Put corrosive material on guitar, deflected blame to me
I shipped a Gibson Les Paul guitar via ZenMarket. It arrived with the headstock wrapped in bubble wrap. The guitar is finished in nitrocellulose, which can react with bubble wrap. Bubble wrap is known to eat into nitro and leave permanent imprints. The hard case is moulded around the guitar body and neck, and the headstock is fixed in position with plenty of space around it, so the wrapping was completely unnecessary. I’ve purchased over 50 guitars, many coming in hard cases, and I’ve never had a guitar arrive with bubble wrap on it. Thankfully I did not detect any damage but I wrote a message to ZenMarket to inform them of this, so they can avoid potential accidents with guitars shipped to all customers. The message was polite, non-accusatory, and obviously I did not ask for any remedy or compensation. The response I received shocked me. Instead of thanking me for warning them and saying they will educate their packers, they accused me of not giving specific packing instructions and said they have no special knowledge on packing guitars. They wrote a reply twice the length of my feedback just to basically say they were faultless and if anything wrong happened, it was completely my fault. 1. The last guitar I shipped via them was also a Les Paul type in an almost identical hard case and there was no such bubble wrap on the headstock. How would I know they would do something different this time? How am I supposed to anticipate the millions of things they could do and tell them in advance not to do each of them? 2. They market their services strongly with photos of guitars; presumably they ship many guitars. On Digimart, Japan’s largest online guitar marketplace, their service is even integrated into the site, with a ZenMarket banner hovering over the splash side, or on the side on all product listings. Yet they say they have no special knowledge regarding how to pack guitars. Nitro is a traditional but very reactive finish still found one many guitars, for example all Gibson and PRS. It’s truly absurd for them to be so prominently marketing their services for the acquisition of guitars, yet say they have no knowledge of the care needed with nitro finish. This is the 3rd guitar I’ve shipped via ZenMarket and I have 2 more on preorder. This experience has left a very bad taste in my mouth and destroyed my confidence that ZenMarket is able to handle guitars. And if anything ever goes wrong, I know they will be quick to deflect responsibility. This is a warning to all guitar collectors shopping for guitars on Japanese sites.