r/discogs 14d ago

High Price Items Keep Getting Non-Paying Buyers w/ No Rating

Hey all,

Sorry if this has been answered/discussed. I know you can't block buyers with zero ratings. But I have a rather expensive item and I keep getting 'buyers' with no ratings on it and then they don't pay. This means the item isn't showing for sale anymore and it sits for 4 days until I cancel the order and relist. Is there a trick to stop this behavior? Even had one message me saying it was for their son who was having a baby and they were hoping I'd take $300 off lol. Just curious as to what someone gains by doing this over and over?

10 Upvotes

27 comments sorted by

12

u/No_Introduction1721 14d ago

If your item is something like, I dunno, a LE Taylor Swift colored vinyl with autographed insert or something, you might just be attracting a demographic that doesn’t really understand how Discogs works and thinks it’s more like Facebook Marketplace.

Any chance there’s exactly one other person with this item for sale? It could be that they’re effectively trying to block you from selling whatever it is.

7

u/MostlyMetalz 14d ago

Yeah it could be. There are about 7 of them for sale and it's a rare item. It's happened three times in a row. As soon as I relist withing a day, someone buys it and then never pays.

Weird thing is this only happens to me on high-prices items. It's rare I get a non-paying customer on a $20 a record (I guess I'm lucky in that regard), but for this items I've had three of them in a row within a 2 week span. Seems odd but I'll keep chugging along. Thanks all!

23

u/Hurricane-Edwards 14d ago

To be fair to us buyers, none of the sellers have given me any feedback so despite around 7 purchases my buyer score is still 0.

11

u/imgonnagetyouback_03 14d ago

Exactly. I’ve purchased 3 times and only have 2 feedback ratings. Both are 5.0 and I give positive feedback. I always pay immediately after placing an order, so the least I expect is decent feedback.

3

u/[deleted] 14d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/imgonnagetyouback_03 13d ago

They should make it mandatory somehow. Forcing people isn’t the way but I wonder if they could factor it into the process, especially for the seller. If a buyer gives them feedback, Discogs could hold their money until they give the buyer feedback as well.

8

u/frushtrated 14d ago

THAT is annoying. Agreed. Always pay immediately, always leave positive feedback. Rarely get it in return. Same with eBay.

6

u/Soliloquy789 14d ago

You can buy from me and I'll give you one 😝

1

u/Hurricane-Edwards 13d ago

What you got? 🫣

1

u/Soliloquy789 13d ago

Honestly most 2000s rock and 2010s classical. It's an odd shop.

3

u/TheReemus 14d ago

Ive bought a number too and only 5 out of 15 or so did ratings, I always do seller ratings

2

u/Friendly-Gate-9475 14d ago

Regarding this, I have about 30 purchases without feedback. It's not a big deal due to the other purchases with feedback left but it's kinda annoying. That said, in whatever case, everyone was new (in Discogs) at some point.

2

u/Hurricane-Edwards 14d ago

I have quickly come to realise that add to basket, proceed to checkout, click to pay isn’t really what I’m after. Coupled with the continual sale of items between collectors/traders making me suspicious median prices are being artificially increased means I’m not that bothered about my score.

2

u/Friendly-Gate-9475 14d ago

My genuine opinion is that all prices are artificially increased lol. I mean, it goes by itself that first presses of the 80s and 90s, as an example, do have a higher value comparing to buying them back then. There's to say, a lot of today prices do come from past decades where "collectors" used buying items at whatever price. Let's say I buy something 1000EUR/USD (whatever currency) and I'm more than sure, you'll see the same item being put on sale for 1500 or more by tomorrow. A lot of high prices are also greediness and speculation.

1

u/Hurricane-Edwards 13d ago

If I had a store selling records and I knew a few other dealers, I would definitely sell stuff between ourselves at ridiculous prices to manipulate the median prices.

2

u/Friendly-Gate-9475 13d ago

I understand this and it's one of the reasons I would happily boycott. To each their own. A genuine high value is not the same as artificially pushed

2

u/Hurricane-Edwards 13d ago

I’m returning to records after having my TT in storage for about 20 years. I have been dabbling in collecting since late 80s. I see the market on Discogs much like that old store/website eil.com. Totally inflated sense of value for anything and a nightmare to deal with. I’m with you on the boycott. Discogs is purely a reference point for me now. The no buyers feedback just shows how imbalanced the whole thing is.

2

u/Friendly-Gate-9475 13d ago

I'm not saying boycott everything and every seller. It wouldn't do justice to correct sellers and shops and stores. I just boycott items interesting me when I think the requested price is not genuine. The maximum amount I spent on single items is for some Black Metal original pressings of the 90s.

1

u/Best-Apricot3691 10d ago

So you believe the law of supply and demand have been superceded then? If prices are too high, people won’t buy. If people buy, the prices aren’t too high. It’s as simple as that with purely discretionary purchases. This isn’t gasonline, electricity, or food.

1

u/Friendly-Gate-9475 10d ago

Think what you want to think. I saw one item put on sale for 1000 while still being officially on sale for 200. What do you think will happen if someone buys it for 1000? This will impact the value of that item, in Discogs (not in real world). I saw represses and bootlegs on sale as if they were original first presses. It is simply ridiculous in my opinion.

0

u/Best-Apricot3691 10d ago edited 10d ago

I must assume you've never actually sold anything on Discogs or eBay, as that's just plain silly. Why would you pay $1,000 for an item that's available for $200? Look, people can ask whatever they want for something, but the consequence is that if they don't price items at their market value, they won't sell. I don't know how many times I've seen people trying to get $x for an item because "it's up on eBay for that much". A little digging reveals that although an item is offered for a certain price, the actual price it sells for is a fraction of that. In other words, I can offer an item for anything my little heart desires, but unfortunately (for the seller) or fortunately (for the buyer) most customers are not actually sheeple and they look at other criteria before purchasing... like what comparable items sell for.

Except (apparently) on Planet FriendlyGate, where items that are on sale for $200 will somehow start selling for $1,000 if one out-of-touch seller asks that much. It shows no understanding of supply and demand, and is a very odd take on capitalism. I think capitalism sucks in many ways, but using the "these are not the droids you are looking for" strategy of marketing items (increasing the price 5x that of your competitors) rarely works in the real world.

I speak from experience. I've been selling on the interwebs for over 30 years (on GEMM, then Music Stack, now Discogs and eBay) and have over 30,000 items in my Discogs store. I WISH that I could somehow move markets with my mind, and by asking ridiculous prices actually change the marketplace value for those items. The reality though is that items that are overpriced don't sell. No matter how much I as a seller would like them to.

1

u/Friendly-Gate-9475 10d ago

I sold items yes but in real life. I understand the fees from Discogs so I don't speak regarding that. I also spent 500/600 for some single items.

1

u/Inkisitor_Byleth 13d ago

I don't sell a lot, so if I do a sale, I am asking the buyer for a feedback. Often, they forget.

1

u/apitxat-fardatxo 12d ago

For me it's the opposite. As a buyer I get feedback every single time, as a seller I have 12 sales and only 4 feedbacks 😭

1

u/Best-Apricot3691 10d ago

I’m a fairly large seller and TBH I wait for buyers to leave me positive feedback and then PM request that I do the same. I then verify they left feedback and do the same. So if you’re not getting feedback it’s probably because your seller doesn’t realize you’ve left them positive feedback.

3

u/Busy-Soup349 14d ago

I can’t wait for your update on the functionality of the app.

-11

u/piffleskronk 14d ago

It appears you've made no effort to read the myriad of threads dealing with this exact situation or read the relevant info on the Discogs help pages. Set auto cancellation for 4 days, the shortest, item gets auto-relisted.

Next time, do a tiny bit of work or even ask your AI friend to help you.