Murphy's Music In Irving Is Stealing My Money

This is a bit off topic. If you'd rather read about politics or other exciting stories, you might skip this post.

Some of you know that I'm an amateur musician. I play semi-regularly at various sessions and open mics in the area. I've had offers for paying gigs, but need to take the time to learn more songs to fill the time slot.

Anyway, I bought a Tascam US-144 back in January, from Murphy's Music. When I brought it home. My system had some serios problems with the drivers that came with it. I upgraded the drivers, firmware and the software that came with it. Simply plugging in the device, without using it, caused Adobe Flash player to crash when browsing Tascam's web site. It's clear that there are some serious problems with the driver.

I contacted Tascam's tech support. They assured me that their drivers are bug free. I could tell be their revision history and notes that they'd fixed a series of issues with their drivers, so I wasn't convinced. The suggestions they gave me were to get a new computer or change the OS. This system is an AMD Athlon 64 with XP Pro 64. Actually the first tech said he'd research the issue and call me back, but never has. The second tech saidthat perhaps the VIA chipset in my machine can't handle the high performance that audio requires. I find this odd as it handles video and audio together, from other devices just fine.

I had intended to get a laptop anyway. So I purchased a mid grade latop with a large hard drive to do field recordings with. It has Windows Vista Business on it. On this system, I can record 20 seconds of audio, then nothing. I have to reinstall the drivers and reboot to record more audio.

I returned the unit to Murphy's Music in Irving. The sales rep there tried to get it to work with my laptop and failed. He wrote up an order to exchange it for another product, but said they would have to order it.

I went back yesterday, (two week later), and got a bullshit story. They can't refund or exchange it, because Tascam has a no refund policy on hardware bundled with CuBase software. The rep said he was going to be out of town for a few weeks, I could check back then and see if anything has changed. I was closing to blowing up by then and left before I did something stupid.

So now Murphy's Music is stealing my money and keeping the unit. I don't have the time to take them to small claims court. So I don't think I have any redress. If i stole moeny from them, I'd go to jail, but being a business, Murphy's can steal my money and not lose anything but a customer.

I've been doing business with them for ten years and my grandfather was a steady customer of theirs when he was alive. But no more. The reputation of Murphy's Music in Irving has declined in the music community over the years, and now I know why.

At this point, I don't recommend that folks from them, or buy Tascam products bundled with Cubase, without trying it first to make sure it works for you. If it doesn't work with your equipment, you've just thrown your money away.