Discogs... things are about to change

Discussion in 'Marketplace Discussions' started by Dave, Aug 7, 2020.

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  1. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    I have no choice but to work this shipping issue out on Discogs. I have had too many previous deals (mainly eBay sales from the past) go right with international sent packages, and I have had too many big-ticket items bought only by buyers outside of the US (more willing to pay for higher end goods). And my modern 20th century classical LPs (hundreds of titles) are interesting mainly to international buyers. But I do plan to exclude many many countries from my "ship to" list. I need to go into eBay and copy it from there (unless it has been removed) to remember what all is on it. But basically no Italy, Brazil, Eastern Europe, South America, and that sort of thing. I simply copied someone else's list of NO-GO countries where it looked like they had millions of eBay sales and knew the score for lost packages. No corrupt or bankrupt countries need to purchase my goods, I'm sorry.

    So this makes it pretty easy, just set these up and you are mostly covered:

    US - all one rate (media) CD or LP including single, double or triple sets = $4.95

    UK, Germany, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, France, etc. 1-2 LPs
    UK, Germany, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, France, etc. 1-2 CDs

    Japan & Aust - 1 LP
    Japan & Aust - 1 CD

    Canada - 1 CD
    Canada - 2 CDs
    Canada - 3 CDs
    Canada - 1 LP


    These sets of rates cover 95% of my international sales. And if a buyer gets over-charged for a package of 2 or 3 or 4 LPs, I can gladly refund the over-payment after I figure in my LP mailer into the final cost. If someone in Mexico wants to purchase an item then they can message me and state their case, and maybe we can work somehting out.
     
    Paul W and eddiel like this.
  2. Eno_Fan

    Eno_Fan Staring into the abyss: Brockman BIF, Pilbara WA

    Location:
    Izieu, France
    I did, inventory removed.

    Only_Mint

    ID: 'Only Mint',
    100% seller-FB,

    Cost them $70 in lost fees and pre-collected taxes too. **** 'em.
     
    Last edited: Nov 1, 2020
  3. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    I took a screen shot of the Marketplace stats on Oct 28th and have been checking them ever since.

    Oct 1 was the first deadline but that change to Nov 1st. So far the number of releases for sale has gone up and not down. But since today is d-day for the ASP launch, we'll see if that changes.

    One thing I have noticed is an increasing amount of greyed out, not available to Canada, items. I think some of those are down to sellers deciding to only sell within their own countries but some are likely due to errors.
     
    Dave likes this.
  4. soam

    soam Forum Resident

    Location:
    Indianapolis, IN
    For all I like about discogs, they seem to be unable to enact even simple changes that would improve the seller experience. I have some expensive items that I would like to list on discogs, but they refuse to have any kind of override on an individual item to the default shipping policy, such as factoring in insurance. I've also never understood why you can't enact a % discount on your individual shop to have a sale - that would be easy. Their vacation settings are non-existent - instead you have to list and delist your entire inventory.

    For those that may have experienced the dumpster fire called bookogs, this was similar there. They seemed to launch something but cannot make even the smallest of iterative changes to improve the site. That site eventually went under. It is frustrating.
     
    Dave and chazz101s like this.
  5. R. Totale

    R. Totale The Voice of Reason

    Can't you just add the cost of insurance to the base selling price for those items? The buyer is going to pay for it anyway, what's the difference whether she pays in the item cost or shipping charges?
     
  6. soam

    soam Forum Resident

    Location:
    Indianapolis, IN
    Yeah, valid point. I had not thought of it that way. My point still stands that if you are going to run a major web site you should think some of this stuff through. So I could say my policy is $5. Then put of the description I'm going factoring $x extra into the price of the item for 1st class shipping and insurance. Then the the buyer needs to understand the bump on the item price *plus* the fact that they still get charged $5 shipping. It works, but as someone with an IT background it just bothers me because it is not an elegant solution.
     
    eddiel, GentleSenator and Dave like this.
  7. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Some sellers only have insurance kicking in when the value of the entire order hits a certain point eg 1 x $10, no insurance, 5x$10, then insured.

    The ASP module is definitely not what I would call elegant at all. I do wonder though, if they are hampered by the overall programming of the website. I haven't done much of this sort of stuff but used to be on teams and sometimes the issues were that the program was so old that each patch had to be just as crap as the original program :)
     
  8. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    It looks like ASP policy has kicked in so this will be fun to watch...
     
  9. R. Totale

    R. Totale The Voice of Reason

    I looked around a bit and didn't see any big changes, myself.
     
  10. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Mostly I've seen an increase in greyed out items that are now not available to Canada, including some from Canadian sellers.

    I think sellers will work out that their policies aren't working soon enough. There's always going to be teething issues when moving to a new system, especially one that is a bit of a pain to set up for many sellers.
     
    Strat-Mangler likes this.
  11. Dave

    Dave Esoteric Audio Research Specialist™ Thread Starter

    Location:
    B.C.
    :agree: Mine are all greyed out as of today. That's because Canada has the most complex shipping charges with variants that no other countries seem to have. At least if anyone's interested in something I have they can contact me and buy it. I included in every listing I have "Please contact me for shipping rates to your location" so that may help.
     
    GentleSenator and eddiel like this.
  12. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    I have my old shipping rates set up well enough I think to get continued sales for the moment. I need to make a statement in my policies that says:

    "If buyer from outside the US makes a purchase (on multiple items) and shipping get multiplied excessively over the actual cost, I do a quick refund on that excess amount before sending". I only charge for the packing supplies plus the actual shipping cost, no worries there!!!

    Do you think this might help smooth things out for any odd issues with multiple items, especially LP box sets, etc?
     
  13. no.nine

    no.nine (not his real name)

    Location:
    NYC
    It's a solution, but keep in mind that Paypal no longer refunds their fee if you refund a customer. For small, occasional sellers that probably won't matter too much, but for those who sell more frequently, it will add up.
     
  14. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    If it is just a very few orders affected, and it is only on shipping costs fees I can eat it once in a while.

    I could see Discogs having very reduced profits and being forced to retreating back to the old way after 3 top 6 months of diminished profits. This could just not improve their bottom live, and that would speak loudly.
     
  15. no.nine

    no.nine (not his real name)

    Location:
    NYC
    There's another thread to which I posted my thoughts on this, but I'll paste it here:

    [...] Then there's the possibility that Discogs knows damn well what they're doing, which would explain why [referring to their Sellers Forum] 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.
     
    Gumboo likes this.
  16. R. Totale

    R. Totale The Voice of Reason

    They've said what goal they are trying to achieve. They are tired of dealing with Marketplace payment processing, including sales tax calculations and state reimbursements. They want to outsource that whole can of worms, have settled on Discogs to handle it, and just want in every case to hand a completed sale including shipping off to them and get their cut immediately.
     
    Gumboo likes this.
  17. no.nine

    no.nine (not his real name)

    Location:
    NYC
    You mean "have settled on Paypal to handle it", right?

    Anyway, that aside, I could see them also intending to alienate small sellers in favor of much larger volume sellers. Amazon's done it. Ebay's done it. I'm not saying that IS their goal, just that it COULD be. Maybe they see that as a way to make more revenue. Maybe they intend to sell to a larger entity. I don't know. But something seems fishy about trying to strong-arm a complicated mess of a new policy in the face of what seems to be overwhelming resistance, without even offering affected users anything more than "form letter" types of answers to their concerns.

    So yes, I suspect they have an unspoken goal. That's why I used the wording "whatever goal it is that they're trying to achieve". That covers everything: their stated aim as well as any possible others that they won't tell us.
     
    Gumboo likes this.
  18. R. Totale

    R. Totale The Voice of Reason

    Right, of course.
     
  19. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    I have contributed the additions of maybe 4 to 5 album entries in their database over a ten year period. I previously described this effort I put in as feeling "like I was working on Maggie's Farm" for this corporation. I soon decided that I would load up my LPs into Amazon's platform if the given exact album has a place card there. Discogs was not the database back then that it is today, with many titles and exact pressings missing. Amazon took all my still sealed stuff, and soundtracks, ez listening, and standard pop / rock like Cat Stevens and Chicago Greatest Hits in nicer end condition and turned them into $25 and $30 sales. Then I came back to Discogs to find that many of my missing titles are now there. Recently I relaunched at Discogs and added in my old stock that has been sitting in the storage room untouched. Still, I am finding a few things that are not there, but I refuse to add any new entries into Discogs due to the excessive work I feel is involved, and their eventual sell-out to a larger corporate entity.. But I have added several dozen pictures of front and back covers and labels if the LP is high priced enough that I think my work is worth it.

    So basically I have limited my efforts to expand "their" copyrighted ownership of the user-created content. Pictures added in to "my" listings is about as far as I go.

    About 7% of my stock has been set aside due to no Discogs entry found. I'll check back in 9 to 12 months and run those titles through again. Another thing I am going to do is take my Discogs listings descriptions and grading and paste it into Amazon's site. I've previously stated this, but I think it's good to not have all your eggs in one basket if possible.
     
    Gumboo likes this.
  20. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Discogs doesn't own any of that information. You could use all the information to set up your own website and sell from there, much like what that Reverb website used to do before it shut down.

    Discogs couldn't own any of that information even if they wanted to.
     
  21. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    They have a copyright notice on every page of the site © 2020 Discogs®

    But maybe it holds no water legally. Just because someone claims something does not make it so. Or it is just the business name. But I do think that they could lock it up anytime and say no more contributions, no more edits, no more anything because Warner has just bought the site and all contents, domains, intellectual property that was © 2020 Discogs® is now a part of Warner Music Group. I don't think the contributors have a leg to stand on to stop such a move. Do you?
     
  22. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Discogs has that copyright notice because there are copyrights that do belong to them and they are legally protected.

    That notice doesn't mean that they now own the details of who was credited on album or the matrix variations of a record or that a symbol in the deadwax means it was pressed at a specific pressing plant.

    If Warners bought Discogs they wouldn't suddenly own information either and they could not stop anyone from using that information. Most of that information comes from other sources anyway. Users did not create that content, they took it from one place and entered it into another.

    But. any owners, of any website, can do what they want with it, including blocking people from adding or amending data. Steve Hoffman could shut down this website tomorrow and there's not much we could do about it.

    So there's no leg to stand on because there never was any leg to stand on.
     
    GentleSenator, Strat-Mangler and Dave like this.
  23. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    I'm having trouble setting up my shipping options. It keeps saying "incomplete" after I close up the panel.

    I am trying to have a price to several European countries for 1-2 LPs, and then 1 CD a different price. I am not using weight, but a number of items.

    I wanted their tutorial and the woman who narrates it chooses to go by weight, and not items. So it did not really cover what exactly I am doing.

    I set up two policies under selected European countries I want to ship to like I said and it looks good to go. But I get these two errors as incomplete:

    This shipping policy is incomplete, it is missing one shipping method that covers:
    • All Items - Under "Method applies to", the "All my items" option should be selected for at least one of your Shipping Methods, not the specific formats.
    • All Order sizes - The final rate range must end with "and up" to handle any number of items or weights.
    Why am I being asked to change the CD or LP specific shipping requirements to All my items rather than the selected formats?

    Why am I being asked to add "and up" when I do not see "and up" as a selection to choose?. I just entered 1 to 2 in quantity, and that should cover two LPs or two CDs. I do not plan on selling 3 to 4 or 5 items to a foreign country - because I am not willing to eat that cost of shipping and value my items when the buyer does not receive the package, and PayPal rules against me. I MUST manage my losses here. No $50 or $60 shipping fees billed and shipping fees refunded, it takes too much of the fun away ya know.

    Maybe someone knows a good YouTube video that has it in clearer English.
     
  24. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    Discogs has a right to lock it up and claim they own everything on the site, and that is that! That is my point. Yet anyone can copy stuff, but the owner is not in dispute. AND they will lock it up one day and say hey "we've accomplished what we set out to do, and Thank you for all your hard work, we could not have done it without you." One would not be able to stop them from this someday coming tragedy.
     
  25. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    They do not own that information so even if they claimed it as theirs it would not be theirs. Therefore, ownership of that information would be in dispute if they tried to stop anyone from using it.

    Maybe the confusion stems from words being used. It sounds like you are referring to the database rather than actual information contained in the database. The database is owned by them and they can do with it what they want. But the information in that database isn't really owned by them. So they can sell the db, they can delete the db. But what they cannot do is stop anyone from using that information.

    But if your point is that they can lie about owning something they do not own and/or shut down/lock the website, yes, they can do just that.

    Anyone can lie and any website owner can shut down/lock their website as they see fit.
     
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