I was referred by Guitar Center to Sac Valley Guitar when I asked them about guitar lessons for my daughter. I scheduled a lesson and showed up to the location and I have to be honest, I wasn't sure I was at the right place. It is located in a somewhat rundown business complex. The decor inside leaves more to be desired and isn't very professional, but I always feel that it isn't necessarily about aesthetics, but quality teaching that matters, so I gave it a shot. The owner (Eric) was a very nice guy and I felt comfortable with him from the start. On top of teaching guitar, he is also a working musician in a band.
He taught my daughter guitar for about two years, and in that time, she did learn a lot about guitar playing and so I decided to started taking some lessons from him as well. At one point he pitched a music program sort of thing where he would pair my daughter up with a few other students around her age, and they would learn a few songs and he would take them into a studio environment to record the songs. It wasn't necessarily cheap, but it was a good learning experience for my daughter and I really did like Eric, so agreed. The program went well and my daughter learned about playing within a group as well as the recording process, so money well spent.
The problem occurred awhile after that. Since I was very comfortable with Eric and didn't have any plans to look elsewhere for lessons, I paid him for six months worth of lessons in advance. Not long after that, he pitched another program he had done in the past which was a "battle of the bands" sort of thing, where he would pair up students into numerous bands sharing a common drummer and then they would perform their songs live and a winner would be selected. Again, it sounded like a good learning opportunity for my daughter, so I signed her up. And again...it wasn't cheap.
About 4 weeks into the program, my daughter had still not performed with or had even met any of her band mates, which was concerning to me because performing live requires lots of rehearsal time. After a month and no actual rehearsals with any band mates, I started noticing how often Eric would need to cancel or reschedule lessons with us. This was because, as I mentioned before, Eric is a working musician and would often be on the road performing gigs.
After about the second or third reschedule in a row, and having to see the disappointed look on my daughters face, I decided to pull the plug on the lessons. I contacted Eric to explain that I can't have my daughter sit in limbo on the lessons and also the battle of the bands program and that for now, we were going to cancel the remaining lessons and the battle of the bands program (which never really happened anyways because she never played with anyone else during that time). I explained that it seemed to me his schedule was too busy right now and that perhaps at a later date, we could resume lessons. I asked for a refund of the battle of the bands program as well as the remaining months I had prepaid for regular lessons. Eric agreed and said he would refund the money soon.
I ended up having to hound him for nearly three weeks, almost every day for the refund, that never really came. In the end, he only refunded me $100 via Pay Pal (which was a fraction of the total refund).
To be honest, at that point I was exhausted and stopped asking for the remaining refund and as of right now, I still have not received the remainder of the refund and it has been over a year. I ended up chalking the whole thing up to a learning experience...do not prepay for anything, even if you feel comfortable about it. Eric is a nice guy, a very competent instructor, and I believe his hectic schedule simply got away from him. But to not make right and give a full refund of hard earned money to somebody you did not provide the agreed upon services to is unacceptable and is the reason for the bad review...even after all this time. read more
