discogs marketplace?

Yes. In my experience prospective buyers can be absolute dicks about international postage quotes.

Never had any trouble with that. Some do balk at the price, but no one's ever been rude about it.

I've never had that problem either, although I do restrict international sales to the EU, USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. But I've processed hundreds of international orders, and never once had a buyer take issue with the shipping charge.

Just started selling on Discogs, and have noticed an annoying trend of buyers not posting any feedback. I've tried putting a 'please leave feedback so I know it's arrived safely, etc' message in my 'Marked as Shipped' messages, and also a hand-written note inside packages. What's up with this?

the CEO of Australia's postal service raised his own salary to be ten times that of the Prime Minister in 2016. Postage prices did not remain stable between 2014 and 2017.

(when the above was revealed, after months of fighting FOI requests, he resigned and got an $11M payout.)

xpost re feedback: I've processed just over 1300 orders and had feedback left for just over 800, so that's a 61% response rate. Before I started, I "sold" one item to a friend who I'd asked to leave feedback, so that I could begin with a 100% score rather than "new seller" status.

advice please! i sold a record to someone in canada in february but it seems to have got lost in the mail somewhere (canadian customs office by the looks of things). i've just put in a claim for it with UK royal mail - would you folk issue a refund at this stage or should i wait until my claim has been processed? total cost inc postage was £65, royal mail say it could take up to 90 days for the claim to be processed.

Domestic shipping are troublesome enough getting claims filled -- i avoid "International" sales altogether. I would not issue any refund before the process finishes its due course. If you're worried about a poor rating from the buyer, i would recommend you stay in constant contact with them even if there is no further info to share -- and do the same with the claims dept as the 90-day deadline approaches.

Do you have any terms in your shipping rates, like untracked freight at buyers risk? Has the buyer requested a refund yet?

I've currently got a parcel sitting with a courier company because the buyer wasn't home to receive the goods but hasn't gone to pick it up. He's made no contact with me though so i'm not sure what's going on. It could even be a similar issue with the parcel being undelivered and then sitting with a local mail centre before slowly being redirected back to you.

Just started selling on Discogs, and have noticed an annoying trend of buyers not posting any feedback. I've tried putting a 'please leave feedback so I know it's arrived safely, etc' message in my 'Marked as Shipped' messages, and also a hand-written note inside packages. What's up with this?

― nerve_pylon, Sunday, March 25, 2018 1:30 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I do enough business both buying and selling that I only leave positive feedback if the seller does something beyond the call of duty: item arrives faster than expected, seller actually undergrades condition (this one's rare), was willing to bundle / accept an offer.

I don't leave buyers feedback unless they don't pay. The way I see it is: you bought something, you pay for it, I send it, end of transaction. You want a medal for paying for the thing you bought?

also, it's obnoxious getting pestered to leave feedback. Not saying you're doing this but I'll often see a message on Discogs related to an item I sold a month prior and think "uh oh, the package was lost," only to find the message is just some dude asking me to leave feedback. Granted, it's like two seconds out of my day, but it's still annoying.

it helps both you and them to leave reciprocal feedback. people are definitely WAY laxer on Discogs than on eBay though. which I'll attribute to eBay being a seething mass of humanity, but Discogs largely self-selecting for uptight nerds who are already there getting loads of tiny details correct for no rewards whatsoever.

thanks for the advice bodacious/micarl. not too worried about negative feedback, just feel a bitt bad for the buyer tbh. i shipped the record tracked & signed and i can see that it got as far as the aeroplane but then the trail goes cold - still no record of it at all on the canada post tracking site. i guess keeping in touch with them is the key for now, even if i basically have zero fresh news.

I've currently got a parcel sitting with a courier company because the buyer wasn't home to receive the goods but hasn't gone to pick it up. He's made no contact with me though so i'm not sure what's going on. It could even be a similar issue with the parcel being undelivered and then sitting with a local mail centre before slowly being redirected back to you.

lol i have had this happen before. someone paid me £12 to have a £3 record sent to them in germany. then they missed the delivery and never picked it up from the post collection place in the two weeks that it was held there. then it got flown all the way back here to me and it was only the day before it reached me again when they sent me a message to ask where it was :\

Not leaving feedback is a bit of a dick move imo. If everyone did that people would either have 0% or 100%.

Varg will be pleased
https://blog.discogs.com/en/top-30-most-expensive-items-sold-in-discogs-marketplace-for-february-2018/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=dashboard&utm_campaign=Top_30_2018_04_05

24. Burzum – Burzum
Sold for $1666.00
Label: Deathlike Silence Productions Format: LP, Album, RP Country: Norway Released: 1992
Genres: Rock Styles: Black Metal

xp this thread has prompted me to go and leave feedback for the buyer who bought a CD from me 2 weeks ago, they were a new user and had no feedback at all.

questions:

what do you call those arc-shaped wear lines around the grooves? you know those whitish marks - is there a shorthand name for those?

if a record has those but it plays just fine without any issues, what would you normally grade it at?

i hate them btw, they make a record look horrible and i normally avoid buying that shit

You mean where it's wear to the groove itself? We call that "groove wear," it's definitely worth mentioning (also worth mentioning that it sounds ok if it has it) but you'll probably lose some customers by being honest.

As for grading I don't know, maybe drop it a grade but mention "plays VG+" with specific mentions of times it doesn't.

VG+ or whatever

i think i've always thought that groove wear was more wear inside the groove rather than that abrasion you get on the tops of the groove if the cartridge has been rubbing on the record (oh the days of overloading the arm with pennies when i was a kid, oops). i guess it applies to both though?

abrasion you get on the tops of the groove if the cartridge has been rubbing on the record (oh the days of overloading the arm with pennies when i was a kid, oops)

I would specifically detail this in the listing.

haha maybe not! am not selling any of the terrible records i trashed as a teenager btw just to clarify, that stuff went in the bin years back

Btw today was a banner day for me on discogs cos I actually sold a herb alpert album. To someone in the US in fact - is there a shortage of herb over there or something?

That is hilarious. Herb Alpert records make up abt 40% of U.S. dollar bins

I figure they’ll refuse it entry at border control tbh

Was it the one with Janet Jackson? That song's a jam, but even so it's still a dollar bin LP.

no it was 'rise' from 1979 which is the one with this bad boy on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaeCdq--puk

the title track is pretty nice too imo, but i'm sure he could've bought a dozen copies of it for what he paid in postage

Fun thing about working in a record store is when I go to list new vinyl stuff and find that now it's becoming common for the median price for sealed copies to be $5-10 below our cost. So if you own a record store... just never have backstock on new vinyl. Or just don't deal in new vinyl at all. Bottom's dropping out imo.

do you think that's because people are selling at a loss, or are they getting the records for less somehow?

What kind of titles would be good examples?

Record store day exclusives, mainly

It's selling at a loss I'm 99% sure.

Yeah those RSD titles are prime deep discount territory tbh because everyone over-orders but we're also trying to unload some kind of generic record store fodder like Black Keys, Brian Jonestown Massacre, a lot of 2nd tier punk reissues... stuff where we can sell at cost if necessary but we're small and order on a scale where if we start cutting prices below cost it's going to hurt.

lol look at the sold history for the Elliott Smith "Heaven Adores You" soundtrack

https://i.imgur.com/wYf6rah.jpg

Back to the shelf with ye

(cost $23/list $35 btw)

but but but wait it gets worse those $7.13 listings are all from "collectors-choice" which is a shell account for alliance entertainment which is likely the one stop distributor that sold you guys the record for $23 wholesale in the first place

Collectors Choice have p good price and a very reasonable at shipping LPs to the UK IME

There's a lot of that happening: big distros like Alliance selling stuff on the internet at cost (or below, loss leader style) and undercutting the very people they're ostensibly distributing to. I suspect a lot of these high volume dealers you see selling new stock on eBay and Amazon--moviemars, rarewaves, importcds, etc--are these so-called shell accounts for (I assume) WEA, Red, UMG, etc. This is, of course, totally fucked up.

listings are all from "collectors-choice" which is a shell account for alliance entertainment which is likely the one stop distributor that sold you guys the record for $23 wholesale in the first place

Didn't even know they were connected. This game rotten as fuck, total stink-ass

A certain well-known Dylan bootleg box set seems to have circumvented the "no boots" policy by being filed under the artist's real name (also the name which appears on the box set).

xp pretty sure "siren records" is another front here in this example:

https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/10518120?ev=rb

just bought the LP version of the "Smack My Crack" compilation. The cheapest copy in the US was $50 plus shipping. I got a copy shipped from Germany for $15 total. WTF, America?

I forget what the spoken word quotient is on that album, but maybe Germans are less keen on listening to poetry in English?

It's likely that when the US seller priced their copy, there were fewer listed and the $50 amount was comparable to the cost of the other listed copy + shipping from EU + a few bucks off the top to account for convenience of not having to wait 3 - 4 weeks to get the record in a flimsy fucking paper envelope that European sellers like to use.

To be fair, it's really only the British sellers that use those horrible paper envelopes, like that will protect the records. I specifically request stiff cardboard boxes now, otherwise you're going to pay for a NM copy of Sheila Take A Bow and it's going to show up with bent corners and you're going to sit there on the floor and run your finger over the crease and then start to reflect on every poor choice you've ever made in life.

the median Discogs price is $11.50

I repeat, WTF America

also I know y'all love to complain about European shipping (and I have seen some second hand horror stories) but I have never had any issues and Germans in particular seem to be great at packaging (lol, xpost, yes UK can be sketchy)

paper envelopes? nah mate, we’ve moved on from that

Wow. pic.twitter.com/mnY0WM7tPR

— michael tanner (@michaeljtanner) May 10, 2018