
 
So glad to hear that good people came to your aid in a time of need. Doug, it's easy to call them good people, and leave it at that, but I suspect that they responded to your need because they knew that you are one of the good people. It's funny how good people go out their way to help one another.
 
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