Better Business Bureau complaints against Washington State-based companies VoodooMan Switches and Black Label Switches are resonating; musicians are sounding off about late or undelivered footswitches, pedals and acoustic equipment.

Most complainants also cite unreturned phone calls and emails after products are purchased from voodoomanswitches.com or blacklabelswitches.com.

Though VoodooMan Switches has been responsive to some BBB complaints, 40 of 53 complaints remain unanswered. To date, BBB serving Alaska, Oregon and Western Washington has recorded 261 inquiries on VoodooMan in 2012—surpassing the 221 inquiries received in 2011 and 156 in 2010. Black Label Switches has four unanswered complaints and 77 inquiries since April 2012.

While the equipment is the bait, the business name is the switch; James Britt is believed to be the owner of both companies.

When searching for amplifiers and other sound gear:

• Boost search efforts. Listen to other customers; research business names, Web addresses and phone numbers in search engines to read reviews.
• Turn down high volumes. Be wary if companies have excessive complaints.
• Listen to instincts. Missing licensing records and privacy policies are blaringly obvious turn-offs.
• Back-peddle. Hang on to order confirmations and pay by credit card, in case purchases need to be disputed.

Sound off if it doesn’t seem right. Voice complaints at bbb.org, ftccomplaintassistant.gov and ic3.gov.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 20th, 2012 at 2:48 pm and is filed under alert, Life, scam, Tips. Tags for this post: acoustic equipment, BBB, Better Business Bureau of Southern Arizona, Black Label, footswitch, pedal, Tucson, VoodooMan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.