Oddball

Hard to believe, but there are still spaces free for workshops with Irish concertina crack Aoghan Lynch at this year's Rhine Valley Irish Association Feis Ceol in Mollkirch (Alsace), during the coming weekend, 2-5 June 2006. A former REI "Young Musician of the Year", Aoghan's fast, joyful and highly musical play is quite a contrast to the sometimes rather laboured traditional styles. http://www.rvia-online.net/feisceol.htm Plenty of other instrument workshops during this event, incidentally.

Unreasonable? Irrational? I see nothing unreasonable about blowing the lid of a murky and chotic system marked by personal preference, misinformation and indifference. It's in the interest of everyone to be able to make informed, rational decisions before purchase. This can only occur if there is transparency, trust and committment to the truth on both sides. So I'm not going to win any friends by my stance. The fact is I feel cheated, and that regardless of what I say or do, Colin Dipper will hold to old habits unless someone blows the whistle. I've spent years in practice in the hope of a faster instrument, years in waiting, invested hours and days on carefully-phrased letters and phone calls. Nine tenths of this predominantly emotional investment is, given my current instrument, irrelevant. I am very, very angry indeed, so stand back, let the reply come and then perhaps I can get on with my life. Oddball.

These are the questions I expect answered by Colin Dipper or a spokesman. o How did a delivery time of 3-4 years grow to over 10 in the space of a decade? o How come I'm still at the back of the queue? o Why was I systematically lied to over delivery dates? o How did so many others (see old concertina.net mails) get new builds and renovations through before ealier-established buyers in your intake queue? o Why. despite many conversations on the telephone, do I still have no written confirmation? o Why, after so many years in the queue, have you assigned me no instrument number? o How many of your instruments are gathering dust on collectors shelves? o Why do you make no effort whatsoever to keep customers informed of the status of their orders? o Several others have in the meantime (off-line mails) reported inordinate waiting times. What is your action plan to get this instruments out? o When are you going to cap your order intake to deal with the backlog? o When am I getting the concertina I ordered and paid a deposit for? Commit, dammit. Oddball

Bingo. The crux of the matter. A couple of quotations direct (email) from the horses mouth. Try : "[...this year....] I have no after hours craft time for making specials". "I cannot offer fixed deadlines at the moment." Is this normal business? Well, a hint at transparency, even if way overdue... What should I read out of this? In the light of experience (my words) "the instument I have year for year encouraged you to expect in the next <production run / spring / early summer / year> will not, after all, arrive in the contracted form, nor will it arrive until sometime in the far distant future". Hopes diced. Numb, Dead. My thanks, therefore, for good advice : : "An order would be placed, with a deposit" - ok, seem to have been on the ball here. : "a reply should be received" :-)) : "confirmation of reciept of your deposit" :-)) :-))) : "expected delivery date" :-)) :-))) :-))) : "entitled to your money back" - After a decade of inflation? Depo on a 2nd hand Stagi.. : "you can place your order elsewhere" - Oh dear, seem to have blown this one. But then where is the ideal break-off point? 3 years? 5? 7? 10 or more? And then to a waiting list of how many years? Was 40 when I ordered, will be 50 this year.... What if I get Dippered again....? What is the concertina anyway? Sound fetishism? Pot-bellied balding myth? Smelly nostalgia, sado-patience-masochism, gushing, starry-eyed one-up-man-owner-ship? Other than the few meagre scratchings of a shared human aspiration, my own experience of it can be summed up in two words :"largely pointless" Nevertheless, I've invested many years of my life in it, and I have not the slightest intention of giving up. What really pisses me off is having someone thwarting my aspirations under the pretext of helping me to achieve them. I expect honesty, transparency and committment in such dealings, and so far all have been missing. No, it certainly is not a normal business transaction. Oddball

Hi all A hell of a topic for a first mail to the forum, but tt's been a truly grinding frustration to read the starry-eyed reports of concertinas delivered by Colin Dipper over the years. Many of these orders were placed long, long after mine. In retrospect, the only thing fast, timely and dependable about the order I placed with him almost 10 years ago have been his excuses. Has anyone else had a hard time getting a concrete, dependable committment (let alone an instrument) out of him? I badly need to share my misery, my anger and my frustration... Oddball.