16th Sep 2026
True Story
100% True Story
Last week, a lovely chap dropped off his guitar for a service.
At some point between dropping it off and returning to collect it, he decided he needed a case.
So he did what has become the default human reflex: opened his phone and ordered one from a massive online warehouse in Germany.
By the time he came back to us to collect for his newly serviced guitar, the courier had already managed to lose his lovely new case.
And so began the usual soul-crushing cycle of tracking numbers, automated web-chat bots, and general international logistics despair.
Here’s the bit that made us want to gently rest our foreheads against a brick wall:
He had been standing in a guitar shop twice that week!
And roughly ten feet from where he was telling us this tragic tale was a storeroom full of guitar accessories including:
Hard cases and gig bags. New ones. Second-hand ones. Tweed ones. Black ones. Grey ones - by the bloody dozen.
Starting at twenty quid.
He could have tried his guitar in three, four or five of them, chosen the best fit, paid less than he’d spent ordering from Germany and walked out with it four minutes later.
No tracking app.
No customs depot.
No courier playing football with it.
No shouting “HUMAN” at a web-chat bot.
We’ve all become conditioned to believe that tapping a screen is automatically the quickest and easiest way to buy something, when in actual fact the thing you need could be 5 ten minutes down the road.
Zero international shipping miles.
Zero risk of a courier smashing - or losing it.
Humans are like water or electricity—opting the route that feels like the quickest, path-of-least-resistance; which we have been conditioned to think is usually found by tapping a screen.
But global logistics is not a magical portal; it is a chain of diesel vans, sorting facilities, and human error.
So before you summon a piece music gear from across three borders and an ocean, just check around around.
Your local independent shop isn't just a place to pick up cables and plectrums; it’s a fully stocked establishment that happens to be down the road, run by actual human beings who will happily hand you the item today - or hand deliver it to you on their way home.
Save your fuel.
Save your sanity.
Check your local retailers first - before there's none of us left.