Discogs selling fees to increase May 22nd

Discussion in 'Marketplace Discussions' started by eddiel, May 1, 2023.

  1. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Selling Fees Will Update on May 22, 2023 | Discogs

    They will now be takin 9% instead of 8% and the percentage will apply to the total including shipping.

    No mention of taxes in the article so I'm assuming they are excluded.

    This makes the costs less competitive to with eBay. Though I think Discogs will still be slightly better plus they don't take a % of the sales tax.

    I was expecting an increase at some point but hoped they would exclude shipping.
     
  2. Ken Dryden

    Ken Dryden Forum Resident

    They probably include shipping because some sellers lowball their prices yet have higher than normal shipping costs. I try to come as close as possible to my costs, but when I have to account for PayPal and Discogs fees on shipping, plus mileage to the post office, it is hard to break even on it.

    I am still sticking exclusively to insured USPS, I don't want to deal with the USPS incompetence or theft. I've noticed too many misdelivered, damaged stolen packages in their hands over the years to trust media mail without it.
     
    negative1 and sennj like this.
  3. glide

    glide Forum Resident

    Location:
    NH, USA
    It’s almost time to start carting things around to local markets and record shows. Almost.
     
  4. Bad news, I don't sell much on Discogs and will raise my prices to cover the increase and sell even less.
     
  5. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Depending on what you want to sell and what your local market is like, it's definitely something I would look into. A friend and I share tables at a local record show twice a year and it works out alright. There are some items that just sell better online though so I save those for eBay/Discogs.

    I was talking to a vendor at this weekends show about this very topic. He had a Grateful Dead boxset (one from their live series) that he couldn't sell locally for $100. Listed it on eBay, sold for $300.

    My eBay fees are closer to 15% of the item sale price once I account for all the amounts they take off the shipping and buyer sales tax. Discogs will still have the edge but the gap is closing. Plus, some items sell faster and for more on eBay.

    Plus for me, I have a couple of local shops who pay 50% of retail for used items and sometimes, it's just easier to sell to them.

    Of course the real benefit of selling at a record show, especially for US members, is no PayPal etc reporting to the IRS. :)
     
    Smackswell and oldjollymon like this.
  6. GentleSenator

    GentleSenator what if

    Location:
    Aloha, OR
    no surprise there. but it's very disappointing that they still don't use any of their income to actually make serious, long-term improvements to the database functionality. they continue to lose valuable contributors because of this and seem to ignore that without a correct & reliable db no amount of fee increase will keep them afloat.
     
  7. Gene Parmesan

    Gene Parmesan Forum Resident

    Location:
    PA, USA
  8. jazon

    jazon A fight between the blue you once knew

    Location:
    ottawa
    I don't mind the 1% increase but to now charge it on shipping costs is crap. Guess I will have to up my shipping fees..
     
  9. Takehaniyasubiko

    Takehaniyasubiko Forum Resident

    Location:
    Void
    What a ripoff!
     
  10. kwadguy

    kwadguy Senior Member

    Location:
    Cambridge, MA
    Is the application of Discogs fees to shipping costs new?

    I love how they explain this increase as "necessary" because of "improvements".

    Yeah, you made changes so that your platform went from a big pile of sh-t to a smaller one. But it's still amateur hour over there.

    Not to mention such "benefits" as having higher shipping costs than buying the labels directly from PayPal (who fronts for Shipstation).

    I'm not saying I'm moving on. I don't list stuff where a change of 1% would make me change anything. But I hate the BS tone. "We're increasing rates because we can and because we want bigger bonuses."
     
    Candyflip Records likes this.
  11. Jomay

    Jomay Forum Resident

    I'm disappointed with this decision. The marketplace is a disaster. Cant' tell you how many times I've been cheated by hackers and scammers who continue to evolve in devious ways. Discogs takes weeks to respond to customer service issues (if they respond at all!). It really feels like they don't give a rat's ass. As pointed out above, they make no meaningful updates to a clunky database. Ebay provides a massive marketplace, great customer service, an excellent place to interact with sellers, easy returns, much better feedback system, relatively few scammers, etc. Discogs offers none of these things. Raising prices is greedy; they do not reinvest anything into the buyer and seller experience. The scammers in the marketplace have made a complete mess of a once decent place to buy and sell. Discogs simply washes their hands of things that go wrong in the marketplace, and tells you to deal with paypal if you get a response at all.
     
    Mr. LP Collector and japhyman like this.
  12. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Yes. They never took a % of shipping costs until now.

    That did annoy me as well. Yes they updated the marketplace to deal with regulatory issues because they had to but it's not really an upgrade.

    There's plenty of requests they've been ignoring for many years.
     
  13. TomOli64

    TomOli64 Forum Resident

    Location:
    England
    Seems harsh to include the shipping.

    I'm not buying on there anyway as the site seems to be awash with scammers at present.
     
  14. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    I think this fee increase was inevitable so even if they didn't hire a new COO, it was going to happen anyway.

    It would be nice if they do use the extra money towards actual improvement especially since the new COO was brought on to drive innovation and growth.
     
  15. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    Might as well raise it to 30% while they're at it. Plus PayPal's 3% rate, it's going to be 12% just to sell it. Utterly ridiculous.
     
    GentleSenator likes this.
  16. AaronW

    AaronW Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    Not good news but eBay takes 12.35% (which has always included shipping costs) for selling records. I guess Discogs felt like they needed to raise prices to stay competitive :laugh:
     
    GentleSenator likes this.
  17. jim249

    jim249 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Utah, USA
    Just maybe it will stop the scamming sellers that sell items for a penny and charge a high shipping rate.
     
    Eric_Generic likes this.
  18. hvbias

    hvbias Midrange magic

    Location:
    Northeast
    Wow I didn't realize vinyl is almost 3% less than CDs! It's 14.95% for CDs. Then they add 1.65% for international buyers for the payment processing fee so you have to assume a 16.6% fee since you can't control where the buyer is from.

    I wonder why this discrepancy exists?
     
    AaronW likes this.
  19. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    They must like Canadians better. They only charge me 13.25 for cd sales. They do charge a .4% international fee when I sell to someone not in Canada though.

    I knew they charged different rates for different categories but not different rates within that category. Weird. My guess is that is has something to do with sales volumes.
     
    MC Rag likes this.
  20. Leugi

    Leugi Forum Resident

    Location:
    DC
    One would think they would at least consult buyers and sellers before increasing fees.

    This leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I think I will stop listing items under $5 moving forward.

    Also I may explore EBay again.

    My listings are currently on vacation but all options are on the table.
     
  21. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    All jokes, sarcasm, and jabs thrown Discogs' way, my main contention is Discogs' seemingly decreasing interest in participating in dispute mediation along with its wholly incompetent ways in dealing with fraudulent sellers... and let's not forget the #1 complaint that is mentioned by a ton of users all the time; that is of the same titles being relisted constantly.

    If Discogs would hire the personnel it needs with the increase in profits and if it were to address these fundamental issues, it would be easier to swallow that the fees are increasing yet again. As it stands, it unfortunately reeks of opportunism and greed and none of us regular users are the better for it either.
     
  22. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    From a purely cost point of view, eBay is still more expensive.
     
    AaronW likes this.
  23. Leugi

    Leugi Forum Resident

    Location:
    DC
    yes but I feel like prices for sold records can be higher due to people bidding
     
    eddiel likes this.
  24. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    The grab for a fee on shipping charges is a bad omen imo. I don't mind the 1% so much as the fees on the shipping cost. They may follow eBay's lead and every 6 to 9 months and introduce changes that always result in less funds for the seller. Ebay also told sellers to raise their prices to cover the fee increase. Buyers are already paying a fortune in shipping and tax to get a damn record sent to them. It's getting to be too much. Streaming is coming in fast for a reason.
     
    Dave likes this.
  25. Jomay

    Jomay Forum Resident

    I want to make one other point about this price increase.
    The last 5+ years we have seen unprecedented growth in vinyl sales, both in terms of volume and pricing. My collection value has gone through the roof. This means that discogs cut has also skyrocketed. 8% of $10 is a lot less than 8% of $100. It is disingenuous to say they need to raise prices when in fact they have been making a killing! Really feels like greed since they do not reinvest any of this revenue into the buyer or seller experience. How pathetic is it that the best response to scammers and hackers is for other buyers on discogs to open fake accounts just to leave negative feedback to warn others from being robbed. Why can't someone create a marketplace just for vinyl.
     
    Candyflip Records likes this.

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