Discogs has gone grey

Discussion in 'Marketplace Discussions' started by Eno_Fan, Nov 2, 2020.

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  1. Eno_Fan

    Eno_Fan Staring into the abyss: Brockman BIF, Pilbara WA Thread Starter

    Location:
    Izieu, France
    All of those who didn't have the hated 'Shipping Policies' in place are now blocked from selling in the Marketplace.

    How do we query the available data to find out how many of the ~ 58,000,000 listings are now Unavailable and how many sellers are affected? This would indicate the impact in $-terms on Discogs ~ $15,000,000 annual revenue, and if this corporate stupidity will be just a blip or put the site in the toilet 6-months from now...
     
    misteranderson likes this.
  2. speedracer

    speedracer Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cascadia
    Wasn't aware of this - how do I find out if I am blocked from selling - can it be fixed? I haven't sold anything in a while.
     
  3. trickness

    trickness Gotta painful yellow headache

    Location:
    Manhattan
    I'm blocked, 600 records greyed out, despite having set a policy months ago, only shipping vinyl to the USA. They've created a Orwellian nightmare for their users, lots of smart, longtime sellers can't figure out this new, badly executed shipping system, they're not listening to users who almost universally revile it. As if 2020 wasn't enough of a **** sandwich, they celebrate their 20th anniversary by sitting on their own di*cks. Great work by Discogs all around.
     
  4. thxphotog

    thxphotog Camera Nerd Cycling Nerd Guitar Nerd Dietary Nerd

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    You'll get a big ol' reminder when you sign on. You can't miss it.
     
  5. sound chaser

    sound chaser Senior Member

    Location:
    North East UK.
    They’ve basically shafted the very people who created their huge database, nice.
     
  6. trickness

    trickness Gotta painful yellow headache

    Location:
    Manhattan
    Yeah but at least by doing so they're also killing their own revenue, which they'll see in a day or two when their numbers take a complete nosedive because they've blanked so many sellers. Usually big tech companies screw users with no consequences, Discogs have also screwed themselves here
     
  7. I wouldn't worry, discogs doesn't make money, if their sellers don't.
     
    12" 45rpm and RAZORMADE like this.
  8. moomaloo

    moomaloo All-round good egg

    I can’t understand what I’m supposed to do. So I’ve ignored it in the hope it will all go away...
     
  9. thxphotog

    thxphotog Camera Nerd Cycling Nerd Guitar Nerd Dietary Nerd

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    I did same. Just not worth the aggravation right now.
     
    quicksrt likes this.
  10. moomaloo

    moomaloo All-round good egg

    I have a seller invoice payable soon. I won’t be hurrying to settle it...
     
    zephyr25 and thxphotog like this.
  11. peteham

    peteham Senior Member

    Location:
    Simcoe County
    What are these policy changes in a nutshell?
     
  12. sound chaser

    sound chaser Senior Member

    Location:
    North East UK.
    Mandatory automated shipping for everything, anywhere.
     
  13. Martijn

    Martijn Perfect Sound Forever

    Great policy. Hate it to ask for shipping price. You wanna sell? Put up the price, easy.
     
    E.Baba and 12" 45rpm like this.
  14. Icenine1

    Icenine1 Forum Resident

    Mine is grayed out as well. I received an email that I need to change update my shipping policy. I think I’m just gonna switch everything over to eBay
     
  15. footprintsinthesand

    footprintsinthesand Reasons to be cheerful part 1

    Location:
    Dutch mountains
    A tremendous strategy.
     
  16. micksmuse

    micksmuse Forum Resident

    Location:
    san diego
    Celebrate good times, come on
    Let's celebrate
    Celebrate good times, come on
    Let's celebrate
    There's a party goin' on right here
    A celebration to last throughout the years
    So bring your good times and your laughter, too
    We gonna celebrate your party with you
    Come on now


    Hello ...,
    Yesterday marked Discogs' 20th Anniversary. To celebrate, we've put together a very special timeline of all the major milestones from the past two decades. We couldn't have done it without you, so cheers to another 20 years!

    "It's really incredible how far we've come. Discogs now has 13 million releases, 7 million artists, and almost 60 million items for sale from 150,000 sellers. And it's the go-to resource for people that really care about music. That wouldn't have happened without the 545,000+ people who have submitted information to Discogs' database. Thank you to our entire Community!"
    - Kevin Lewandowski, CEO and Founder


    Check Out The Timeline »

    Sincerely,
    Discogs
     
  17. no.nine

    no.nine (not his real name)

    Location:
    NYC
    I checked on a random seller's item which said "Unavailable in United States" and I got the following Discogs message:

    This seller does not have shipping rates for your region and may not be able to ship to your address. Check with the seller if they’re able to ship to your location, and request shipping rates to be set for your country.

    In my assessment, this equates to encouraging buyers to in effect harass such sellers into "getting with the program". I say this because for many sellers, this was a conscious, deliberate decision to avoid using the ASP, and other sellers have made honest attempts at trying to set those policies and haven't been able to do so.

    I also want to address the idea that Discogs is shooting themselves in the foot with this. I'd like to think that's true but I'm not so sure it is. Yes, it looks like the overwhelming majority of sellers posting in their forums are against this, but how representative is that of the Discogs community as a whole? Only a small percentage of total users post in those forums from my understanding.

    Then there's the possibility that Discogs knows damn well what they're doing, which would explain why they haven't in any way reassessed their position or even bothered to address those users' concerns with anything more than boilerplate corporate-speak nonsense. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they're going the way of Amazon & (to a slightly lesser extent, I think) ebay, which both made policy changes over time to squeeze out smaller sellers. I've read their seller forums as well, and they got the same responses after certain policy changes were announced. Everyone predicting that they'd soon lose so much money by users abandoning them or being shut out. But it hasn't happened for either of them and I bet it won't for Discogs either. They probably didn't make what appears to be a stupid policy change without doing a thorough analysis based on whatever goal it is that they're trying to achieve.

    Well anyway, that's my 5 cents. I've written too much for it to be 2 cents. :D
     
    Last edited: Nov 2, 2020
    Sprague Dawley likes this.
  18. giantleech

    giantleech Lord of all fevers and plagues

    I'll assume that I am "greyed out" to all but customers in the United States. Trying to generate proper, accurate shipping policies for all other countries, especially if a person is ordering multiple items, is way too complicated. I'll steer any international inquiries that I receive through Discogs to head on over to my eBay store.
     
    quicksrt likes this.
  19. I've sold 3 or 4 heavier box sets there over the past 6 mos. How am I supposed to know shipping costs to every byway of the country ? Ridiculous policy.

    Want a blanket policy ? Fine: $25 shipping for everything.
     
  20. I've sold most of what I wanted to get rid of so if they want to make it awkward to sell, fine, whatever. I'll live without it.
     
    quicksrt likes this.
  21. trickness

    trickness Gotta painful yellow headache

    Location:
    Manhattan
    Except it ISN'T easy - they require you to have a blanket shipping policy, based on weight and quantity. You can't set a shipping price for a specific item even if you want to.

    Discogs used to have that ability and they removed it a few months ago. With every listed item you could manually set a shipping price, and factor in insurance based on the value of the record, and also the weight and size. You could enter a price specifically - I did this on every item, then they killed that - which was bad enough, but then they set up this arcane system of shipping policies which are based on weight or quantity, and in order to have a "complete" shipping policy, you need to set up a blanket rate that can cover every order based on either weight or quantity (otherwise, you're blanked.) This works fine for standard items, but if you are selling a record worth hundreds, you'll want to set the cost based on the value of the record (which is how the Post Office charges you for insurance) and you can't do it. They do let you set up a shipping policy for insured items, but again, it's based on weight or quantity, NOT the value of the item. It's like these guys don't even know the first thing about the products their users are selling.

    It used to be simple, nobody asked for this, nobody complained, there was no issue. If it was so "easy" they wouldn't have nearly their entire seller community up in arms about it. It's REALLY badly done.
     
  22. R. Totale

    R. Totale The Voice of Reason

    I haven't seen a large increase in greyed-out listings or any other obvious changes in the last couple of days.

    It won't. The only thing that has gone away is any potential sales you might have made, since your inventory is no longer displayed.
     
  23. LivingForever

    LivingForever Forum Arachibutyrophobic

    I had set up shipping policies for CDs, Blu-rays and DVDs to the U.K., Europe and the US a couple of months ago and all was good and people were making orders with automatic shipping costs quite nicely.

    Today, I log in to my inventory to a message that says “Your items are no longer available. Please complete your shipping policies to make them available again.”

    Not quite sure what that’s all about. Has it greyed out EVERYTHING because a couple of things don’t easily fall under any of my shipping policies? :confused:
     
    Dave S and Eric_Generic like this.
  24. R. Totale

    R. Totale The Voice of Reason

    Yes, just like they told you they would. Figuring out how to do what they want is like doing your taxes or something. The rules are actually laid out on the site and all you have to do is follow them. It's a stupid set-up and their stupid instructions don't make it any easier, but at least for domestic sales (which all but a few of mine have been) it's not rocket science.

    If you were all set up it's likely your problem is that you have not set up a final catchall scenario in case someone from a country you ship to wants to buy your entire inventory or something equally unlikely to happen. Set it up, call it "Must be an error. Email me." Set postage at 1000 quid, it's never going to happen anyway. Voila, you are complete and your inventory should re-appear.
     
    Last edited: Nov 2, 2020
    quicksrt and Lost In The Flood like this.
  25. Two words: free shipping.
     
    Mbe likes this.
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