Mojotone have some great products, but their service...

H

HamishR

Well-known member
I love building amps. More than pedals, building amps is so satisfying and now quite a few guys in my town are gigging with amps I have built for them. There are few places which sell the parts though, which can be a problem. It gets expensive fast. I used to use Mojotone for cabinets but that is now out of the question because shipping is so high. The shipping costs more than the cabinet...

So my latest project is building a Brown 6G3 Deluxe. (I can build my own cabinets now!) I have already ordered the transformers from Mercury Magnetics and most of the parts from Antique Electronics so I'm pretty much committed to this build now. The big parts I still need are things like the tagboards, chassis and faceplates. As far as I know Mojo are the only place which sells these and right now they're out of chassis. But in my searching I found that they are selling "B-stock" 6G3 chassis on Ebay at an excellent price. As far as I can tell the only problem with them is that the screw mounting holes in the upper fold of the chassis haven't been drilled - I can do that easily.

As they are being sold by Mojo I emailed them to ask if they could just sell me one direct and add it to my parcel. No, they can't - it has to go through Ebay. Strange. Ok, so if I buy it on Ebay can you ship it with the other parts? Yeah, we'll talk to sales and get that sorted. I mean they're all in the same big building, right? How hard can it be? So I ordered the chassis through Ebay. Then I get a message from Ebay saying that it's on the way. Um, no, I don't want it sent through Ebay because the shipping is $160 for a $40 chassis!

Apparently no, now they can't send me all the stuff I need in one package. So now I'm up for more shipping on a few parts which would have been better protected if they had been shipped with the chassis. Why did they imply that they could?

I don't think I can deal with Mojotone any more. Already their shipping prices are astronomical. I buy lots of parts from USA vendors and their shipping is always the highest cost. I know that shipping isn't entirely in their control, but they are always the most expensive. And to have to pay two lots of shipping on just a few parts is nuts. It's just laziness.
 
HamishR said:
I love building amps. More than pedals, building amps is so satisfying and now quite a few guys in my town are gigging with amps I have built for them. There are few places which sell the parts though, which can be a problem. It gets expensive fast. I used to use Mojotone for cabinets but that is now out of the question because shipping is so high. The shipping costs more than the cabinet...

So my latest project is building a Brown 6G3 Deluxe. (I can build my own cabinets now!) I have already ordered the transformers from Mercury Magnetics and most of the parts from Antique Electronics so I'm pretty much committed to this build now. The big parts I still need are things like the tagboards, chassis and faceplates. As far as I know Mojo are the only place which sells these and right now they're out of chassis. But in my searching I found that they are selling "B-stock" 6G3 chassis on Ebay at an excellent price. As far as I can tell the only problem with them is that the screw mounting holes in the upper fold of the chassis haven't been drilled - I can do that easily.

As they are being sold by Mojo I emailed them to ask if they could just sell me one direct and add it to my parcel. No, they can't - it has to go through Ebay. Strange. Ok, so if I buy it on Ebay can you ship it with the other parts? Yeah, we'll talk to sales and get that sorted. I mean they're all in the same big building, right? How hard can it be? So I ordered the chassis through Ebay. Then I get a message from Ebay saying that it's on the way. Um, no, I don't want it sent through Ebay because the shipping is $160 for a $40 chassis!

Apparently no, now they can't send me all the stuff I need in one package. So now I'm up for more shipping on a few parts which would have been better protected if they had been shipped with the chassis. Why did they imply that they could?

I don't think I can deal with Mojotone any more. Already their shipping prices are astronomical. I buy lots of parts from USA vendors and their shipping is always the highest cost. I know that shipping isn't entirely in their control, but they are always the most expensive. And to have to pay two lots of shipping on just a few parts is nuts. It's just laziness.
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Well you may not like this if it's correct:
www.mojotone.com

Brown Deluxe Style 6G3 Chassis

Mojotone reproduction chassis. Same size and style as Brown Deluxe®Please note: The mounting and rear hole pattern is not the same as the Fender® chassis.
www.mojotone.com www.mojotone.com
 
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I thought shipping was free on orders over $99?

I called them about their reverb store and they told me they'd prefer to sell from their website because of the fees they have to pay reverb.. I'd think the same would be true of eBay. Plus, on their website, you don't have to pay tax.
 
Let’s just say shipping to down under is not cheap…. It does suck that there is obviously a demand in AU but shipping there is expensive… I shipped out several pedals this week to AU and reverb initially quoted me at 45 for international shipping to AU from NY. Expensive, but hey it’s a lot cheaper than me flying it there personally…. When I went to print the shipping labels then Reverb came back at 245USD to ship each 6x4x3 1lbs package!

Their customer when contacted did their normal thing… confirm the order… confirm the dimensions and weight…. Three days later they said that their quote for international shipping is only an estimate and that I should contact the buyers and tell them they needed to pay the extra! Yeah no! While i might have received substandard service from them I certainly am not going to pass that along.

They also told me that in the future I could overcharge for shipping to help compensate for high shipping prices. I asked what matrix should I use to cover a 200% shipping price swing and they just said most charge 3% more….. Not helpful…..

Rant over… Anyways they are shipped and not sent though reverb shipping. I still find it crazy that their “estimate” was so far off and their solution was to pass on the expense…
 
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I heard back from Mojo today. It seems to take ages to hear back but that's because of the time difference. Obviously I'm never going to hear back the same day.

They're admitted "dropping the ball". So they're offering a 20% discount on the stuff in my shopping cart - boards, panels etc. It's not the US$160 the shipping on the chassis cost but I'll have a look and maybe see if I can pad the bill out a bit to take advantage of 20% off.
 
When I used to bitch about shipping when I lived in Hong Kong, I was always (and still am) acutely aware that my MTB-friends (and now fellow pedal-builders) Down Under were getting screwed over.

Hope you're able to pad that 20% well out.
 
Wow.. I don't even know how the Australians can afford those shipping prices. I just bought an ST1 PCB from Headfirst Amps and it cost me $25 to ship which was pricey but should make the rest of the amp build a lot cheaper than using a kit.
 
Fizz said:
Wow.. I don't even know how the Australians can afford those shipping prices. I just bought an ST1 PCB from Headfirst Amps and it cost me $25 to ship which was pricey but should make the rest of the amp build a lot cheaper than using a kit.
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You didn't allow for our conversion rate, $1.00 USD = .66 AU?
$160.00 USD = $244..00 AU, Totally Sucks!!
 
I'm sorry to hear about your Mojo woes - hope they get things sorted out for you.

It's not really related to your situation, but I will say the pandemic really did a number on them. I know some transformers & kits became harder to source, and/or experienced great delays. Mojotone isn't what I'd call a SMALL operation, but they are completely in-house - very little (if anything) can be done remotely. I went there 5yrs ago for an amp building class (Tweed 5E3) - they're about 2hrs from where I'm sitting right now. Very cool facility and wish I would work there.
 
That sucks, but it's cool they're giving you that twenty percent. Please post a thread about the 6g3 build because I decided last week that a 6g3 clone was going to be a project I was going do in 2024.
 
Fizz said:
Wow.. I don't even know how the Australians can afford those shipping prices.
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can confirm, it's fucked up over here.
the only saving grace we have is tayda's fixed usd$10 shipping, or mouser's free shipping for orders ≥$60.

for everything else - bend over.

stompboxparts
1702507499481.png

smallbear
1702508731841.png

if pedalpcb, madbean, and aionfx can do it for less than usd$20 (confirmed, they can), there's no excuse for this bullshit.

and then there's cabintech - holy crap, i don't know how they do it - they'll send a tube of ICs for less than $5 and get it done in less than 2 weeks.
 
owlexifry said:
can confirm, it's fucked up over here.
the only saving grace we have is tayda's fixed usd$10 shipping, or mouser's free shipping for orders ≥$60.

for everything else - bend over.

stompboxparts
View attachment 63103

smallbear
View attachment 63108

if pedalpcb, madbean, and aionfx can do it for less than usd$20 (confirmed, they can), there's no excuse for this bullshit.

and then there's cabintech - holy crap, i don't know how they do it - they'll send a tube of ICs for less than $5 and get it done in less than 2 weeks.
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:( It's expensive, I'm aware. That is the price we pay to ship to you. Some places, particularly in AU, are extremely expensive to ship to, and we sometimes get hit with an additional "outside delivery zone" fee that frequently doubles our cost that we do not pass on to the customer. Not sure why smallbear is higher than us for same services (are cart contents roughly the same?), but maybe their rates are worse than ours.

We currently do not offer the less expensive USPS(/national carrier) service outside USA and Canada anymore. Delivery times were all over the place (between 1 week and 12 weeks). Understandably frustrating for customers, and us too. "Lost" packages almost always got delivered (at the pace of a crawl), but its not the impression we want customers to have on us.

Ultimately, dependability and customer experience became the priority so we only ship via FedEx and UPS outside USA/Canada. It's expensive for you because it's expensive for us, and I really am sorry for that. But, I'd rather offer an expensive label that gets delivered timely than offer a cheap service that I constantly need to answer to, and FedEx and UPS rarely let us down. We definitely lose customers because of that, but we had to decide what was ultimately important for us.

And that's my excuse. Cheers.
 
StompBoxParts said:
:( It's expensive, I'm aware. That is the price we pay to ship to you. Some places, particularly in AU, are extremely expensive to ship to, and we sometimes get hit with an additional "outside delivery zone" fee that frequently doubles our cost that we do not pass on to the customer. Not sure why smallbear is higher than us for same services (are cart contents roughly the same?), but maybe their rates are worse than ours.

We currently do not offer the less expensive USPS(/national carrier) service outside USA and Canada anymore. Delivery times were all over the place (between 1 week and 12 weeks). Understandably frustrating for customers, and us too. "Lost" packages almost always got delivered (at the pace of a crawl), but its not the impression we want customers to have on us.

Ultimately, dependability and customer experience became the priority so we only ship via FedEx and UPS outside USA/Canada. It's expensive for you because it's expensive for us, and I really am sorry for that. But, I'd rather offer an expensive label that gets delivered timely than offer a cheap service that I constantly need to answer to, and FedEx and UPS rarely let us down. We definitely lose customers because of that, but we had to decide what was ultimately important for us.

And that's my excuse. Cheers.
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fair call.
idk, the customer should have the choice for economy postage with the caveat that you can’t be responsible for the carriers failures.
madbean has an interesting policy where he’ll give benefit of doubt to customer on first lost shipment, but on the second you’re own your own. and that’s acceptable.

it really doesn’t matter how long it takes, especially when most of us have build backlogs up to the eyeballs.
and whether you go for budget, economy, tracked, whatever, it always takes minimum 2-3 weeks to get anything here anyway, so it doesn’t matter.
i get that USPS has its problems sometimes, sure i’ve been stung before, but most of us would rather have the option to accept that risk than be forced to use a premium/expensive option, that’s all :)
 
StompBoxParts said:
:( It's expensive, I'm aware. That is the price we pay to ship to you. Some places, particularly in AU, are extremely expensive to ship to, and we sometimes get hit with an additional "outside delivery zone" fee that frequently doubles our cost that we do not pass on to the customer. Not sure why smallbear is higher than us for same services (are cart contents roughly the same?), but maybe their rates are worse than ours.

We currently do not offer the less expensive USPS(/national carrier) service outside USA and Canada anymore. Delivery times were all over the place (between 1 week and 12 weeks). Understandably frustrating for customers, and us too. "Lost" packages almost always got delivered (at the pace of a crawl), but its not the impression we want customers to have on us.

Ultimately, dependability and customer experience became the priority so we only ship via FedEx and UPS outside USA/Canada. It's expensive for you because it's expensive for us, and I really am sorry for that. But, I'd rather offer an expensive label that gets delivered timely than offer a cheap service that I constantly need to answer to, and FedEx and UPS rarely let us down. We definitely lose customers because of that, but we had to decide what was ultimately important for us.

And that's my excuse. Cheers.
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I have purchased 100's of packages using usps first class international & the only one's that didn't arrive weren't sent in the first place.

that's my 2 cents! Cheers
Australia 6063
 
music6000 said:
I have purchased 100's of packages using usps first class international & the only one's that didn't arrive weren't sent in the first place.

that's my 2 cents! Cheers
Australia 6063
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It's not that the packages don't arrive. People report the package as lost because they take so long then Stompbox Parts ends up sending a replacement out and the customer receives the original order after the replacement order is already on the way. I totally understand them not using that cheap service. I would have removed it as an option too.
 
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