Discogs seller ratings. Are you honest?

To moot, I, as a seller, did make a mistake a few months ago when I mistakenly sent the wrong album to a buyer. It was from the same artist but I was scrambling as I was unbelievably busy at the time and made a simple mistake.

The buyer contacted me, I paid for return shipping and sent him the correct album. Had the buyer just left me negative feedback immediately without letting me know, I wouldn't have had a chance to apologize and fix the issue.

 

I did find out that's the policy obviously; after the event.

I'm sure it goes both ways.
Recently I've been buying on Facebook and I'm prepared for it to be a lucky dip.
Etc.

 

Indeed I became highly cautious of Discogs and their buyer "protection", in fact I use Ebay most of the time.

 

It isn't buyer protection as much as it's protection from non-paying buyers. You'll notice a lot of the time the negative feedback entries on profiles of buyers are usually due to non-payment. If a buyer isn't the serious type and simply a time-waster, it's best to not have to deal with them at all.

 

Ebay used to be like that in the early days. Don't even get me started.

People buying something and then vanishing in the ether. Nowadays with instant payment more or less required I didn't have a single Ebay deal where I had to remind the buyer that they still need to pay, for years. Since I never sold there I only can comment on Discogs from a buyers perspective....

 

That really doesn't address the point I was making. If a seller on eBay provides poor quality pictures I at least can make a decision based on that fact. A lack of LP information and poor quality pictures is actually useful to know up front. It shows me that I am taking a chance if I make a purchase. I simply don't buy from sellers like that.

The criticism I made of Discogs is when sellers specifically list their LP under an LP title and catalog number when the one they actually have for sale is different. The pictures shown on Discogs are a representation of the item, not the actual item the seller has for sale. I have had far too many purchases where the seller misrepresented their LP for sale.

Scott

 

Plenty of sellers on eBay do the same thing. Either grab stock pics or the pics are of poor quality. Useless either way.

Best way is to ask the seller (regardless of platform) to confirm what they actually for sale and what the honest-to-goodness condition is. A blurry pic doesn't provide any additional info and more often than not, sellers on eBay simply list under the title and don't provide any pressing info whatsoever which is an added bonus with Discogs. If I'm looking for a 1st US pressing of a specific album, I can at least filter out the ones which aren't even listed as such. Then, I can ask the sellers to confirm and go from there.

In the end, it's merely a preference. I'm an extremely logical person so I really don't see what a poor quality pic will accomplish so might as well skip that step entirely and get confirmation anyway since it'd need to be obtained with a poor quality pic regardless. Even high-quality pics can rarely display actual condition. I did sell an UHQR record and I had to take a number of pics depending on the angle and light to get the quality shot shown below.



That is the only instance that it might give you an inkling. And I did it because it was a record I was asking $250 for and wanted to offer proof of the "played once" grading I gave it. Aside from high-quality close-ups, it's a waste of time, IMHO. How many sellers will go through that trouble on eBay? Next to none. And if it's a lower-priced album, even more of a waste of time for sellers so...

 

You should be cautious because they offer zero buyer protection. They leave it up to PayPal.