Beware of Amazon and Djangomusic !!

I agree 100% but I will say that it's surprising when an individual selling something cannot provide accurate information about what they have. I've had email exchanges with potential sellers wherein I became convinced that they really didn't even know what a gold disc or a record label was. ("How can I tell if it's a DCC/gold disc?" )

This problem isn't limited to music: I was checking out new mobile phones on Ebay today and contacted a seller because he simply wrote that he had a "Virgin Mobile" phone for sale. I wrote to the seller and asked him which phone he had because Virgin Mobile has several different phones that range in cost from $20 to $200. The seller replied that he didn't have any additional information to provide. No wonder he had no bids with only 1 hour left in the auction.

 

I've had the worst experiences with Djangos and secondspin, I dont even want to go down that road.

A seller you may want to avoid if possible is caiman in amazon and half.com and ebay. Although they do have some good prices, they just upload their catalogues but i'd say 30% of the times I shopped with them they dont have the stuff in inventory. I have had to canel about 20% of my orders with them.

 

OTOH, I've had no problems with Caiman. I've ordered the Tal Farlow Mosaic retail version, Steve's Mamas and the Papas, Beatles Red and Blue albums, Benny Goodman Carnegie Hall Concert (Avid version, not the unlistenable Sony version), and some more CD's from them. They've all arrived in the correct editions, as described, and for good prices. I know they're not the greatest e-tailer out there, but in my experience, they are much better than the bad sellers out there.

 

Hah...I remember when Django's--the original Django's, before they got greedy during the Internet boom--was actually one of Portland's better used record stores (conveniently located right next to Powell's Books). I spent huge amounts of time and money there, back in the day.

I haven't shopped there in years; it's a shadow of its former self.

--Paul Curtis

 

I've probably spent $3000 at Amazon Marketplace over the past four years, and have only used the A to Z Guarantee twice; once for a seller that plummetted from from four stars to one star in a few weeks, and the other from Caiman, where after waiting two months, I asked them to refund the price.

I've found with Caiman that you'll eventually get your order, but be prepared to wait a long time for certain items to show up.

On the other hand, I've ordered several dozen discs from Newbury Comics, and they almost always arrive three days after I place the order.

 

Does Djangos brick-and-mortar store even still exist anymore? They vacated that downtown location near 10th and Burnside. I have some very personal bad memories about the folks who work there; such as they used to sell stuff for pennies on the dollar to their friends and/or acquaintances they wanted to impress.

I'm talking about letting their "friends" walk out with hundreds of dollars in merch for under $20.

Just p***ed me off for a number of reasons (for one thing, it showed the true morals of one of my friends who's no longer my friend now); I was glad when Djangos Portland fell flat because I knew of all the corruption there and for that reason I refused to go there and help a decent record shop collapse.

Because of what I learned about Djangos Portland, I have always avoided djangosmusic online, assuming it might have some of the same corruption still lurking there in the warehouse or wherever.

Craig(VC).

 

Djangos bought out local chain Cellophane Square in the late 90's, expanded into multiple locations, and promptly ran it into the ground. The Django's website still advertises the stores, even though all are closed but the original University location.

http://www.djangos.com/Stores_Location_Seattle.asp?djc=

 

Bob Dietsche and Don Anderson founded Django Records in the fall of 1973. It started in a small space (maybe 200 square feet) on SW Stark in downtown Portland. It was mostly jazz those first few months, having been pared from their collections, and the rock section was only one crate at first. You can still find used records around town that bear the marks of their first pricing system, fashioned after the "jailhouse" calendar, a vertical hash mark for each dollar, followed by a horizontal mark if they wanted an additional 50 cents. Their average price was $2.50. The rock section soon grew to half the store, but it was still the favored place for jazz collectors, and there was a good section of other categories too. Several years later they acquired an identical space next door, doubling their capacity and quickly filling it. By this time Don Anderson had amicably left to start his own store on SE Hawthorne, "Bird's Suite". Their first employee had also gone his own way to start his own mail-order business, Craig Moerer's Records By Mail.
Django's then acquired the large space on the corner of 11th and SW Stark, which had been a furniture refinishing business, and more than doubled their existing space in 1980. A few years later they added one more space on 11th. The area was a rather seedy part of downtown, with a hotel above populated by Portland's largest assembly of transvestite heroin addicts, who would often doze off with the bathtubs running, which explained why rolls of plastic were stashed under the rows of record crates for any emergency while open and always deployed at closing time. Other used record stores followed Django's lead, often established by former employees, but Django's was always the used vinyl central.
Bob Dietsche sold the business in the 1990s to a partnership unfamiliar with the intracacies of running a record store, and their dream was to build an online music empire. They did so with a huge wad of cash from investors, buying up healthy and unhealthy stores, selling through a central database. As the dot.com bust arrived, so did the bad news for Django's. The store was sold along with several other NW stores to Everyday Music, which itself had been created by a partner of the Midwest chain Cheapo's, his former partners buying up the rest of stores across the country. Django.com became a totally independent online-only company.
I still see Bob Dietsche weekly, he's recently written a book about the seedy underbelly of Portland's jazz scene up to the 1970s. It's quite a good read. If you're curious, you can check it out at Powell's Books (they're online too).

 

This is true with a lot of larger sellers: they are just uploading a standard catalog, and order the items in (probably from local distributors) as needed, assuming the stock is always going to be there. Most of them claim everything is in stock, but it's likely in stock at their distributor, or so they hope.

That's why I usually shoot for the smaller individual sellers with high feedback ratings...they have their hands on the product they are selling.

 

I have recently ordered a cd from amazon uk from django, they have sent me an email to say its been dispatched? am i likely to get it?

 

What did you ordered, a special edition of an OOP title?

 

I grew up in Seattle. My brother, who still lives there, mentioned last week that Cellophane now sucks. I guess this explains why.

I can remember the *original* original Cellophane Square location on 42nd or 43rd. It used to be extremely cramped but extremely cool.

 

I ordered a regular CD from Django just last week but if I had seen this thread beforehand I wouldn't have ordered it. To say they've got special editions and then send regular discs is unforgiveable.

 

On Saturday night, I ordered a box set from Newbury Comics through Amazon marketplace, and it shipped Monday or Tuesday (don't recall). So far, so good. Caiman is generally much slower.

 

I just wish that I'd read this thread before Monday morning last 'cos that's when I placed an order through Amazon UK for the Layla 2CD RSO and I've just noticed that the Marketplace seller was djangos-europe Here's typing with fingers crossed...

BTW, I buy loads of stuff (again, through Amazon UK) from Caiman and I've never gotten any incorrect or wrongly-described or faulty discs. I've cancelled a few orders if they've exceeded their estimated delivery dates and I've gotten full refunds but generally I find them A-OK. In recent weeks I've ordered some so-called 'used' CDs from them and in each instance they came up trumps with mint, still-sealed CDs, delivered from Florida to Ireland within 5 working days

 

I don't think that djangos is dishonest in terms not shipping out orders -- they just don't ship out the precise items they list. If you just ordered a regular cd that doesn't have multiple available editions (original issue, remaster, gold cd, etc), I feel confident that you'll get the title you ordered.

 

If you order a regular CD from Djangos online, you are safe if that's the only CD pressing out there.

 

But I don't think that's the point because I might well have ordered a special edition and been disappointed. I would rather not deal with this company at all if they cannot be trusted with multiple editions and left other customers disappointed.

 

I understand choosing not to do business with businesses who provide poor customer service in general. I was just indicating that since you said you had just ordered a "regular" cd that you probably don't have anything to worry about for this specific order. You should get what you paid for if you ordered a standard cd for which there isn't the issue of multiple available editions.

 

Well I finally got this situation straightened out after nearly two months. What a mess. Their web site shows different amounts for the credits than they actually credit back to your account. When you call there you always get the same woman. Every time she rubbed me the wrong way. I finally went off on her.

Never again will I deal with Djangomusic.com

Case closed.

 

Another one I had issues with lately is GoHastings. Sold me a couple of Gold CD's and sent me the plain aluminum ones. Blamed it on Amazon. Had to issue a claim and sent the CDs back. Waited 3 weeks to get my money back. Not fun.

 

The other amazon seller ("mymusicfix") is even worse. It's actually the same guy that's offering 140 MFSL/DCC CD's for a staggering $17,500 on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/140-MFSL-DCC-Rare-Sealed-24Karat-Gold-CD-U2-CCR-Set_W0QQitemZ100505641490QQ

 

I work for a store that sells on Django's. Django's has third party sellers on it's website & loads these items on Amazon.com under the Django's name. While I have never received an order from Django's for a gold disc when we didn't have it, we get plenty of orders for different releases of CD when we don't have that exact version. Many examples are Sony titles. Amazon.com for the most part doesn't have listings for a non-remastered Sony title (if there is a newer remaster available). For example, the original Billy Joel Greatest Hits 1&2 CD will not load on Amazon but the remaster will. However, we have gotten orders for the remastered version from Django's (noted as an Amazon.com order) even though the store hasn't had a remastered version for 6 months. I believe Django's takes the non-remastered UPC, & loads it under the remastered UPC to get it to load. They probably do this because 80% of the customers don't care, they just want the music (80% based on in store customers).

 

Well they shouldn't have separate listings for each version on their web site. And they should explain that they won't send you the version you order. They should also warn you that your account on their website doesn't even reflect the real transactions on your bank account, and when you call you are going to be talking to a sarcastic and rude woman. And see if the other 80 % of the people will even bother. "80% of the customers don't care" Is no excuse for the way they do business. Why do you think people who sell on ebay are very careful to be specific about what they sell? Probably, because they know people care about what they are buying and don't want returns and negative feedback.