My Crazy Tube Circuits Venus Tube Driver has finally landed after quite the adventure

The Journey!

So this quest started at the tail end of January when the Venus was first teased at the NAMM show. I contacted Christos straight after the show and requested that I be fully in on the launch. I cover most every CTC launch - while typically it’s mostly just from the materials that Christos sends me - which are extensive.

I thought I had indicated that I wanted to be in on an hands-on deep dive review - but I’ve since read my statements and my meaning wasn’t always crystal clear I must concede. So March rolled on and I was expecting to pay an invoice and get a Venus sent out to me - but Christos had already shipped that first batch out to his distributor and had none left for me. It turns out that Christos offloads all the fulfilment to his main distributor - Belgian outfit Face Mi. The only option I was given was to get a pedal from the second batch which would come around circa 3-4 weeks after the launch - which was way too far away for a resource like GPX - which is supposed to be on the bleeding edge of all things pedal!

I was kind of hoping that Christos would liaise with Face Mi and help arrange a pedal for me - which did not happen. Fortunately I know Niels at Face Mi - and immediately emailed him to see if he could help out. He did not reply to my email - so I phoned on the Monday and Niels said he would look into things for me - which presumably never happened as beyond the one phone call I initiated I never heard a word!

I was hoping that Niels / Face Mi could at the very least tell me which of their UK and European Dealers would be receiving stock imminently and which would be my best bet. The delay in response to my first email meant that I entirely missed out on the first batch that went into Andertons. And after I had not received any updates from Niels - I then came across what I thought was one in stock at my good friend Andy Ebsen’s Effekt Boutique. I immediately sprang for that, but 24 hours later there had been no further update or notification of shipping for that matter. I contacted Andy again - and he said he had initially been told that he would get the Venus on the day before I ordered from him - but was then later updated that the shipment was actually 3 weeks out. Andy of course refunded me immediately - while that sill left me in a precarious position.

I had been stalking all the UK CTC Dealers - Andertons, Windmill Guitars and Juno.co.uk - none of those had a listing in place when the Venus launched - while preorders did eventually go up much later that day. Juno.co.uk has a useful feature where you can get notified whenever something comes into stock - so I activated that email alert which turned out to be my saviour. The alert arrived around twenty past 2 last Friday saying that the Venus was in stock - and I had managed to secure one within a matter of minutes (seconds even!) - I must have reacted with split-second timing - and surely have never been faster or more timely!

On the Juno order form there was a ’Special Instructions’ box - and I informed Juno that I was attending the London Synth and Pedal Expo over the whole weekend and please don’t ship prematurely - make sure you ship such that the package arrives on the Monday!

Turns out that Juno.co.uk are either illiterate or do not read their own ’Special Instructions’ info box - and the pedal was instead shipped out immediately for an overnight Saturday delivery - coinciding with when I was at the Pedal Expo!

So I had to go to Royal Mail and change the delivery slot - which I thought I had rearranged for this last Monday I have an email confirmation as proof of that. I then received some packages from Royal Mail on the Monday - but the Venus was not among those. Checking on the tracking details - they said the package was simply being ’Held / Pending’ seemingly with no intention to be released in a timely manner. 

I phoned Royal Mail at around 2 o’clock on the Monday and asked why my Package was still being held and not released for delivery - they could not offer any reasons but they determined that said package would be out in the van later said afternoon. So I checked online once more to see that nearly 3 hours later the status had not changed, and the package was still being held. I phoned once again (on hold for circa 90 minutes) and a Royal Mail Staffer once more told me that it would likely be delivered on that day - by 7 o’clock at the latest - which obviously did not happen!

In fact the very next day when I checked said package once more - it was still listed as ’Held / Pending’!!! I phoned once more (60 mins+ call holding) and spoke to the Royal Mail idiot in in chief most likely - he offered no apology over the abject failure to deliver, and simply said he would be lodging another internal complaint on my behalf to go with the two that had been recorded the previous day. 

He went on and on about Royal Mail’s SLA’s - and how they had at least 10 days to deliver a package on a 24 service - and up to a month for the 48 service. Once upon a time those were hour markers - but are now just b.s. nonsense - bereft of any meaning. The only Royal Mail service that has any kind of timing guarantee and a rapid frame for resolution is ’Special Delivery. All other services are pretty much trash in their integrity and are entirely ’best-endeavour’ ’activities’ rather than proper professional legally bound commercial services. Subsequent governments have allowed the Post Office to behave in this manner - fully out of control most of the time, and just being constantly fined for late deliveries - which we the consumers end up paying for anyway!

And if any of you are still sending out pedals on 24 or 48 Royal Mail services it’s because you really don’t care about customer service and support!

So my Venus finally landed today ’Wednesday’ - and yes despite all that nonsense it was still kind of worth it - as Christos is onto a definite massive winner here - as exemplified by this pedal’s current unobtanium status.

Amusing note is that when I phoned Juno to complain about the premature despatch - they said a customer had been onto them about his purchase kind of glitching out. Seems like both of us entered the fray at around the same time - and I was just fractionally quicker with the transaction - I’m rarely lucky with those - more typically losing out at the final hurdle. Turns out Juno only ordered the one Venus in - and I had only managed to snag it because of my superior reaction time - literally by a split second!