Discogs Shipping/Billing Policy Change

[somethingvinyl]

I've sold on eBay and Amazon for 17 years and can count the number of problems on both hands. I started selling on Discogs this year and only made my first sale in July. I've got 2K in my Paypal right now because it's been so easy thus far. But then I had to set up my shipping policy, which to be fair, was easy. So I thought.

I sold a Wings boot that Discogs let me list for $160 to someone in Japan. I thought I had the LP and 45 flat rate shipping set up, but it was backward somehow. So the guy was invoiced for $14 shipping a 2xLP to Japan instead of $25. I kindly sent him a message asking him to Paypal me $11 and I'd even pay the difference to ship it registered so we can track it a bit more than the normal customs label biz, but of course I haven't heard from him. I wouldn't respond either if I were in his shoes, lol. I literally paid $3 for the boot so I'm not going to lose the sale because of $11, but fuck! I have to make sure this shit is right or else I'm going to be eating the cost of shipping a lot. 

Edited September 19, 2020 by somethingvinyl

[Smellman]

I've had my shipping prices automated for a couple years but I just got a notice that it was incomplete because of the order size setting. The order size setting has been filled in from the beginning. Nothing worked until I just deleted that shipping policy and added a new one with the exact same parameters. 

I'm glad I don't ship overseas.

[thenameisluigi]

On 9/18/2020 at 2:29 PM, daegor said:

The problem is that it's only a half-step.  Every other place on the internet you enter your address and it figures out the shipping cost.  Discogs isn't doing this, instead making the sellers figure out the rates themselves.  It seems like the majority of people are just going with the flat rate option, which actually hurts the buyers since most will be paying more for shipping now.

 

If they had ACTUALLY implemented a solution instead of just forcing sellers to figure it out on their own this would be great.  Unfortunately it's just a step further AWAY from being able to compete with every other marketplace.

This is the issue I see as well. I'd say 2/3-3/4 of all my sales end up being international. On eBay I couldn't care less if it's international since I sell with the Global Shipping Program. I don't deal with it at all, just have to ship it to whatever processing location for eBay and still pack all the records super nice regardless of it being international or domestic.

 

On Discogs, since there's nothing like that, I don't mind checking for quotes when someone asks, but I've rarely shipped to the same country twice, let alone with the same weight. A one size fits all cost is just a headache to refund after the fact, and hope that I put something high enough to cover any situation, which will likely dissuade buyers from purchasing to begin with. 🤷‍♂️ I'll probably just switch Discogs to domestic only and let Ebay handle anything international.

Edited September 20, 2020 by thenameisluigi

[Iggy_Pilot]

On 7/29/2020 at 3:45 PM, al-naafiysh said:

Regarding paying seller fees immediately, I think that’s the more contemporary way to do it - I know eBay still invoices, but most selling platforms just take it out immediately. 

eBay UK and Germany (probably their other divisions as well) have introduced immediate paying of seller fees in July. eBay is using Adyen now which processes all the payments for them.

So Discogs is following the eBay path again by doing that, too.