RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) denied due to being too "demanding"**

I tried to return a record recently that was a Mispress and was denied, I was told to contact the label, which I did. They thanked me for contacting them and said they had escalated my claim, which is corporate speak for binning it.

 

I managed a high-end furniture company in the 80s, specializing in "natural leather", i.e no overcoating, so scratches, small cuts, colour variations etc. were inherent. This was all well stated in advertising, catalogues etc. However we would get complaints about minor blemishes, etc. Although I never said it to a customer, I was tempted to say "You should have ordered it in Vinyl"....

 

Turn the tables on the argument.

If the customer is purchasing an LP instead of a CD, it is because he is perhaps expecting a "superior product". This is the way the merchandise has been pitched, ever since the CD came to prominence.
The prices charged these days for LP's as opposed to CD's, certainly backs up this claim, that the LP is intended to be perceived as a "superior product". And, if the customer is paying more for the same album on LP, there is a case to be made, that the customer deserves a "superior product".

Manufacturing an LP in smaller batches than was done back in the days before CD, has indeed led to a higher percentage of damaged product getting into the marketplace. So, you're paying more, and getting less of a promise of a decent product. Can anybody argue with that? A store's own customer base can probably confirm this, if they just dared ask. If indeed they were to confirm this for themselves, then their position, "that this customer is costing us money", is undercut by their own research: it is the distributor, and the manufacturer, who is costing them money, not the customer.

If the customer brings in a defective disc, and shows it to the store, and the store agrees, this is not a "superior product", is this really the fault of the customer? Also, as we've seen, the customer who wants a product, will go to wherever he must, to find it.

Thus, the conclusion, "maybe vinyl isn't for you", should perhaps apply to the retailer...and not the customer...?

 

In the four years I worked in record retail I can recall one such customer. This guy would purchase 20-25 LPs per month and return 80% of the month's purchases because of "imperfections." After several years of dealing with this man's unrealistic expectations, we decided that he would be happier purchasing his music elsewhere. About three months later, we got a call from the manager of a large record shop 2 suburbs over from us - "Do you know ------- ?" "Yes." "Did you send him to me???" "No, we did not, looks like it's just your bad luck." "We aren't making any money." "Yup."

Some time later, we found out that our former customer had suffered severe hearing loss and no longer could listen to his rig.

 

AND, not to put too fine a point on my position, the very first thread that popped-up the moment I posted this, and then hit "New Posts", was a 660-post thread entitled:
"Modern Vinyl Is Rubbish...Everything Is Warped!"

 

I've had very good luck dealing with labels, but some might take a good while to get back to you, especially these days.

 

Is it my fault as a customer that the store looses money, or the factories / supplier that in the first place has poor quality control at times?

 

It's a bit of both. If you're buying sealed product, the expectation is obviously not that you'll be receiving a defective product (although in this day and age, with vinyl quality control being virtually nonexistent, I actually do expect to get defective records now) . and from the retailer's standpoint, no matter how much they'll say "the customer is always right," a lot of (read: virtually all) retailers don't really believe that and will instead (and often rightly) conclude that the customer is the problem. you have returned a fairly high percentage of the merchandise you've bought from the store so whether fair or otherwise, the store is going to lose patience.

however, if someone is in this business right now, they have to be aware of just how poor vinyl quality control is, and to that end they should be paying more attention to vinyl returns citing defects. you basically can't be a record store in 2021 and pretend that all records are pressed well. long-term, that is going to hinder business as more and more people realize that so much of the vinyl pressed these days is shoddy, and more and more people start applying pressure to retailers by way of increased returns. so if we rule out that you, the customer, are not being inordinately difficult, then your store is neglectful, willfully or otherwise. in my book that adds up to a good reason to take your business elsewhere.

 

Records are inherently prone to defects--some minor, some major. A perfect vinyl record is a unicorn.

The vinyl record biz is structured so that these are sold one-way: The record store can't return them, even if they are defective.

You can argue that vinyl records should be perfect. They aren't. You can argue that a record store should take back the product if it isn't perfect ENOUGH. Many will, but only to a point. There gets to that point where a customer is clearly expecting something closer to perfection than is reasonable given the medium, and that customer is going to cause you to lose money.

This is the real world. The ideal world--where vinyl can be expected to be perfect, and you are allowed unlimited returns until you get a perfect copy--doesn't exist. You can blame the record industry if you want. But your local record store doesn't make the rules and they aren't in charge of QC for the vinyl. And the margins are not large enough to allow return reates of double-digit percentages without heading towards a loss.

 

I think someone mentioned it back in the thread, but I think your only option to move forward with this store is to have them inspect every record before they send it to you.

 

This is the first vinyl-centric thread I've read in quite some time where so many people are essentially saying that vinyl is inherently prone to defects and CD/digital is the obviously superior choice in this regard...

 

You returned four records in one year.

I have been buying new records since 1974. I have returned two in that 47 years, unplayable copies of The Pacific Age by OMD and Antisocialites by Alvvays.

 

Oh, noes...I forgot, "this is the real world"-!

Obviously this should be the caveat of every single "vinyl-vs.-CD" argument on this board. Somebody should ask a gort to change the title of that one thread to, "Vinyl 1 CD 0 Reality 2" .

 

Digital has always been the obviously superior choice for people with severe OCD issues. People on this forum have said they returned LPs because one corner of the sleeve was slightly crumpled! Those are people who should not be buying vinyl unless their goal is to collect grievances.

 

It depends entirely on what your definition of a flaw is. For example, an edge warp would have to be pretty extreme for me to register a complaint about it.

Craft Recordings carelessly packed an order for me this past summer, and all three of the LPs in it had visibly crushed corners. All the LPs looked absolutely perfect. Craft wouldn't consider a return unless the records were damaged, even though it was partially their fault that the sleeves were damaged. Every single thing I've gotten from an individual or store on Discogs was packed with more care than Craft took with my order.

When all was said and done, Craft was good enough to take 15% off the order, so no harm done. These weren't One-Steps, after all.

 

Well I would assume people afflicted with OCD to that extent would also return CDs for similarly cosmetic issues (creased bent booklets, cracked cases, corner damage on digipacks, etc.)

 

That was definitely not the case back when I was buying vinyl; records warped to any perceptible degree were rare, as were off-centers or non-fills.

If that is the case now, I feel vindicated in being glad I stopped buying vinyl.

 

I had to google non-fills, to see what the fuss was about. I don't think I've ever seen that before, but, I stopped buying vinyl in 1986. Was this a common flaw even back then? I must have been lucky.

 

The truth is that there are fewer than 10 pressing plants currently operating in the USA. No one wants to invest $$$ in a new pressing plant because no one can predict when the current "craze" will end.

As a result, these plants are working overtime to produce albums, and the biggest mystery to me when I was placing replenishment orders was "WHY are labels wasting pressing time on reissuing albums that have limited appeal (for example, the soundtrack to "The Godfather") when they cannot keep evergreen titles like "Abbey Road," "Dark Side Of The Moon," "Rumours" and "The Best Of Queen" in stock?"

Buying for 30 stores, I would routinely cut POs totalling 9,000 units and receive about a 10% fill. Because of the fact that plants were operating extended hours pressing vinyl on 50 year old machines and struggling to keep up with demand, there are a lot more "issues" with vinyl records TODAY compared to the 1970s and 1980s:

* 2 LP sets containing 2 of the same albums (i.e. 2 "sides 3 +4")
* Mispressed vinyl - can be off center or may contain "pits" in the grooves
*Empty sleeves containing NO record at all
*Warped records

These defects occurred about 5% of the time (In earlier times, these were pretty rare occurrences), but we were usually able to work with our vendors and get replacement copies for our customers. In some cases, certain labels would instruct us to have our customer directly contact them to fix a problem.

It is not likely to get much better, sadly.

 

The 'perhaps vinyl is not for you' comments are not doing anything to dispel the belief that this hobby attracts some massive bellends.

 

Exactly...
It doesn't matter if this threading goes all the way to 100 page. if you dont act and figure out the right to do next, you'll end up complaining for the rest of your life. For what., a vinyl?

Well they wont just know that unless if you open it and it also goes the other way and what if you mis-handle it?
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This is not just a dilemma for vinyl. It happens on almost anything and you name it. There is nothing wrong with being too picky but if you feel that the result of buying from online will not meet your expectation, you may need to buy or order from you local store so you can assest the whole thing by yourself on "Live" before you initiate the full payment so it will be a less headache for everyone.

 

I think the OP deserves everything in the response letter. Records aren't perfect. Never have been. If you're returning over 20% of your purchases, the seller doesn't need your business. I've probably bought new 500 albums in past 3 years. I returned 1 album because it was audible that there was a warp.

I understand that people are paying a premium for records. But you aren't buying a premium product. You are free to expect a premium product, that is your choice. But the truth is that you're just buying a record. You're buying music. If it plays fine, then the record is fine. Your turntable is designed to handle slight warps. And it shouldn't be noticeable. If it is noticeable, then maybe you deserve the exchange for another. But this shouldn't be the case very often. Vinyl just isn't going to be perfect. And you're fooling yourself if you think so. I've spent a lot of money and effort to clean my records. I clean all of them. I think there is a difference if you've spend $100+ on something like a UHQR or a 1Step, these are premium records and a standard issue one. And if there is a warp, especially a severe warp, you aren't getting what you paid for. But standard records shouldn't just be returned for minor issues. This causes problems. I think you're buying art when you buy an album. If you don't like then after listening to it, then that's on you. It's been like that forever. Today you hear the songs on most albums for free on Youtube or other streaming services. So for very minor issues with pressings that aren't audible, the seller can't tell if you're returning it because you didn't like it. I don't want things to get petty with record stores, but I've been to record stores that have a no return policy on vinyl because buyer have exploited past return policies. And I understand why the new policy exists. If I was a seller and accepted a return for a defective record, I'd at the very least inspect the records before I sent another one. I figure you're returning an unsealed record, you're going to get an unsealed record as a replacement. But I know it's just easier to tell the buyer to contact the record company for the replacement. I love record stores, but I know that the modern expectations of the buyer always being right, is taken beyond reason, doesn't fit well with that model unless you can offset the returns like Amazon does with purchases of other items into the thousands for their Prime Members.

 

This sounds like a frustrating experience, and I can see how this email from the retailer would be off-putting and bothersome. We buy music to enjoy it, not to go through all this aggravation. So I am sorry you are having to deal with this unpleasantness.

That said, I think at this point in this thread we should speak plainly. While everyone knows that there are plenty of flawed LP pressings out there, the main problem here is that you have returned an unusually high percentage of the new vinyl you have purchased - 4/15 or more than 25%.

Now, it is certainly possible to buy 15 new records and receive 4 records with major defects that make them unplayable or clearly returnable. However, while it is possible, it is not likely - and it is particularly unlikely if you have bought 15 records of various titles from various labels pressed at different times by various pressing plants. (If you had received a bad pressing of an album and then returned it and received another bad pressing, and then another one, that would actually be more common - people report that here all the time, as some records just seem to be bad pressings or have bad batches so people keep getting the same defects when they try to obtain replacement copies.)

So the bottom line here is that a lot of people responding in this thread simply do not believe that 26.7% of your LP purchases have had defects that are as bad as you say they are. And clearly the place you are buying LPs from is now raising that same doubt.

I don't really know what to tell you: none of us can see or inspect your LPs in person. So folks are going on their own experience and their own sense of what the most likely explanation is. No offense, it's nothing personal - there are just limits to how much anyone else is going to take a stranger's word for it on the internet.

 

Currently I'm buying more CDs than ever