Peal Guitars

Beware of Buying Guitars Direct from Ye-Il International

Are considering buying Peal Guitars directly from the company that supplies them wholesale, Ye-Il International of Seoul, South Korea? If so let me share my unpleasant experience in dealing with them, and the owner Mr. Un Sub (US) Kwon. Please learn from my rip-off experience so you don't throw time and money down the drain like I did!

Long story short: in January, 2009 I ordered and pre-paid nearly $1700 for 18 Peal acoustic and electric guitars via wire transfer to the account of Ye-Il International. The agreement with Mr US Kwon was that the guitars would be produced in the company's affilated factory in China and shipped to me in the U.S. in early March 2009.

On September 7, 2009 I still not have not received any part of the order, or any documentation on the status of the order. To make matters worse, Mr. Kwon stopped responding to my communications in July 2009 and has basically dropped out of sight. The order is overdue by 6 months, and Ye-Il International has apparently chosen to just give up on fulfilling the order and to cut all ties with me as a customer. I have paid in-full for the entire order and have nothing in return but broken promises.

It seems that Mr. Kwon and Ye-Il International have not acted in good faith, and instead engaged in some kind of scheme or scam to get me to send money to them. Whether they ever intended to deliver the guitars to me is unclear, but at some point they simply decided to just quit on me and keep my money. At the very least it is a clear breach of contract and they should promptly refund my money.

How a company can operate like this in a networked world and not expect that word will get around about their bad business practices is beyond me. My best guess is that at some point Mr. Kwon decided to exit his Peal Guitars business and doesn't care about it's reputation and integrity. It's a shame, as I heard that at some point in time they were very good value guitars, which is why I wanted to buy some in the first place!

My advice for anyone considering importing goods from Asia or anywhere else is to do extremely thorough due diligence, and to not pre-pay the supplier, unless you are willing to lose that upfront payment. In my case the dollar amount lost is significant but not huge. Just be careful of import / export scams and dishonest suppliers.

Even though this is a bit off-topic, I wanted to make these facts transparent for others considering a similar transaction to import Peal guitars directly from Ye-Il International. Beware of doing business with Mr. Kwon and Ye-Il, and if you do prepare to be disappointed.

Additional information:

Read additonal details on the danger of buying Peal Guitars from Ye-Il.

Read about yet another Peal Guitar ripoff by US Kwon of Ye-Il International

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