After a month, I got a response - turns out he was recovering from a heart attack. Now I feel horrible.
I’m right there with you. I’ve been buying a lot of UK and German LPs the past few months, because I think I’m at that point with collecting records where I want to switch to UK Islands/Vertigos/Atlantics/Parlophones/Columbias over their inferior US counterparts. Unfortunately, almost every single record I’ve bought from the UK has been overgraded. Some by a lot. At this point, I’d rather wait around for a US seller to pop up with an import than pay $20-$30 in shipping + the $75-$200 the record costs, then have to pay $20-$30 in shipping again to send it back due to significant issues which make the record pretty much worth less than the shipping cost to begin with. I’ve bought a few “mint unplayed” LPs from UK sellers with 100% positive feedback and reviews that seem legit, and then I end up with a hazy, warped, groove worn piece of junk record that belongs in the trash. At least with domestic sellers, I can pay $5 and it’s back to them in a week and I get my money back. Half the time I don’t even bother trying to send records back internationally because of the problem I mentioned, where I end up basically getting a refund of a few dollars after paying the shipping to send it back. It’s just not worth the time and money spent to get $4 back. I’m even willing to pay a significant premium to buy UK records from US sellers at this point just to avoid the headaches!
Interesting, I bought probably more than a 100 records from German sellers in past 2 years, and had an issue with only one record. UK -yes, I almost gave up buying unseen records there. But I just got a spam message from discogs, basically from "seller" promising naked pictures of herself ))). Now that is first.
when I discovered that in a lot of cases, the shipping equals the cost of the actual product I was 100% done .. keep it
Emily and I are going out sometime soon. I had to buy her some things and give her my credit card info but I think I'll be alright. Oddly she didn't know much about collecting music. She's outgoing and not all that shy btw.
Most of my international dealings have been fine. However I'm usually only buying for pretty harder to find items like 45s or something never released in the US. It seems the people who have those kinds of items are probably collectors too and care about their grading. Most of the things I want were never audiophile recordings to begin with. My rule of thumb is always: if they have a bunch of 50 year old records listed as NM in their store, I don't believe them.
I can't count the number of times I wanted to pick up a rare/rare-ish US pressing of something and ALL the sellers are non US. The listing is for a completely reasonable price and then you get to the shipping and it becomes totally out of the ballpark. Just something I noticed and lamented about.
The old owner at the record store said that back in the 90's and early 2000's, the Germans (and other nationalities obviously) were coming in and buying up all the rare stuff. They especially grabbed a lot of country. That's why most country albums in the US are usually pretty common and undesirable. I'd imagine folks like Bear Family (among others) had people buying over here when everything was cheaper. At that time (even now), there was a lot of stuff on vinyl that had not made it to CD. Even as far back as the early 1980's, some companies were scouring the US for rare garage rock. Almost every time I want some obscure 45, some guy in Germany has the darn thing!
That happens is someone selling private collection (inheritance for example). But this is rare, I agree.
How long would you guys wait to claim a purchased item was not delivered/lost? What's the cut-off with Paypal – 3, 4 months?
The 180 days is PayPals cutoff for when a claim can be filed. When USPS sells a label they estimate a delivery date. It's on the tracking page. I'd say it is arriving late maybe a week after their estimate.
It's coming from Europe so no USPS, and seller did not provide any tracking or evidence of shipment even when asked. So, I wonder how long should I wait to file a claim. Probably a fair amount of time before the cut off just to be safe, right?
Unfortunately that’s sometimes the only easy way to find foreign pressings a lot of the time. What’s cheap in Europe can be several times more expensive here, and the domestic pickins are slim. You might find one beat up copy per year of the album you’re looking for domestically, but in Europe there’s a steady stream of decent copies. Obviously if you end up with an overgraded record anyway, it wasn’t worth it, but it can really pay off if you do find a trustworthy seller.
I’d give it 2-4 weeks. At that point, open a paypal case. It takes about 2 weeks for paypal to have the option to step in, so that gives it a month or 6 weeks to arrive. At this point with shipping services getting more used to the covid era, a month is an acceptable amount of time to wait IMO. Every international shipment I’ve received in the past couple months has gotten to my door in ~2 weeks. It seems like that happens somewhat often with overseas sellers. No tracking. Doesn’t make sense to me, since I’m pretty sure almost every shipping carrier offers tracking at no cost at this point. It’s not the 90s where not many people wanted or cared about tracking. I’m curious what they told you when you asked for tracking, since generally if I bother to buy a record from Europe, it’s a somewhat valuable one that I and the seller probably don’t want to just disappear for weeks or months.
And the frustration grows!! Two times in the last 2 days I have ordered a specific pressing of a cd from 2 separate sellers and sent instructions that they confirm the matrix # before shipping. BOTH sellers had the cd listed under the wrong listing. This really is starting to be a problem with the sellers, but at least they both read my instruction before they shipped and I had to return them. I thought I was being smart once and didn't pay for a vinyl I had ordered and put in the instructions to the seller to please confirm pressing before I paid, they ignored it completely for 19 days and then gave me a non paying customer negative. I contacted them and they IMMEDIATELY (all of a sudden they get interested) contacted me back saying it was obvious I didn't want to pay for it. I tried to get Discogs to remove the negative (I have been on Discogs almost since year one without a single negative) and they basically told me to F off. Too bad they are almost the only game in town.
For awhile, the instructions weren't all that noticeable. Now they put it in a yellow box. I know I missed a few instructions just because it wasn't popping out at me. I even put in seller's instructions to contact through a message due to missing that little window on the right. I see it now though. So I must not have been the only one missing it. I believe having wrong matrix on cds where there is the same barcode is not something that will go away. If every seller really wants to dig into every cd for those tiny little numbers, a lot of cds probably just won't make it to be sold at all. I know for my work if I have to do too much work on a single item that's not that valuable, dollar bin it goes. Bigger sellers aren't going to check for that stuff... ever. It's still better than Ebay IMO where they don't have to even attempt to find a particular version.
Once you place an order you are essentially agreeing to buy it regardless of any outstanding questions that need answering. Hence, the negative feedback was left to stand. I've seen it happen before (via the official forums). It's why you're better off asking before you place the order.
Great news Mia and I are getting married! I sent her my bank account, credit card and SSN and she's promised to fly out here as soon as she can. She forgot to tell me what country she's in, but I'm sure she just wants it to be a surprise. What a playful wench she is.
