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October 2024 by Mohishka Lalwani
I visited the Music and Arts store in Redmond. Two days prior, I had my initial interaction with Kevin over the phone. He provided excellent customer service by guiding me through the app to reserve the instrument. He even went above and beyond by contacting another store to check for the availability of the book and reserving it for me. All of this was accomplished during a busy time at the store, as I could hear other customers in the background.
When I arrived to pick up the instrument, it had been tuned and prepared, thanks to Spencer, who also assisted me with a quick and efficient checkout process.
Both Kevin and Spencer demonstrated exceptional customer service skills. I highly recommend this store for anyone seeking musical instruments or accessories.
Best regards,
Mohishka
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October 2024 by Pawan Kumar
Did not offer the same promotion which Bellevue store was offering. The store rep was helpful but asked me to come next day to talk to manager for promotion.
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August 2024 by Brigid Choi
I don't know how to feel about this place. The main problem is the staff. Sometimes they seem pretentious and conceited (unfortunately common within the music community), sometimes they seem overly sensitive so that I'm in an awkward position where I'm suddenly on the defensive, sometimes they seem confused about what they can do and what they have, and sometimes they just seem like they don't want to work and they're just trying to find a reason to say that they can't help so that they don't have to work. I also don't know how appropriate this is, but I have a suspicion that this is somewhat affected by gender, just because the staff member acted TOTALLY differently with male customers than with me. I have faith in their products and inventory, but I just don't like working with these people, so I don't like going into the store or even calling them.
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April 2024 by H K
Great service! Spencer helped me a lot when I had trouble with a new Cello. I can’t thank him enough for all his efforts. I found the whole staff very professional and friendly, we’ll definitely come back to M&A Redmond when we need a cello for my son.
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April 2024 by Deshna Shah
Really poorly managed business, staff is courteous when they're talking on the phone but never followed thru. They had to cancel two of my child's lessons. They were supposed to adjust the bill and I was assured that they will confirm. I had to follow up multiple times to get a confirmation.I had adjusted my schedule to accomodate their times and they scheduled another kid for my child's lesson. Just too many oopsies. Unfortunately, that is not the way to handle a business. We stopped lessons with them. I wouldn't recommend this business. We really liked the teacher but the store management can really learn to run business better.
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March 2024 by Vera Tarasevich
During a recent visit to your Redmond store with my son, who's keen on learning drums, we were assisted by Riley. His guidance through the selection of drum sets was incredibly helpful, offering insights tailored for beginners. Riley also introduced us to a offer of a free first lesson. We left feeling very satisfied and grateful for the great service.
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January 2024 by Liubov Davidova
I could rent my daughter's clarnet, and buy all of the needed materials for it.
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November 2023 by わわ
I really love this store.
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October 2023 by Life Without Music Would Bb
Deplorable working conditions due to many reasons.1) Very poorly managed business all around. My former boss proudly and randomly announced to me one day that he got out of a felony.Yes, a felony. Knowing how agressivly he blocked my way out of the back storage area by the cellos on July 21, 2022, I'm pretty sure I can guess how serious of an offence he got out of. (Spencer refused to do his job adequately that day and blamed me for being unable to do mine perfectly in result). How does such a hostile environment support my ability to give out quality lessons? It didn't and that's why I eventually quit. I regret not quitting on the spot that day though because this wouldn't be the last time Spencer was agressive to me or refused to do his job adequately. I am an experienced musician and was a long term employee of the store. Spencer had been there for a couple months at the time. By that time, the store was on its 5th manager in 4 years. Still, his hostility was unacceptable and it made it impossible for me to continue my shift. I chose to leave for the day. It was extremely unfair for my students to lose out on their lessons all because my boss refused to hold up his end of the job. I also quit because my boss was usually fine with allowing a brass teacher down the hall practice loudly by himself with his door wide open during my lessons but I wasn't allowed to keep my door ajar to cool off in the summer during my lessons. I had my door rudly shut by the guitar teacher even though he wasn't teaching a lesson and my door was barely open to cool the room off. There was no way I could concentrate on teaching with such hostility and noise going on around me.2). Inadequate pay for the teachers. When I signed up for my position as a teacher 5 years ago, I was paid $40/ hour for my efforts. The store only keeping $20/hour of the $60 they charged in total for lessons (I did not set my rates, I technically worked for the store, not myself). This is less than half the going rate for most private music teachers but still better than what I earned when I quit my job earlier this year. The company decided to slash the music teachers' pay even further to just $15/ hour base rate. We did receive a $10 bonus for each student we taught but it was only given to us if the boss felt like it and proper records were kept (which they often weren't). I had a hunch that I wasn't receiving my bonus most of the time because even with nearly 40 students, I made far less in total than I calculated and deserved for that amount of hours. $15/ hour base pay plus a $10 bonus for two students I'd teach in the hour is $35/hour if my math is correct. So basically, I was only making slightly more money teaching 40 students in 2023 than I did teaching 20 students in 2019. After you factor everything in. Yes, it was as confusing as it sounded to keep track of what you deserved and I'm pretty sure I was short changed. I couldn't clarify with Spencer on what I deserved because again, poor record was kept. For example, if a student cancelled 2 hours before the lesson, I was supposed to be paid in full because of the 24/hr cancellation policy. However, if someone documented this incorrectly and said that the student did cancel 24 hours in advance, I'd lose out on money I deserved. And there was absolutely no easy way to tell on their end that I deserved that money even if I documented it.3) Inadequate heating and air conditioning systems. It would be 80F+ in my room while I tried to teach during the summer. I brought my complaints up to my boss many times and he did little to help some days, completely ignoring my requests at times and agressivly making excuses as to why it was my fault for the system malfunctioning. Other days, he'd give me a more practical excuse as to why the AC or heating wasn't working but nonetheless, he still gave out excuses and only on rare occasions did he actually listen to my reasonable and polite requests to have the temperature adjusted to a more comfortabl
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September 2023 by Wilson Lee
They have a good selection of instruments and accessories. The lesson quality can vary considerably from instructor to instructor.
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September 2023 by Jorge Reyes
The store attendant was very courteous and had a very nice attitude.
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May 2023 by A P
I'm a former employee: Do NoT work here. For starters, the music teachers are chronically under paid (The store charged $60/hr lessons, my take home of that was only $35/hr, IF I was given my SPIFFS correctly. I don't believe I always was, so then my pay was only $15-25/hr. Vastly less than what most private teachers make which is usually close to $100/hr. When COVID hit, the store slashed everyone's pay from a full set $40 an hour with no spiff existing then, to just $15/ hr base pay plus a $10 spiff per student taught. Head spinning yet? Yup, mine too. :/ I believe I was not given my full spiffs since my income should have been close to $3000/month given how many students I had. I taught about 40 students per week which most of those were 30 min sessions. At $15/ hr plus two total $10 spiffs for two students taught in an hour (total $35/hr) I should have been making about $700/week and $2800/month. My largest paycheck here was $2200 and that was with about 20 hours of lessons per week. Having to rely on my spiff being properly calculated and honestly submitted is not a good business model and leaves lots of room for dishonest shortchanging. So, if you work here, prepare to keep diligent, confusing track of every dime you deserve and prepare for a hassle and battle or lame excuses if you believe you've been short changed. I also felt very underappreciated here and full-time teachers like myself were also chronically over worked with only my one, unpaid vacation in the 5 years I worked here. Which I had to fight for and "qualify" for, too. My other "vacations" were when I was admitted to the hospital for two weeks at a time dealing with my failing health, largely resulting from how inhumane the working conditions were here. Minimal other benefits as well and the AC doesn't work well in the practice rooms, reaching close to 80 in them during the sunny days. I asked about the broken AC many times over two years and no, it WASN'T fixed. The rules of the road here were also different for the other teachers compared with me in that they could practice loudly with their doors open as loud as they wanted on a brass instrument, but my door was rudely shut closed during a violin lesson. I quit despite trying to hang in there for the last two years and that teaching was my passion. I wanted to see my students graduate high school and make it to Julliard or the Seattle Symphony, but that's not happening now since my health deteriorated so much from the poor treatment I often received here, I just couldn't continue. I deserved better. My boss let my students down and has blamed me for everything and he's taking ZERO responsibility for his yelling at me in July and on Wednesday, trying to minimize it as much as possible. No, I don't believe I told HR about him yelling at me on July 21, 2022 (he claims I did tell HR) while blocking my way out of the back storage area by the cellos. This traumatized me. If HR knew how badly Spencer treated me that day, he'd have been fired. There's no simple way to contact HR about such issues either. The boss's yelling wasn't respectful in the least and it resulted in my needing to call the police because he was that aggressive. Not a humane way to treat your best employee with the most students out of everyone in the store. He also condemned me for allowing a little boy to look at a cello in that same storage area one day in the most disrespectful way by saying rudely, no students in the storage area. Despite my hard work and efforts to meet everyone's needs, my best was not good enough here. My amazing students were the reason I kept going, I didn't want to quit and leave them high and dry. Unfortunately, I couldn't take the abuse from Spencer anymore. Or the enslaving size of my paycheck. I do appreciate that he helped me with my flat tire, but that doesn't make up for him being rude and abusive towards me many, many times. Especially about the van in the picture. It was parked blocking tra
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March 2023 by Joseph Larrabee
I've had a couple great experiences with Spencer at the Redmond location. He's super knowledgable, patient, and kind. He took the time to educated me about the differences between guitars, the sound they create and why. He also walked me through the importance of a basic setup imparting the knowledge upon me as he did so.His customer service is amazing, and I will certainly be a repeat customer.
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January 2023 by Sergey E
Store was closed at 4pm but it is supposed to be opened by 5pm as the sign on the door says.
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November 2022 by sami adam
poor customer service + be prepared to wait in line forever to be served poorly with an attitude.
