Discogs has gone grey

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

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  1. Y'all can pay all the shipping you want, but I just choose not to buy items without free or minimal shipping. Don't care if it's LPs or winter tires, if the shipping is stupid I just won't buy it.
     
    Mbe likes this.
  2. R. Totale

    R. Totale The Voice of Reason

    You do understand that you (as the buyer) will actually be paying for the shipping, whether or not the charge is broken out separately, right? So that $16.00 with "free" shipping is the same to you as $12 + $4 shipping?
     
    ARK, giantleech, katstep and 7 others like this.
  3. jazon

    jazon A fight between the blue you once knew

    Location:
    ottawa
    I set up to be able to sell to canada and the us but only 12 inch albums. they aren't greyed out to me but who knows what others see.
     
  4. Eric_Generic

    Eric_Generic Enigma

    Location:
    Berkshire
    Kind of glad I never got into selling on Discogs. Just ends up the same as amazon, ebay, all the rest.

    But it explains why an item I was interested in yesterday from a UK seller had an automatic £5.00 postage for a CD single (ridiculous), yet in the item details they said UK shipping was £2. But if you checked out, it would add the £5 so it's a mess for both seller and buyer this way. And I didn't buy the item.

    EG.
     
  5. Say there's two different sellers with the same item at the same price, but one charges shipping & one doesn't. Which one do you buy? That doesn't confuse me as to which seller to purchase from.
     
  6. no.nine

    no.nine (not his real name)

    Location:
    NYC
    Say you want to buy two CDs from me. Both are priced at $14 because I intend a $10 price each but add I've added $4 for shipping. Therefore, the total is $28 and you order because the price is competitive against the other listings (my Discogs listings ARE frequently the lowest priced available copies - though in some cases that would change if I bake that shipping into the price).

    Do you realize that by listing both these CDs at the intended $10 price instead, and adding the shipping charge separately you'd pay a total of $24 instead? That's because I charge $4 shipping for up to 2 CDs.

    But you'd rather pay $4 more in total so you could get "free shipping"?
     
    giantleech, LivingForever and Ctiger2 like this.
  7. Chee

    Chee Forum Resident

    Location:
    Denver
    Old Rusty is correct.
     
  8. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    Your point was incorrectly and inaccurately stated so you're now filling in the blanks and moving the goal posts.

    No one is stating you should pay through the nose for shipping. The world is bigger than your little bubble so I won't be offering free shipping to Australia, for instance. So no, it isn't as simple as you think it is because you're obviously thinking solely for your own situation, therefore completely disregarding any other factors that come into play.

    Are you even a seller? If not, what are you even doing in this thread?
     
    shaboo, sound chaser and no.nine like this.
  9. Participating in a discussion.
     
  10. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    ...where your POV is that of a buyer when this is about sellers needing to adjust their profiles. You neither have a profile nor are a seller.

    Sorry, but your input is a distraction. It offers nothing pertaining to the topic whatsoever while derailing the thread. With all due respect, we know where you stand on this off-topic tangent, don't need it repeated anymore, so if you have nothing actually relevant to contribute, it'd be nice to stick with what this thread is about.
     
    Last edited: Nov 7, 2020
    shaboo and sound chaser like this.
  11. tmtomh

    tmtomh Forum Resident

    Doesn't matter if shipping is free or not. If the total cost is less, you buy that one - we get it, and no one disagrees.

    It's entirely beside the point, which you've clearly failed to grasp.
     
    ARK, shaboo, GentleSenator and 4 others like this.
  12. Tough room! Good luck on Discogs
     
  13. no.nine

    no.nine (not his real name)

    Location:
    NYC
    I've done OK there, thanks. Repeat customers, too.
     
    giantleech, tmtomh, eddiel and 2 others like this.
  14. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    Same here.

    This is about Discogs' new policies and has nothing to do with what buyers would like to be charged. Let's keep this thread on point.
     
    tmtomh, Dave, sound chaser and 2 others like this.
  15. no.nine

    no.nine (not his real name)

    Location:
    NYC
    Agreed. I think that was a slightly odd interjection into this thread, but... oh well.

    These new ASP requirements don't even affect me, because I only sell CDs and I only ship within the USA, so MY ASP is simple. Plus, I already had automatic shipping in use anyway. But other sellers who have more complicated inventories and shipping situations have absolutely legitimate complaints here.

    Going slightly off topic, I want to add that it's unfortunate that I don't ship internationally any more. Once international shipping rates for just 1 CD went up insanely from still largely reasonable to about $14, I stopped receiving any international orders. Understandable and expected. But after a bit of time I realized that if I did ever get another international order, I'd be on the hook to lose $14 out of my own pocket if something went wrong such as non-delivery - something entirely out of my control. That's not a risk I'm willing to bear. That's when I went to U.S. sales only. A shame, as I used to do a good amount of international sales.

    Never did have to refund anyone for ANY reason, BTW, but that doesn't mean it can't happen.

    Another patented long post by me. Sorry. It's not always easy for me to compress what I want to say.
     
    Strat-Mangler likes this.
  16. kwadguy

    kwadguy Senior Member

    Location:
    Cambridge, MA

    Enter the real weight of your items when listing, and have a shipping policy based on weight.

    I agree it's a hassle, and it's why I've shut down non-US shipping. For the US, I ship media mail and if I'm under or over a bit, the cost difference is negligible.
     
  17. R. Totale

    R. Totale The Voice of Reason

    You can buy third party insurance that also covers shipping costs. I use U-pic because I was introduced to them many years ago, but I'm sure there are others. I last used it about a week ago when I sent a $40 plus shipping CD to Germany. It cost $1.60 to cover everything the buyer paid. In 10+ years I've only had to claim once (a $200 record reported damaged in shipping) and they paid up although it took a couple of months. You can buy insurance for a single shipment, you don't need an account.

    And FWIW it only took 5 days from shipping here to arrive at customs in Germany.
     
    noname74, Dave and Strat-Mangler like this.
  18. no.nine

    no.nine (not his real name)

    Location:
    NYC
    Thanks, but it's not worth the bother to me. I'm only a hobby seller who merely sells CDs I no longer care for. My inventory is rarely more than 100 at any given time. It's not even close to a serious source of income. That's why I'm not willing to risk losing international shipping charges - I can absorb such a loss less easily than a larger volume seller might be able to. But it's the same reason I'm not willing to deal with insurance and filling out forms and waiting for judgments (or whatever they're called) and worrying for a couple of months about if my claim will be denied. Plus, my low inventory also makes it even less worth it to buy additional insurance, as my overall profit margin isn't big since I don't overprice. BTW, that's probably the biggest reason I do OK sales-wise despite such a small inventory. This is all how I see it, anyway.

    As a side note, having explained how small my inventory is, I'm actually surprised at how frequently I receive orders. I slowly replenish my stock as I decide I no longer want or need this or that for whatever reason and would have expected I'd only get one order every few months. But that hasn't been the case for me.
     
    Gumboo and Eric_Generic like this.
  19. no.nine

    no.nine (not his real name)

    Location:
    NYC
    Brief update:

    I had my listings offline for a couple of weeks because I couldn't get to the Post Office during that time. But I just now found out that after I finished setting up my old rates into their new system, they did NOT save properly even though I had the green mark indicating that my shipping policy was complete. And they WILL NOT save properly now either.

    Too burned out to post more details at the moment.
     
  20. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    Press the Reset button and redo everything from scratch. The only way this worked for me.
     
    SimonSaysCake likes this.
  21. no.nine

    no.nine (not his real name)

    Location:
    NYC
    Thank you, kind sir. Believe it or not, I never even noticed the reset button.
     
    GentleSenator and Strat-Mangler like this.
  22. It's not that. Also I hate to ask for shipping price, and I only do it when there's no other seller offering the same item. But the vast majority of sellers perfectly explain the shipping costs in their "seller terms", so that's not the problem.
    The new policy of mandatory automated shipping costs is extremely rigid. The seller can't offer as much individualized shipping costs for each and every item to each and every destination sent in each and every possible way (i.e. CDs with or without jewel cases, items that discogs automatically consider under the usually critical 100 grams, that really weigh over 100 grams after packaged, etc ). Besides that, when a seller has recently changed from manual to automatic shipping costs, a stupid message "the seller has recently changed this item", or something like that, appears when you place an order, but it could also mean that the item is no longer available, or that who knows what other thing has changed, so you need to contact the seller anyway! This is obviously a change for worse, both for buyers and sellers.
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2020
    Dave and Eric_Generic like this.
  23. Exactly. Couldn't agree more. This new absurd policy is suicidal. It only creates many more problems than the supposed issues is trying to fix, and it's also killing the essence of the community. It was more than enough to request all the sellers to state a well explained shipping policy in their seller terms. Period.
     
    Eric_Generic likes this.
  24. no.nine

    no.nine (not his real name)

    Location:
    NYC
    An update:

    It worked. Thanks again.

    The one thing that still kept happening is that I wanted to set the line "Order subtotal must be" to "at least $1". because it seemed that $0.00 just couldn't be a valid entry and wouldn't work. Yet, even after first hitting reset again each time, the system stubbornly kept defaulting back to $0.00.

    Finally figuring that I may as well test it out to see if I was wasting time and energy over nothing, I went into my buyer account (yes, I keep my buyer and seller accounts separate) and added several of my own items to my cart. And I was pleasantly surprised to find it working as it should.
     
    Strat-Mangler and GentleSenator like this.
  25. InStepWithTheStars

    InStepWithTheStars It's a miracle, let it alter you

    Location:
    North Carolina
    Just tried to log in today from my phone (as it logs me out about once every two weeks). When I logged in, it brought me to a second login screen. When I logged in from there, it said "Welcome to Discogs", offered me a bunch of BS security options (eg. connect Discogs to Facebook, two-factor ID, change my email) but there was no way to actually get to the database itself. I was stuck on this screen. I had to change the URL manually to get to the dashboard.

    Did Google buy Discogs?? If, on top of alienating their marketplace sellers, they're going to push this linked account BS before you can even use the database at all, they're shooting themselves in the ass. If they start putting ads on all the pages when you're logged in, then I and thousands more will be done with them.

    If it ain't broke, don't fix it. There are a few things that could have used tweaking, but the crew behind Discogs ignored those and instead appear to be trying to turn their database into some kind of social network site. We already have way too many of those.
     
    Gumboo likes this.
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