I called one of the Texas locations because they had an older Variax 700 there, used, that I was thinking about buying. I got the dude on the phone, and he says, "damn man, we were just trying to sell that this past weekend, and we discovered that it doesn't work."
I actually walked HIM through a couple of things, asked him if the batteries were fresh, etc, and I asked if they had the footswitch/direct box there, he said "no".
So, they gave that person money/merchandise, and took this thing in, obviously not testing it, because it doesn't work. That makes that guitar useless. It's on their site for $474.00 or something.
I was considering offering them like $100 for it and toying with it myself. If they fix it themselves, they *may* actually break even on it, but probably not. WTF?
In an unrelated story, something very similar happened at a different location. I called that one about 7 months ago, about a Godin LGX that they had there. VERY similar story, the dood told me that the input jack is just hanging off the guitar, the knobs are missing, and the piezo system doesn't work.
