Whom to contact when record store abandons you?

Sage advice, but I'll see how far I can get with email. It's easy to do and I'm really not that worked up about it so no stress involved. It's just a bizarre concept that you can order something, not get it, and then have no recourse due to some crazy store/distributor no return policy. Yeah, I'm sure I could get my money back with the credit card company or Discogs but I really don't want to screw the store because of some distributor policy. It's only been a few days. I'll see what happens.

 

Weight of the record has zero to do with sound quality, as many others have said around here. It's only a marketing ploy. Don't let that issue sway you in either direction.

 

My only point in bringing that up is only that it is a different product. It isn't the same pressing that goes in the box set so it isn't really a true replacement.

 

You didn't get what you paid for. No disclaimer can negate that fact and you have an actionable position, however, unless you continue on with this yourself the cost of getting them to give you a new set may well exceed the cost of the set itself. That may be exactly what they are counting on. If there is some type of local consumer advocate at a news outlet they may be help at least determine if their "policy" aligns with consumer laws in your area.

That said, you may want to mention to them you are active in the music community (including these forums) and have no problem communicating the FACTS of your experience to all other music lovers you know. Also, ask them how their "policy" was communicated to you before you purchased the set.

Communicating the facts of a situation is not bashing. Bashing can be actionable - communicating fact is simply factual. As above, if you purchased the set on a credit card, that issuer is a good place to start by filing a dispute. Hope things work out for you.

 

I thought I was a nice guy but if I bought something from a Discogs vendor, paid with Paypal, received the product you received and then was told "too bad" I would've filed a paypal claim immediately. That store is pretty lucky to have you as a customer.

I've gone out of my way many times to sort things out with a seller and once when an lp went missing in the mail and the seller refunded me, it arrived a month later (3 months total) and I sent him his money back. But I have no time for sellers who can't even be bothered like the store you dealt with. At least they are now trying to make amends. But remember with Paypal you have 180 days to open a claim and if all else fails, you could probably part out that set and lose relatively little cash on it. Hope it all works out for you in the end.

 

Discogs has no buyer protection plan. What they can do is suspend a seller but in terms of forcing a seller to work something out with you, they don't do that. You have to rely on Paypal for that. There are quite a few posts on the Discogs forums of people who paid via funds transfer and then got nothing and Discogs could do nothing for them. All you can do at that point, other than leave negative feedback, is report the seller and hope they get kicked off but that's no guarantee anyway.

 

I once told a local shop that I didn't like buying new lps from them because they couldn't return defective lps and I didn't want them to be out the cash (they took returns). I told him I heard that they couldn't return lps but they told me that isn't the case. If the lp is truly defective or has items missing he can return the lp. But it has to be a true defect. He can't return the lp to the distributor if there's a corner ding or a minor warp.

I have a friend who's a buyer for a big distributor in town and he told he frequently returns records to labels when they arrived damaged and that includes corner dings as they sell online and often get people wanting to return lps for stuff like that so he refuses delivery from the labels of any damaged covers.

 

This right here.

 

OK, so I contacted Rhino at the email address above and they sent me a copy of the individually sold TFA. They said they had no more copies of the box set. I'm pretty happy with the result even though it isn't exactly the same as what was supposed to be in the box set. Thanks so much for the link, ggergm.

I never heard back from the record store regarding the email they sent to their distributor.

Thanks everyone for the feedback.

 

I'm glad this story had a happy ending, @Lamus, and that I could help out, but when it comes to SH.tv, what goes around comes around. I got the Dr. Rhino email addy from a similar thread when I was bitching about my defective record. Next time it's your turn to be the informed source around here.

As for the different LP, keep the original one with the set and think of yourself as a restorer of a classic sports car. You've taken out the defective front drum brakes and replaced them with modern disc ones. You can now stop safely but you'll save the old drums in the garage for the integrity of the original build.