discogs marketplace?

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

fwiw i have had wrong items from Amazon before. i was trying to buy a phono preamp, and they sent me some kind of microphone booster thing instead. so i returned it as "wrong item sent", and they sent me another microphone booster thing. so i returned that and got a refund and went somewhere else

i've never bought anything on amazon but i hear its quite popular.

when i hear from people who sell on amazon it sounds like a torture chamber and also the rings of hell and also bezos.

i don't even own a record player

I order from Bandcamp as much as possible, but used to get a lot of vinyl from Amazon.

They would go through phases of trying different, cheaper methods of packing vinyl. I don't think I ever got the wrong item, but there were more than a few records tossed inside a big box. The beefy mailers they used for a long time were the best.

When I bought a lot from discogs I noticed that stuff coming from the UK would sometimes arrive in a flimsy thin cardboard mailer (NOT corrugated cardboard) that would inevitably be bent up. These would get instant negative reviews because the packaging was such a joke.

Worst packaging ever: a record wrapped in holiday wrapping paper. That's it.

UK sellers are infamously bad about packaging, idk why

I do need to find an affordable source for record packaging when I get round to selling some records. I'm guessing, but that might be why UK sellers are bad for packaging, because if I bought it from the shop the post office was in, I'd go bankrupt, it's an absolute ripoff (the chain that hosts a lot of post offices is notorious for price gouging) so maybe that's why people cheap out on it?

interesting, that makes sense.

I'm just selling CDs right now, and tbf I buy padded envelopes in bulk but they are Jiffy branded ones not just cheap knockoffs, and they are 7x more expensive in WHSmith

actually it's worse, I just looked it up, and WHSmith are charging £3.90 for THREE jiffy bags. £1.30 each! that's 10x as much. what the fuck

my favorite was a record I received in a pizza box. was in fine shape so hey no harm no foul

with or without anchovies?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63yyMxlBhZs

I can’t find the Suburban Base comp that came in a pizza box.

i buy record mailers on amazon in packs of 30, they aren't too expensive. I'll also reuse ones as long as they aren't decimated.

The trick would be to buy 1 record mailer on Amazon, and 1 record, and get them to ship you the record inside the mailer so they don't bend all the corners

I've also heard a rumor that if you mark an LP as "gift" at checkout, they will ship the record in an LP mailer inside a box, but I have not personally confirmed this hack. If anyone tries it and is successful, please report back

FWIW, I save all my mail packaging, so I've never had to buy any. (I'm not a huge Discogs seller though - I'm lucky to sell five orders in a month.) I get good marks for shipping, but it's mostly because I use media mail, which means it's easy to load up on packing material without worrying about weight. I usually double-package my orders, so it'll have the bubble wrap in some form (Amazon's mailers, padded envelope) but then an additional layer of cardboard, perhaps a box, and if it's a small, flat item, I may even stick the whole thing in another padded Amazon envelope. Plastic film recycling has gotten very tough in my area - for whatever reason the local supermarkets and drugstores stopped offering to take it - so rather than throw it in the trash, I like putting all that padded plastic from Amazon to use.

I do the same thing. Recycling is good.

recent problem: when filtering items for sale on discogs marketplace, a number seem invisble - ie, it says there are 87 copies of a Duke & The Blazers comp for sale, 27 in the UK, but when I filter it to show only them no records are shown for sale, and when I don't filter it none of the 27 copies for sale in the UK appear. Similarly, the main menu says there are 2 copies of kassa overall's debut in the UK, but when I filter it will only show one. Is the database missing out copies that are for sale, or are they ghosts that shouldn't be there in the first place?

I have noticed this. I previously thought maybe those copies have v recently been bought but haven't gone from some cache somewhere, but that was because there was only a small discrepancy on the records I noticed it on. I don't think that can be the case if 27 copies are missing though.

It may be that sellers have multiple copies on the same listing? When listing an item you can enter how many copies you have for sale, not sure of discogs treats that as one listing that will stay on until all X copies are sold or if it would create X individual listings.

that wouldn't explain why it says 27 copies for sale but none appear, if that was the case at least one copy would be there

I've often seen "27 available from £3.33" for example, you click on and the cheapest is £10.21 or suchlike. I daresay there's less than 27 available too.

I haven't seen the one where there are none available, but it seems to be the "extreme" rendition of the same error.

they might be doing some maintenance/“upgrade” work, my wantlist was inactive over the weekend for this reason

Yeah, it's been a bit screwy. Showing "red eye" on items on searches that I do not want.

Having said that, it sent me details about one item I've been looking for for about 10 years, and it was actually true! and now I have it, yum.

In the iPhone app, I don’t see items for sale that are unavailable in my country. In the desktop browser they’re visible.

Maybe a small thing, but when I search for an artist, the results in the box no longer show the little red, blue or green icons indicating how many are in my wantlist, inventory, or collection

Also, no more "x" buttons on album and artist photos, so if you click one, you end up having to scroll back to the previous page rather than back to the page you were on

wantlists were down for a while, they had a banner announcing they were working again.

the mobile app is a pice of shit

xp yes that change is very annoying!

(the first one, had no experienced the 2nd)

Ordered a record on ebay for the first time in ages, one I’ve been trying to find a good copy of at a reasonable price for over 5 years…seller had it listed at $50 but it didn’t sell, so he relisted at $30 with the option to make an offer, I made an offer at $30 and he accepted right away…

After waiting ~5 days for it to ship the seller refunded my order saying he knows he has it but can’t find it and didn’t want to sit on my money in the meantime while he’s looking.

I want to believe him but this was certainly closer to a $50 record (probably more like $60-$75 really) than a $30 record and I can’t help but be suspicious that this is a case of seller’s remorse.

Would I be justified in leaving negative feedback in this case or should I let him go and give him the benefit of the doubt? He has basically 100% positive feedback with 26k transactions so I don’t think he’s evil or anything.

Why would you list a record you do t have in your hand at that moment.

Sounds like it got relisted and marked down as an “aged inventory” reconciliation but due to that it’s been awhile since the record has been checked on or looked at physically, so when they went to pull it they realized they couldn’t find it.