New discogs shipping policies

Started by CannibalRitual, September 18, 2020, 10:41:58 AM

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CannibalRitual

This shit is going to be mandatory for sellers starting October 1st. Anyone set this up already? Well it was quite good, without this extra hassle.

W.K.

Probably going to wait out and see what will happen. Only looking at the policy editor gives me a headache already.

QuoteWhat will happen if you have no Shipping Policies?

If you don't have a Shipping Policy set up, or it doesn't cover all your potential orders (see above), your listings will show up as unavailable in the Buyer's region. You won't be blocked or banned from the Marketplace, but (prospective) Buyers won't be able to purchase from you.

Can I set up Shipping Policies for some countries and not others?

You control where you're willing to ship to. If you'd like to only ship domestically, set up a Shipping Policy for your own country (again, make sure it covers all potential orders by format, quantity, and weight). Your listings will appear as unavailable to buyers outside of your country.

It's the same process if you want to offer your inventory to only a handful of countries. Your listings will show up where you have complete Shipping Policies set up and will be unavailable in the countries with no Shipping Policies.

aiaiaiai, not being able to sell nazi stuff, alright Discogs, I understand, but this.......
Straight murkin' riddim blud, absolute vile gash

CannibalRitual

Quote from: W.K. on September 18, 2020, 11:55:42 AM
aiaiaiai, not being able to sell nazi stuff, alright Discogs, I understand, but this.......

Not able to sell it, okay, but why the fuck do they still allow to list them up on their precious site if it's sooooo bad?

My shipping policies are quite simply as is, and to be honest I don't want to be bothered doing this shit. And forcing this as requirement looks shady to me. Unfortunately discogs has been my primary noise "income". But I'm really getting fed up with all this corporate shit getting worse everywhere with big marketing guys in their meetings decide what people want or not.

theotherjohn

It's very annoying to say the least, even if I just use Discogs non-professionally on the side to sell odds and sods in my collection. When the initial messages about this transition came in, I got individual policies set up to factor in orders up to 2kg in weight (any higher than that and courier services get involved, especially for international shipping) which I thought would be enough, but after getting the email yesterday from Discogs I saw that in order for the policy to be "completed" by Discogs' standards you have to also set a "flat rate" shipping cost... who knows what that could entail in size or weight?

In the end I just made another separate flat rate shipping cost for each selling region with a highly exaggerated price for item orders of any size or weight. Rather than turning off potential buyers when they see that price, my hope is that it will just make people message me directly so that we can negotiate what the actual shipping cost will be. Never had an issue with doing business like that up until now. Bottom line is I detest relying on automation and will always favour transactions with a little back and forth personal interaction between the buyer and seller.

monster ripper

I've been meaning to make a post about this, so I'm glad somebody else got to it before me.  This is the latest in a long line of screw ups from discogs, and if you read the blog/forum posts about it, you'd see that 99%+ of the users are against it.  There are way to many factors in shipping to come up with a standard policy that covers them all, and this will be nothing but a major headache with sellers either going to have to raise there postage rates, and stick it to the buyer, or they'll end up having to eat the  loss every time the system screws up and only charges $10 shipping for something that ends up costing $25. 
Supposedly your items will still show up in the marketplace, but people won't be able to place an order, but with luck they'll be able to contact you direct and you can proceed with the transaction outside of discogs.   So, anybody reading this that buys from me off of discogs, just contact me direct in the future, not only will you get a better price, since I no longer have to pay the  discogs fees, you won't have to pay the sales tax that discogs automatically charges you either.
The fact that they're still going through with this, despite the mass amounts of negative feedback, and threats of sellers boycotting discogs makes me think there's more to the story they're not telling us, so don't be surprised if in a few months from now you see them announcing the sale of discogs to ebay, or some3 other party.....

Goat93

Quote from: CannibalRitual on September 18, 2020, 12:13:12 PM
Quote from: W.K. on September 18, 2020, 11:55:42 AM
aiaiaiai, not being able to sell nazi stuff, alright Discogs, I understand, but this.......

Not able to sell it, okay, but why the fuck do they still allow to list them up on their precious site if it's sooooo bad?


They are in the First Place a Database and in the Second Place a Market. So its natural that they want to include everything into the Database but won't sell everything

accidental

Quote from: Goat93 on September 18, 2020, 05:12:04 PM
They are in the First Place a Database and in the Second Place a Market. So its natural that they want to include everything into the Database but won't sell everything

Maybe to you. So depends on your perspective. One has to be really naive to think they "are" a database first, marketplace second.

Discogs is pure capitalist evil - for fools. Brilliant business idea and implementation. Those who -with a smile- will for free build a database/wiki for a company. A company that will make millions. And then proceed to let the same company take their money through the foundation that members has built...Some people want to be slaves.

Im using it, i love the database. And the items ive gotten ahold of thanks it.  But fuck discogs. I'd be happy to see them go down. Like eBay has when it comes to underground music.

whiteheatnoise

At first, I was resistant to this idea, but personally, I am okay with it after having switched over my account to the automated policies this week. It's been working fine so far, and even with the few international orders I've received, the shipping invoices seem to be on point. However, I am expecting to run into some issues with Discogs undercharging for international shipping at some point, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. It is going to save a massive amount of time on my end as far as not having to invoice buyers anymore, sending follow-up messages to buyers about sending payment, cancelling orders for non-payment, etc.

To be clear, my domestic policy is very simple as I offer $5 flat rate shipping for any amount of items, so that was easy to set up. The international policy took a little bit of time, but maybe 2 hours tops to set up prices and weight categories for all the possible international rates. So, being a seller that has set up their policies, I can say that it wasn't that much of a headache.

absurdexposition

I think the automated shipping policies are great and sales are made much easier. Although it does become complicated in countries like Canada where we don't have any flat rate options like Media Mail, etc. and shipping is based on distance/region. So when it comes to shipping LPs at a flat rate you either have to take a hit, or overcharge and dissuade prospective buyers, depending on what you decide to set your rate at. Setting up per-format rates made sense, but this blanket "All Format" rule is annoying.
Primitive Isolation Tactics
Scream & Writhe distro and Absurd Exposition label
Montreal, QC
https://www.screamandwrithe.com

deutscheasphalt

Utter garbage.
Discogs is getting worse and worse

holy ghost

Quote from: absurdexposition on September 18, 2020, 06:37:31 PMshipping is based on distance/region.

I shut down my discogs store in February and have been contemplating re-opening just to Canada/the US but probably won't just because of this. I can't tell you how many times I've been burned when an LP is .505g vs. .499g and shipping to Calgary is $24 instead of $13 or whatever.

I see their point trying to standardize things - nothing worse than seeing a record you might be interested in from some huxtable and the shipping is €40 from Germany while Total Black is shipping me multiple LPs for like €7 so I know it doesn't cost that much! But really overall I don't think it helps anything and is a deterrent for people like me who use it all the time.

PTM Jim

Luckily I don't put too much up for sale, but this is pretty stupid and unnecessary. Could have made it an option rather than mandatory. I simply added a flat rate for US and then put a flat rate of $60 for the rest of the world so it would show up for them. Then I have a prompt telling international customers to simply send me a message or email and I will easily cancel an order and get the proper shipping.

absurdexposition

Quote from: PTM Jim on September 18, 2020, 09:09:35 PM
Luckily I don't put too much up for sale, but this is pretty stupid and unnecessary. Could have made it an option rather than mandatory.

I think it kind of goes hand in hand with something we commented on in the past in regards to having an easier checkout process on a website vs. "email for shipping costs", etc. Once I switched to my current storefront my sales almost doubled and I did nothing extra in terms of promo or changing up what I stocked, the only change was that shipping costs were visibly available. The same can be applied here with these automated shipping policies: knowing the full price incl. shipping before even adding to cart is a big plus for buyers imo and will for sure increase sales (and payments come through faster, typically)... the headache only lies in getting everything setup and figuring out an acceptable balance for the "all format flat rate" bit. Overall it can't be much different than setting shipping prices on Big Cartel, etc. which is already a mess of inaccuracies most of us are used to.
Primitive Isolation Tactics
Scream & Writhe distro and Absurd Exposition label
Montreal, QC
https://www.screamandwrithe.com

slagfrenzy tapes

I posted a CD to Canada in April. It turned up in August, I refunded his money in July and he refunded my refund when the CD turned up. Top bloke.
The idea that I am forced to commit to a realistic price for postage is a joke when postal companies can't provide the service. I brought an LP from 20mins drive away from me which took three weeks to be delivered. I have to explain this to my customers all the time now.

I no longer post outside of Australia because of the prices being charged by the postal carriers.
This is the wrong time to implement this shipping policy.

Good to hear you people have the same opinion.


holy ghost

As a buyer I don't hate it, I will admit. I've dealt with enough sellers who weren't clear in their terms and I wind up paying more or it not being registered from overseas, but I know that they have a much higher risk of getting screwed over if the package is off a touch weight wise.

Like I bought a few 7"s from someone in British Columbia last year and it worked out that sending two packets letter mail was cheaper than sending 4 7"s (two $4 packages vs $18) so how do you account for those goofy variables. I get it, Canada is huge but so it the US, literally the only thing they have ever done that I agree with is media mail.....