Vinyl Me Please (store, exclusives, swaps, etc)

GentleSenator said:
how're folks sleeves showing up? for three months in a row now mine have all been beat/split. getting pretty tired of their mediocre mailers, to be honest. this is something absolutely within their control.
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This is one that I'm so curious about. Like for all the issues I usually get, I almost never have corner crunches or splits. I agree that the mailers are not what they should be and for a "premium" service they should be way better. But I do wonder how much of this comes down to local postal hubs. Because I can't see how this stuff is traveling across the border to me in fine shape, and yet so many US folk repeatedly get damage.
 
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Mather said:
This is one that I'm so curious about. Like for all the issues I usually get, I almost never have corner crunches or splits. I agree that the mailers are not what they should be and for a "premium" see they should be way better. But I do wonder how much of this comes down to local postal hubs. Because I can't see how this stuff is traveling across the border to me in fine shape, and yet so many US folk repeatedly get damage.
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Regardless, they’re whole business consists of shipping records by mail to consumers but VMP still can’t do this without a good portion of their product being damaged. I am pleasantly surprised whenever I receive a record without problems.

I hope they have at least done some sort of cost/benefit analysis and determined that is cheaper just to send replacements to those that complain rather than just fix the shipping process because from where I am standing it seems bonkers that they haven’t gotten the logistics figured out on how to get me an album without damage on their first try.
 
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Mather said:
This is one that I'm so curious about. Like for all the issues I usually get, I almost never have corner crunches or splits. I agree that the mailers are not what they should be and for a "premium" service they should be way better. But I do wonder how much of this comes down to local postal hubs. Because I can't see how this stuff is traveling across the border to me in fine shape, and yet so many US folk repeatedly get damage.
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I also get a ton of QC issues but almost never physical damage on the packaging/sleeves. Could it be that our Canadian politeness runs so deep that it affects our mail delivery as well? Eh????
 
NewsFedora said:
Got a generic email saying some records are shipping ahead of schedule. I followed up asking which ones specifically and was told it was for the VMP-100 releases and should expect a shipping notification in the next 24 hours.

I ordered Queen and Saba, which were both slated for mid-May. So yay. 🥳
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Got a shipping notification but it was for Sorcery and nothing else. 😕
 
They replaced everything but Arular. Said they were out of replacements, which sucks because I literally received my box on Wednesday the 21st. It’s been a long time since I’ve received one that late. They gave me $40 in store credit, so that will suffice this time around. Hopefully something good pops up in the store.
 
Sparks_03 said:
They replaced everything but Arular. Said they were out of replacements, which sucks because I literally received my box on Wednesday the 21st. It’s been a long time since I’ve received one that late. They gave me $40 in store credit, so that will suffice this time around. Hopefully something good pops up in the store.
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You can hit up the Vinyl Flat thread on here too and someone may be able to level that Arular up for you too.
 
Sparks_03 said:
Four out of the five records I received were almost as bad. I live in Tennessee. It hasn’t been above 60 the last three days. When this package arrived, the high was 52. Something major went wrong with this. I struggle with how much warp/wobble is appropriate, so it’s hard to say how many “good” albums I’ve sent back for peace of mind. This however, way too much and probably sounds awful. I wasn’t putting my needle down on it.
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also in East, TN and we have less mileage for these to travel, too.
 
Urbs_hott said:
I also get a ton of QC issues but almost never physical damage on the packaging/sleeves. Could it be that our Canadian politeness runs so deep that it affects our mail delivery as well? Eh????
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Canadian politeness is overrated, especially in the big cities. More likely packages travel less distance to folks in Vancouver and Toronto as they are close to the border. I get quite a few seam splits and dings, but my VMP packages are travelling 7000 km from Saddle Creek, through Mississauga.

In my experience, it's almost entirely dependent on how good the packaging is. And, this might be coincidental, but I find you get what you pay for in terms of shipping and packaging. The two vinyl sellers that build shipping into their cost (Amazon and VMP), have the worst packaging, while smaller retailers that charge for shipping (or have a high "free" threshold) are better (whiplash mailers, etc.).
 
TCell said:
Canadian politeness is overrated, especially in the big cities. More likely packages travel less distance to folks in Vancouver and Toronto as they are close to the border. I get quite a few seam splits and dings, but my VMP packages are travelling 7000 km from Saddle Creek, through Mississauga.

In my experience, it's almost entirely dependent on how good the packaging is. And, this might be coincidental, but I find you get what you pay for in terms of shipping and packaging. The two vinyl sellers that build shipping into their cost (Amazon and VMP), have the worst packaging, while smaller retailers that charge for shipping (or have a high "free" threshold) are better (whiplash mailers, etc.).
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In general, agree. I am in Toronto, and in 4 years, have never received a seam split or corner ding (or warp for that matter) from VMP, and I find their packaging hugely better than Amazon.

Amazon - people have to understand that free shipping is going to be cheapest shipping. Can't suck and blow.
 
NathanRicaud said:
Yeah, that’s fair enough! It’s expensive but great value for me as I live in Australia (free shipping) and I really love The Diary Of Alicia Keys + this is a stunning exclusive variant! Plus, the other pressing I had didn’t sound good so it was a big upgrade sound quality wise!

I’m very excited for that King Curtis ROTM! I listened to it the other day and really enjoyed it so I cannot wait to listen to it in audiophile form! I love both the May and June Classics ROTM picks!
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Turns out I had a non-member friend order a copy for me around the time we were having this discussion, much to my absolute surprise! It's not here yet, but they informed me an hour or so ago that it is en route. I'm both flabbergasted and thrilled!
 
Does anyone know if there is a way to see how much credit is in your account without actually putting a record in your basket and going through the process? Cant seem to find anything on the membership page but I might just be looking in the wrong area.
 
Selaws said:
Does anyone know if there is a way to see how much credit is in your account without actually putting a record in your basket and going through the process? Cant seem to find anything on the membership page but I might just be looking in the wrong area.
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go to your account ("my account" > "membership") page, and in the top bar you should see it:

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yukbon said:
don't the may ones come first?
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They do, my question was about the timing of swaps though, they both show the same time, which is 12PM EDT or 5pm+1 GMT.

It's been a year or so since they have been at that time, swaps have generally been going live about 10pm GMT. They haven't shown it as GMT before either, my assumption was that the international times displayed might be wrong.

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