Just a PSA - Instagram is promoting a fake guitar center sale. The website looks very similar to guitar center. However, it is a scam. You can spot it by checking the URL. The real website is guitarcenter.com. The SCAM website is guitarcenterofficialus.com.

Guitar Center's rep said they're aware of the scam and are working on it.

I don't work for GC. I didn't fall for the scam either. Just wanted to make others aware.

Last year I bought a MIM Strat and twice got open box guitars one with a ding and one with a chip on the fretboard. Has anyone recently bought a new guitar from GC and actually got a new guitar I’m considering giving GC another try hoping that they have changed their ways.

Yesterday I went to the GC near my place and saw a guitar thatvI have been eying on clearance. The actual price is $949 but the clearance price is $600, so it's an excellent deal. Although I didn't like the color, that's secondary for me since I loved the sound. Now, I am sceptical to buy it with no return policy - basically for having it checked by my luthier and the option to return it if it has any major issues. Anyone with any experience or advice with this?

Yesterday I got an email allegedly from Guitar Center promoting a "Fathers Day Sale" with discounts as high as 70%.

Unlike so many such online sales where that 70% typically applies to things like bow rosin and discontinued guitar polish, this one promotes hard-to-resist discounts on popular stuff.. like a PRS Private Stock Special Semi-Hollow Electric Guitar for $3,279 (a $8700 discount) and a Fodera Monarch 4 fretless for $1665 (a $3885 discount).

In the latter case, the site alleges that it had over 500 of this particular Fodera model in stock when Fodera only makes a few hundred basses per year across all models and the factory is back-ordered for two years. Why would Guitar Center heavily discount a bass that it could probably sell for more than MSRP in 20 minutes on Reverb?

It's a scam running out of China.

The email pushes you to a Chinese-registered domain, https://guitarcenter-us.shop. If you were to buy something from the site the recipient would almost certainly be a party you've never heard of and which will never respond to your "Where's my stuff??" inquiries.

From what I can see, they scraped Guitar Center's (huge) web site, replaced the prices with ridiculous discounts of 70% and then hijacked the e-commerce component for themselves.

It's an ambitious scam and one that even had my greed fighting with common sense. Guitar Center has been in troubled financial shape since 2020. What if Guitar Center needed to raise a mountain of cash quickly to comply with a bankruptcy court order, blah blah? No. Just no.

I showed the ad to a guitar player who is friends with some guy in Guitar Center management who told him that it's a scam that's popped up before.