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

Skalap said:
It was funny how the day before, despite some critisism, most were arguing that the way it was supposed to happen was the best option and then... Oops, even VMP sent an email to apologize.

Poor Pauly, again. I wish to find a good company where he won't have to clean other's people shit all the time.
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At this point I don’t know whether they’d be better off binning off their community engagement models entirely (discord etc) and just going full faceless. There’s part of me that thinks it’s their profit margin as a company so who cares what batshit decisions they take (see the last 5 pages for reference). They can just say ‘here is the offer. Take it or leave it and if you take it do it quickly’. If people want to play let them and if not then that’s the way it goes.

It’s not like the old days when they were shifting one record a month, the odd exclusive and as many cheap copies of Live Through This as they could get their hands on. They’re massive. They should sack off the losers from the internet and roll the dice on being a proper grown up company. I kinda think that’s how they think they operate anyway so at least they’ll be more honest about it.

I still generally like the product but at times I kinda feel like I’m buying records from the Jonestown Vinyl Emporium.
 
Rowan said:
At this point I don’t know whether they’d be better off binning off their community engagement models entirely (discord etc) and just going full faceless. There’s part of me that thinks it’s their profit margin as a company so who cares what batshit decisions they take (see the last 5 pages for reference). They can just say ‘here is the offer. Take it or leave it and if you take it do it quickly’. If people want to play let them and if not then that’s the way it goes.

It’s not like the old days when they were shifting one record a month, the odd exclusive and as many cheap copies of Live Through This as they could get their hands on. They’re massive. They should sack off the losers from the internet and roll the dice on being a proper grown up company. I kinda think that’s how they think they operate anyway so at least they’ll be more honest about it.

I still generally like the product but at times I kinda feel like I’m buying records from the Jonestown Vinyl Emporium.
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I still get the feeling that they have grown too quickly. Back in the earlier days it seemed more manageable and the customer service team seemed a lot more capable than they do now, in my experience anyway. It used to be that they would respond the same day with a personal response but now I just seem to get the same copy/paste response several days later.

I've been asking them to sort out an address issue for weeks and the last 2 responses from them has been the exact same copy/paste response of "Management is further investigating your concern. I am sorry for the wait here, however, I will contact you back with updates as soon as they're available.", which isn't really helpful at all.
 
Selaws said:
I still get the feeling that they have grown too quickly. Back in the earlier days it seemed more manageable and the customer service team seemed a lot more capable than they do now, in my experience anyway. It used to be that they would respond the same day with a personal response but now I just seem to get the same copy/paste response several days later.

I've been asking them to sort out an address issue for weeks and the last 2 responses from them has been the exact same copy/paste response of "Management is further investigating your concern. I am sorry for the wait here, however, I will contact you back with updates as soon as they're available.", which isn't really helpful at all.
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That's like when it took them three months to investigate why the warehouse couldn't ship my in stock order.
 
MyWifeHatesTrain said:
What’s with all the corn memes over there?
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One of the guys over there bought the fleet foxes RSD live record from Vinyl Cup. They packaged it really poorly (padded it with 5 $1 records but left the FF as the outer record) and it got badly damaged in transit. He emailed them and said the album got damaged because they packed it poorly and he asked for a refund and a return label. The guy at Vinyl Cup cursed him out and told him to take the corn cob out of his ass hah.
 
MikeH said:
One of the guys over there bought the fleet foxes RSD live record from Vinyl Cup. They packaged it really poorly (padded it with 5 $1 records but left the FF as the outer record) and it got badly damaged in transit. He emailed them and said the album got damaged because they packed it poorly and he asked for a refund and a return label. The guy at Vinyl Cup cursed him out and told him to take the corn cob out of his ass hah.
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Clearly the vinyl market is too strong when you can say that to your customers.
 
Selaws said:
I still get the feeling that they have grown too quickly. Back in the earlier days it seemed more manageable and the customer service team seemed a lot more capable than they do now, in my experience anyway. It used to be that they would respond the same day with a personal response but now I just seem to get the same copy/paste response several days later.

I've been asking them to sort out an address issue for weeks and the last 2 responses from them has been the exact same copy/paste response of "Management is further investigating your concern. I am sorry for the wait here, however, I will contact you back with updates as soon as they're available.", which isn't really helpful at all.
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I think they grew quickly but then didn’t reinvest that back into the company to improve things. Instead they tried to keep adding tracks and be everything to everyone. They have 20k subscribers but still act like a scrappy start up. The site sucks and their systems suck. Why does someone have to manually update when a preorder is in stock on their site backend? Why do they introduce new website features the day of a big drop? How do they STILL not know how and when to communicate to customers?

With Shabaka, the album was marked in stock yet the test pressing hadn’t even been approved by Shabaka yet and it had blown past the original release date. How do you not just email customers and say “the release is delayed and we will update you when we have a new date locked in”?

They have had the same issues for 10 years. Feels like nobody in the company talks to each other. Comms doesn’t exist. The response has always been “we’re working to fix it”
 
MikeH said:
I think they grew quickly but then didn’t reinvest that back into the company to improve things. Instead they tried to keep adding tracks and be everything to everyone. They have 20k subscribers but still act like a scrappy start up. The site sucks and their systems suck. Why does someone have to manually update when a preorder is in stock on their site backend? Why do they introduce new website features the day of a big drop? How do they STILL not know how and when to communicate to customers?

With Shabaka, the album was marked in stock yet the test pressing hadn’t even been approved by Shabaka yet and it had blown past the original release date. How do you not just email customers and say “the release is delayed and we will update you when we have a new date locked in”?

They have had the same issues for 10 years. Feels like nobody in the company talks to each other. Comms doesn’t exist. The response has always been “we’re working to fix it”
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Oh damn, I must have missed the Shabaka delay. When are they expecting it to ship now then?
 
MikeH said:
I think they grew quickly but then didn’t reinvest that back into the company to improve things. Instead they tried to keep adding tracks and be everything to everyone. They have 20k subscribers but still act like a scrappy start up. The site sucks and their systems suck. Why does someone have to manually update when a preorder is in stock on their site backend? Why do they introduce new website features the day of a big drop? How do they STILL not know how and when to communicate to customers?

With Shabaka, the album was marked in stock yet the test pressing hadn’t even been approved by Shabaka yet and it had blown past the original release date. How do you not just email customers and say “the release is delayed and we will update you when we have a new date locked in”?

They have had the same issues for 10 years. Feels like nobody in the company talks to each other. Comms doesn’t exist. The response has always been “we’re working to fix it”
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They’ve tried to grow the company without growing the staffing or the expertise. It’s still the same bunch of chancers picking the records, writing the pieces and running the logistics and customer service. And it shows. Massively.
 
Joe Mac said:
They’ve tried to grow the company without growing the staffing or the expertise.
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this 100%. Status quo. The curation stuff is whatever—it’s always gonna be subjective. But all the annoying shit hasn’t changed and it’s just VMP shooting themselves in the foot over and over and over again.

Selaws said:
Oh damn, I must have missed the Shabaka delay. When are they expecting it to ship now then?
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You missed it because they didn’t communicate it hah. It was supposed to be out mid May I think. It showed in stock on the site. Then someone asked about it and Storf said Shabaka hadn’t even approved the test pressing. It’s apparently now approved and on the presses…
 
MikeH said:
this 100%. Status quo. The curation stuff is whatever—it’s always gonna be subjective. But all the annoying shit hasn’t changed and it’s just VMP shooting themselves in the foot over and over and over again.


You missed it because they didn’t communicate it hah. It was supposed to be out mid May I think. It showed in stock on the site. Then someone asked about it and Storf said Shabaka hadn’t even approved the test pressing. It’s apparently now approved and on the presses…
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It all kinda plays into it though and even with something that is subjective having a main player, or a small group led by a main player, things get stale and samey. More so when that main player has some pretty strong opinions that don’t always have the strongest rationale behind them.

I’d love a club this size to have more female voices and even more voices with older or non US focuses. And by old I don’t mean boomers, there’s enough of that everywhere, but that big 80s and 90s period that seems to often fall between all the vinyl cracks. Hell even an Anglophile would probably radically transform their curation and Britain is probably the second most powerful player after the states in terms of producing lots of acts and recorded music.
 
I’m going to need to find a third record also. Between a referral credit and using a referral link I’ve got the 3 months for about $60 so decided to give the Joni a try and get the Little Richard one. Scraping around a bit for a third though….
 
spilledleche said:
They feel like a start up who were always gearing toward getting bought and ramped up in a way to try and achieve that. When that didn’t happen, they had become an overextended company lacking in infrastructure to support what they’d become. I’d love to see their balance sheets at this point.
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I've worked for so many companies that did this. Great at the startup phase, but no idea how to run things at the next level so they just flounder and flop around for years never knowing why nothing works the way it should. It's different skill sets. But I'm also for more small companies and fewer behemoths. We need that diversity and innovation. One of the reasons I was sad to see Bandbox go belly up.
 
spilledleche said:
They feel like a start up who were always gearing toward getting bought and ramped up in a way to try and achieve that. When that didn’t happen, they had become an overextended company lacking in infrastructure to support what they’d become. I’d love to see their balance sheets at this point.
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The last three years have to be batshit crazy.
 
Hemotep said:
I've worked for so many companies that did this. Great at the startup phase, but no idea how to run things at the next level so they just flounder and flop around for years never knowing why nothing works the way it should. It's different skill sets. But I'm also for more small companies and fewer behemoths. We need that diversity and innovation. One of the reasons I was sad to see Bandbox go belly up.
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These guys were a great small company but never scaled out of that mindset.
 
Hemotep said:
I've worked for so many companies that did this. Great at the startup phase, but no idea how to run things at the next level so they just flounder and flop around for years never knowing why nothing works the way it should. It's different skill sets. But I'm also for more small companies and fewer behemoths. We need that diversity and innovation. One of the reasons I was sad to see Bandbox go belly up.
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Yes totally. It’s one reason why the clubs that come from huge labels have a different feeling and are often more just a different store front for variants than anything else.

What I would say is that even still they are not an enormous company, it’s just that they hit the zeitgeist by having the right product at the right time, blew up quicker than they were ready for but then just never addressed that. They don’t need to aim for eternal growth, that’s neither healthy or realistic, but they do need to expand to service the growth they had 6 years ago.
 
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