Upscale Denver report membership Vinyl Me, Please is combating rip-off web pages that have been made to seem like its on-line retailer, the Denver corporate stated Thursday. However actual adjustments also are going down because it strikes clear of its founding style and touts newly discounted releases and check pressings.
The faux web site vinylmepleaseus.com and no less than one different that was once marketed on Fb Thursday are “factually 100% a rip-off,” corporate officers posted in a Vinyl Me, Please Reddit discussion board. “The message that they shared with it’s not correct in any respect and the ones aren’t even VMP workplaces … Apologies for any individual stuck up within the confusion, we’re doing the whole thing we will be able to to get that web site(s) taken down!”
Whilst the spoofed web site seems to had been deleted, its “the whole thing will have to move” message was once angled to play into fears that the corporate had declared chapter, following fresh months of shopper lawsuits, product delays, proceedings, and management turnover.
Vinyl Me, Please officers didn’t reply to requests for remark.
The corporate on Thursday did, alternatively, announce a “Dings & Dents” sale, wherein data are decided on randomly through staffers — relatively than being ordered through name or artist — then offered at a cut price because of bent corners and different imperfections.
It’s now not the one alternate. Final month, the corporate dropped its long-running Report of the Month style, as an alternative choosing customer-chosen releases. That adopted the cancellation final yr of its global club plans. As well as, Vinyl Me, Please has made up our minds to promote its backlog of check pressings, a few of that have sat in a closet for just about a decade.
“We’ve gathered hundreds of units of check pressings, and as an alternative of allowing them to take a seat untouched in garage, simplest heard through one or two body of workers contributors, we’re making those ultra-rare pressings to be had for the primary time ever,” the corporate wrote in its e-newsletter. Just like the Dings & Dents sale, shoppers can’t make a selection titles.
The 12-year-old corporate’s per 30 days subscriptions get started at $54 and vary as much as $654 for the highest tier, in line with its web site. Maximum in their data, priced between $35 and $65 every, are advertised for his or her exclusivity and collector-grade high quality.
Simply over a yr in the past the corporate gave the look to be on cast footing, with more than one high-profile releases deliberate for 2024. However in March, the board of administrators fired leader govt officer Cameron Schaefer and leader monetary officer Adam Block, then filed a lawsuit in opposition to them claiming they’d misled the board and diverted VMP cash to a brand new and one after the other owned, 14,000-square-foot urgent plant at 4201 N. Brighton Blvd.
Schaefer later instructed Industry Den he believed he and others have been fired to avoid wasting on severance. In October, the corporate stated it had discovered new proof that 3 of the fired executives went “to nice lengths to hide up their use of corporate price range to construct a vinyl urgent plant within the River North Artwork District, together with non-disclosure agreements and a codename for the challenge,” Industry Den reported.
Final yr the corporate stated it was once additionally going through delivery delays, and it cancelled its global club plans, limiting new releases to home shoppers.
Some contributors have complained concerning the ongoing adjustments on-line, with YouTube movies corresponding to “The Cave in of Vinyl Me, Please” and others garnering tens of hundreds of perspectives, and Reddit and different boards web hosting lawsuits about delays, value will increase, and issue returning pieces.
Reddit person Anna Seembor stated that she nonetheless hadn’t won greater than $200 in data she ordered right through a Black Friday sale final yr. She posted information about a lot of customer-service calls that experience now not but resolved the problem.
“I’m questioning if VMP refuses to send my order as a result of I cancelled my club in December, or if they only don’t find the money for to pay the distributor to free up my order,” she wrote on Reddit. “I’m leaning towards simply cancelling the order and getting money back as an alternative of shedding the cash when VMP in the end information for chapter…however I actually sought after the data lol.”
Lately, report labels, artists and different entities have additionally taken a chunk out of the high-end LP reissue sport, and native brick-and-mortar report shops (which regularly promote used VMP releases at a cut price) have expanded with new and bigger places.
The corporate stated that fresh shifts in its industry style will have disenchanted some shoppers.
“We all know this alteration is large and would possibly really feel like a departure from what has made VMP particular,” in line with a January weblog publish on its web site, which detailed the Report of the Month adjustments. “Please know that our challenge — serving to you construct a report assortment your family and friends will struggle over whilst you’re long past — has simplest grown more potent.”
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