Music & ArtsReviews of musicarts.com

I will not use Music & Arts again. I wanted to try out a few different clarinet mouthpieces. I used Music & Arts because the last online company I used (satisfactorily), BrasswindWoodwind, merged with them. I ordered 5 different mouthpieces to try, understanding M&A's policy of 30 day returns for a full refund (but I pay the return postage). The shipment arrived quickly, but wrong -- two items of one mouthpiece, and was missing the 5th one. And one of the mouthpieces was just in a plastic bag, instead of the sturdy padded boxes they all are supposed to be in. I called customer service immediately and spoke to an English-challenged agent. After several attempts, I thought she understand the problem and the solution: to send me the missing mouthpiece. She also emailed me a return label, even though I told her I still had 4 weeks to return the unwanted ones. Four days later, I got the replacement mouthpiece. Again, it was the wrong one, a duplicate of another they had already sent me. At that point, I gave up trying to get the 5th mouthpiece. So I tried out the 4 models for several days, knowing I had a 30-day period to return the unwanted ones. Fifteen days into the 30-day period , I received an urgent-sounding voice message from M&A, and a Past Due Balance notice in the mail. I called M&A again, and got an agent who spoke clear English but was unpleasant. She impatiently lectured me repeatedly that I was supposed to have returned the first wrong mouthpiece immediately, even though the first agent never said that. Then she told me just to return them all to the nearby store, rather than mailing them back ... but the store she cited is 3 hours from my city, which I had already told her. She didn't know what to do about returning the mouthpieces, and had to hang up and call me back. To her credit, she called back 10 minutes later, and told me I had to return the unwanted mouthpieces in two separate boxes; the first wrong mouthpiece in one box with the earlier shipping label, and the other unwanted mouthpieces in a second box, with the shipping label she would email me. Instead of testing the mouthpieces any further, I kept the one I already knew I wanted, and packed up the others in two boxes and sent them back that same day. Also to the 2nd agent's credit, the label she emailed me was prepaid. I will have to be watching my credit card transactions carefully over the next month, to ensure I get charged and refunded correctly for the 6 mouthpieces. This type trial and return process with customers should be a routine transaction with such a music business. M&A has some significant bugs to work out of their system. Life is too short for such frustration.

For the Stone Oak store in San Antonio, I can't speak to the products, but I can speak to the service. It's mediocre, at best. We had been receiving private lessons and the instructor himself (Jorge) is great, the rest of the store is blah. Staff will generally not speak to you unless they have to. Management is non-existent. No voice mail, no email address, and the contact form only accepts a couple hundred characters. It's almost like they go out of their way to tell the client "We don't want to hear from you." Your lessons have an expiration date that they try to claim is to encourage people to stay current, which I don't buy. They also will charge you for about a month's worth of lessons at a time, so when you cancel, you're still on the hook for a bit longer. No business owner worth their salt accepts money for service they don't provide, or for poor service. Do better. We cancelled our private lessons and will drive past it to continue because of the apathetic service. Hard pass.

I ordered a sax stand on 8/2. Website said it was in stock and I got an order acknowlegment. Since then total silence. I cannot get through on the customer support line. I have written them an email. I hope they will respond.