After 50 years of business, Ridglea Music is closing its doors for good on Wed., June 30. Joe Fritz, who co-owns the place with his wife, Cheryl Fritz, say they never recovered from business lost during a long and drawn-out relocation from the Village at Camp Bowie to a retail space of roughly the same size (7,000 square feet) behind nearby Ridglea Theater. The Fritzes say their landlord claimed he had all of the right permits, but in actuality he did not. “This has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Joe said. “Moving a store and then ending up having to close it. This has been my life for almost 20 years, and I’ve loved every minute of it” –– the Fritzes bought Ridglea Music in 2001; Joe had begun working there in sales in 1991.
Ridglea Music is currently having a storewide clearance sale, with discount prices on guitars, amps, sheet music, and orchestral instruments.
Joe says he plans on staying involved with music, perhaps through a local charitable organization. Interacting with people was his favorite part of the job. “I loved dealing with customers,” he said. “And I enjoyed the fact that there was always something new happening. One minute, you’re selling a PA system, then you turn around, and you’re selling a band instrument or sheet music. It was always an interesting, fun job. It’s something that I’ve done my entire adult life. … We weren’t the ‘metal’ store. We weren’t Guitar Center. We did a lot of lessons. There were a lot of educational aspects to it.”
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I am not surprised about this. Over priced instruments, lousy repair jobs and horrible service is a few of the reasons why they are going out of business.
I am not surprised either! I agree with Eric, they are definitely over priced and I’ll add to that, they have very poor record keeping and poor customer service. I had a layaway there, I had a hemipalegic seizure and went to the hospital and missed 2 payments. I contacted them as soon as I could but they claimed they had no record of my layaway and claimed not to know me! I provided my receipts and then I was told ” Oh yeah, we canceled your layaway because it was too old” when I asked for my money back or to restart the layaway they said “it’s just your loss for taking too long”
I guess my $400+ dollars they kept wasn’t enough to keep them in business!!!! Quite frankly I’m glad they are going out of business so they can’t steal other peoples money like they did mine!!!!!
I have an order with them that I paid in full and never received. how do I get my money back?
go to the local news stations.4,5,8,11….shows your receipts and tell them whay has happened to you and that you need their help getting your money back. Even if they are going out of business they don’t want the bad publicity.
My Mother paid in cash for items she never received too. Maybe we can contact others for a class action law suit or criminal charges.
Joe also owes my daughter money for a trumpet hat he sold for her. Sounds like the owner is not the person he is portrayed in the article.
They had intermittent problems with service personnel, but they did do a great deal of good, efficient and honest business. Not paying consignments, fulfilling orders nor returning money for unbought layaway items, is just wrong. Wrongs should be corrected. From the six previous responses, however, this was not the norm. And, there are two sides to every story.
However, since they were in business for nearly 55 years, for the most part they must have done customers right, and probably wrote off many losses to theft, damage to instruments, and rented band and orchestral instrument customers disappearing without paying, as happened to us when we were in the business. When things go right, no one hears about it; people just keep coming back, until the economy runs dry enough to close it. Luxuries like the arts are always the first to go.
Response to Tony,
Yes it is a shame when a longtime business closes, BUT they still should have integrity, honesty, and do the right thing when it comes to refunds.
What does their losses have to do with a paying customer who paid over $2,000.00 cash, in advance, for a order and did not receive the merchandise or a refund. We did not even get a notice that the store was closing.
They should have at least contacted us to make some kind of arrangement for the refund, don’t you think!