discogs marketplace?

Far be it from me to praise eBay for anything, but now when you make on offer on an item, if the seller accepts it, the payment is immediately withdrawn from whatever payment method you have on file. I haven't yet enjoyed this feature as a seller, but I've bought a few things this way and I wish Discogs would implement something similar.

I don't get why people order things and don't pay for them. If I buy something, it's because I want the damn thing, so I always pay immediately because that's just common sense. This also leaves no time for buyer's remorse, which is I guess why people flake out on paying for the things they impulsively bid on in the wee intoxicated hours.

I turned off offers because my prices are already v low because I price things to sell.

I still had some cunt message me this week moaning because I had all 3 Mazzy Star albums on CD, and he said can you lower the prices because I could buy them all separate for less than you're selling them. I checked, and for all 3 I was the cheapest for all of them in the UK, and 2 of them were 50p cheaper if you bought them elsewhere, but for 1 I was the cheapest in the world.

I was at least somewhat vindicated when someone bought So Tonight Etc this week.

they were all priced £2.50 to £4. fucking cheapskate cunts. I assume they are just scammers who want to buy them as low as possible just to sell them on after

If discogs needs the money from those Ticketmaster-style "offers", they clearly don't have the money to pay more than 1 or 2 part-time programmers, who don't have time to implement your feature ideas because they're too busy trying to keep things from falling over.

but it's going to the USA so it probably won't arrive and the max I can claim from the Royal Mail is £20.

I assume some countries have a functioning mail system.

Do items sent to the US have a habit of not arriving? That surprises me

no tbh the US is fairly OK but my heart sinks every time I get an order outside the UK, I meant the UK mail system which is absolutely shit

I toy with just disabling every country but the UK on my shipping policies. Italy and Eastern Europe are particularly bad for this. just got a message from someone in Serbia asking where their CD is

I'm not sure if I've ever successfully sent CDs to eastern Europe tbh. couple of days ago I just cashed a refund cheque from Royal Mail from sending 10 CDs to Bulgaria which didn't turn up

I do wonder where all the stuff people order that doesn't arrive ends up.

I ordered a 28lb bag of cat litter and a 10lb bag of cat food a few weeks ago, and fucking Evri (used be called Hermes) somehow managed to lose it. where did it go? that's not a small package.

I've sent stuff all over the world, and less than 1% have gang awa'

Once, the buyer asked if I could send it to the country next door, as they were limited to how many foreign packages they were allowed per year. I was like hmm, but I did get a nice feedback 2 months later, so hey.

good overview

Discogs’ vibrant vinyl community is shattering

(Discogs declined to comment for this story.)

Many sellers who spoke with The Verge speculated, in line with the viral thread, that the company was trying to pump up its valuation for a potential sale. All of them, though, had the sense that Discogs was trying to increase its profit margins without necessarily offering any improvements to its product in return.

Far be it from me to praise eBay for anything, but now when you make on offer on an item, if the seller accepts it, the payment is immediately withdrawn from whatever payment method you have on file.

this isn't uniformaly true, or you have to turn something on to make it happen. I mean it's happened to me as a buyer several times and that's fine; but I have a book listed and someone made an offer, I accepted it, and then they just replied "sorry I got something else" and didn't pay and I had to relist. I sent them a message saying "making an offer is a commitment to buy" and they didn't even respond.

I hang out in a private FB group for record buying/selling and there is a guy in the group who will instantly block anyone who doesn't pay within, like, 30 minutes of claiming a record, I am not that hardcore but I like that he makes it well known as the default baseline

he might just give people 15 minutes, I should ask. ex-ILXor jaxon is on there!

i'm curious why Simonetti deleted that thread and why he's not consulted more for that article.

also good to see this issue mentioned by others: "the European seller, for example, had just been dealing with an issue with the platform’s refund button. “Discogs said it was PayPal’s fault, and PayPal said it was Discogs’ fault,” he says. “It caused stress for the buyers, and so I had to do direct refunds — which meant I was refunding not just what I made but Discogs’ and PayPal’s commissions as well, effectively losing money on the refund.”

sleeve which group is that? jaxon and I are in some fb vinyl collecting groups too

LPSM, are you on there?

"LP Swap Meet-Buy, Sell & Trade"

if not u should get jaxon to invite u

will do!

super good vibes altho everyone in the group hates FB and (to tie back in to the article above) one member is coding up an alternative website to eventually replace the group

for example, a friend of mine went to FB jail for posting a totally-not-obscene Hunx & His Punks LP cover in the group

yeah I basically only use FB to keep up with a tiny number of people and a few groups that I really enjoy, and everyon ehates the platform. likewise, with discogs, I regularly think "someone should build an alternative to this that runs better" but frankly, that is a shit ton of work to build something as a seller platform that is anywhere close to feature parity; why can't we just get this platform to listen to it's users? I don't even know who works at discogs. who is the leadership there? where is this place run from? it's a fucking mystery to me.

Ok it's owned by Zink Media, Inc in Beaverton OR. someone should go knock on their fucking door.

omg they are like next door to me! brb

It’s probably an irrational concern but I feel like at this point Discogs going away would crush the entire vinyl market to some degree (which is probably a good thing given current prices, although I have a hefty stack I need to unload before the whole thing implodes)

Kevin Lewandowski remains the CEO. 167 employees on linkedin. small company but it's pretty weird how secretive they are (or at least, non communicative)

TBH, generally speaking, I make more money on records when I sell them on ebay, so I dn't think it would obliterate that market, people would just sell on ebay. There are benefits to ebay listings too; easier to attach photos to your specific listing, larger user audience, etc. It's just less of a hassle to list stuff for sale on discogs.

I am now realizing I play weekly D&D with an employee, there have been a couple rounds of layoff recently but that's all I recall, maybe I can get some inside dirt

fuck s1monetti. He's fucked over a few of us over the years. Ask anyone on the old southern lord board

easier to attach photos to your specific listing

Actually, one of the things I prefer about Discogs over eBay is not having to take my own photos, though I will write in the Discogs description "photos upon request" if it's anything less than VG+. Of course, any time someone takes me up on that, they never, ever buy the record.

Listing records on eBay also takes a LOT longer, even if you use templates.

god I am so glad I never sell online anymore, it sounds like absolute hell these days

yeah I know there are past issues with him but that thread he had posted was still an interesting perspective and it's weird he deleted it.

Listing records on eBay also takes a LOT longer, even if you use templates.

yeah listing anything on ebay is really a fucking hassle. their form has a trillion fields, and the UX is just bad and hasn't improved one iota in at least 10 years, maybe longer. In fact it seems almost intentionally bad.

re: the deleted thread, even if the guy sucks a lot of people seem to agree with his critiques of Discogs

if I had to guess, he got a call from their lawyer and decided to play it safe

I bought a copy of the first SYR EP the other week, because it was crazy cheap - because the previous owner's ex-gf had scrawled a love note to him across the sleeve in sharpie (and also German), which tbh only made me want it more - and because the guy's postage, from Germany to the UK, was pretty cheap, like 6euro. He didn't send it for a fortnight, so I chased him but he was like, "Sorry, been swamped, sent it this weekend but the postage was a bit extra, but don't worry, you waited ages so I've covered it", and I ended up sending him the extra couple of euros because it was a bargain and it felt like bad karma to leave him out of pocket just because he'd misguestimated the postage. If it's a real-life human being there I always try to be understanding, because that could be me (not that I sell records via discogs that seems like madness)

"sorry, I got Covid" may be to discogs sellers what "my grandma died" is to college students before a long weekend, but I always give the benefit of the doubt and tell sellers to take their time. Very often they compensate by sending extra stuff.

Honestly, communication goes a long way. Take two weeks to send my African Head Charge record if you must, especially if you have a good excuse, but please don't just ignore my messages when I ask what's up

I finally started selling, but out of the 11 transactions I’ve had so far only 3 have left feedback — what percentage do the rest of you get on average? It’s just got me wondering if I’m doing something wrong and people don’t want to nitpick so in turn don’t say anything at all, or if ~66% of buyers not leaving feedback should be expected.

less than 50% of my buyers bother

Sorry, that should be out of 9 orders which is where I got the 66% — but gotcha, yeah I was surprised as I always leave feedback if the transaction was smooth but I guess a lot of people don’t bother as you said.

I only leave positive fb if it's a new seller who could really use the vouch, or if a seller goes above and beyond. Otherwise I don't really bother, and from the looks of my own feedback relative to what I've sold, I'm guessing this is pretty typical, so don't sweat it!

I always do it because I like giving people positive feedback in general

same

My experience with discogs sellers has been uniformly positive. I made the mistake of ordering a new vinyl album on Amazon recently, which I won't be repeating any time soon. The contrast was palpable. They sent me the wrong record, I returned it and asked for a replacement, then they sent me another wrong record, and I gave up and asked for a refund. Unbelievable incompetence, and of course it's impossible to interact with a real person.

I stopped ordering new vinyl from Amazon when they consistently packed it by tossing it a big box with no inside protection to keep it from rattling around or getting crushed

same, I tried 2-3 orders and gave up

it's super random how they ship things. I got two records in a row last month that were sent in just polyvinyl bags...they may as well have just stamped postage on the album cover and thrown it a truck. needless to say all the corners on both were completely fucked. then I'll get a record from them that is in a giant fucking box with another box inside with a ton of padding. I don't get it.

I've experienced the same things - I ordered 3 records a month ago, one of them was totally crushed and for another one they'd sent me a Mumford & Sons LP instead! it is really weird because in my experience Amazon doesn't have those problems with anything else, don't think I've ever gotten damaged/wrong products from them before, but for vinyl it happens all the goddamn time. unfortunately it is tempting to order off there because sometimes they do have things at very good prices - I've seen stuff that goes for $40 minimum on Discogs available for $26.99 + free shipping. record collecting is an expensive hobby so you should probably take advantage of things like that.

also there is a trick I learned from ILX, where if you get a defective record from Discogs or a local shop you can order a new copy from Amazon and return the defective one for free. I feel kinda bad about doing that, but also they're the ones sending stuff that looks like it went through a garbage compactor, so what do they care really

yah fuck Amazon, good hack