Album Circle

RenegadeMonster said:
The latest thing people are complaining about is the autographed bags weren't exclusives either. That's how the record came autographed from other sources as well.

To me that says Album Circles claim that that was the artist decision was probably valid. This is also the issue I'm least concerned about.

When signing up it sounded like you would get something that's exclusive to Album Circle. That's not the case. I'm even more bothered by the fact that they blame us for making that assumption. "It's a rough trade service, you should have known you were getting a rough trade exclusive."
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The bag makes me think it wasn't the artist decision and more likely they had extra or the stock in place already. Either way a signed bag isn't a signed lp
 
bdm105 said:
The bag makes me think it wasn't the artist decision and more likely they had extra or the stock in place already. Either way a signed bag isn't a signed lp
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Well, it is the same bag you got signed on band camp. So people got it from sources other than Rough Trade. They were going with a King Gizzard album bag feel with the packaging.
 
duke86fan said:
So can someone recap how they messed up

So far stuff about not getting shipping notes and not really getting exclusives
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It was advertised as an exclusive for the club limited to 500. Instead they sent out leftovers of another RT exclusive that had 2,000 pressed. That’s the biggest annoyance for me. There’s nothing exclusive or interesting really about this release or club. Then they went back and changed the website wording and blamed the artist for signing a paper bag instead of the actual album.
 
That cheap ass box arrived today. Open. No spinny qr code thing, and they signed the back of the bag. Don't get the idea of this at all. Even if signing the bag was the band's idea, why sign the back of it? No way to display the art and signatures. And folding it twice? Plus the sleeve was beat to hell. Had I been excited for this to arrive still despite all the shenanigans opening that box had all the disappointment of getting a hot turd in the mail. Colossal letdown. I really only want to be in this hobby for the music, but that album couldn't save this box's soul.
 
Finally got a reply to my email this afternoon.

They didn't comment on the rough trade exclusive portion of my email at all in my first reply.

They just apologise for my package coming damaged and offered to send me a new package or send me a shipping label to return it for a refund.

I again questioned them on the rough trade exclusive and it not being an album circle exclusive. And they replied that it was an exclusive.

The monthly albums are indeed exclusive editions - in this instance, to Rough Trade (which this service is part of - who source and select the record), but not solely Album Circle (Album Circle members-only have received this record weeks ahead of it’s US release). We have amended our website description accordingly, removing any degree of ambiguity.
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This sounds like a canned response and is pretty much the same as what they said on Discord.
 
I would imagine that is where Rough Trade is going to sit on this. I think the responses of most of us and the folks in the Discord/Reddit likely represent a good chunk of the userbase and they know they're just chalking up the loss at this point. The fact that they're providing shipping labels now tells me they know they are in the wrong but can't or won't admit it for a variety of reasons.

The insanity of the bag folding is one of the low key funnier parts of it. The bag is the same size as the record and they're using a record mailer...why does it need to be folded four times? And mine was signed on the back too Hemotep, that's absolute bollocks.

I feel like their strategy is going to be taking the brunt of cancellations, re-opening signups for people who don't know better, and then lean more heavily on their new website verbiage. I think it's pretty clear that they intended to deceive on the exclusivity of the whole thing so I'm happy with the cancellation decision.
 
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They still need to have communication about the Q&A session.

Not to mention, they could still use it as customer support until they get through all the refunds and questions from people.

Their contact email to request a refund was only given on Discord. Without Discord, people still getting their packages and who have not been in the group trying to avoid spoilers will not know how to contact them now.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
They still need to have communication about the Q&A session.

Not to mention, they could still use it as customer support until they get through all the refunds and questions from people.

Their contact email to request a refund was only given on Discord. Without Discord, people still getting their packages and who have not been in the group trying to avoid spoilers will not know how to contact them now.
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They sent an email out this AM with info on how to contact:


Dear Member,

We hope this email finds you well.

Regrettably, after much deliberation, we’ve taken the decision to close our Discord server. Quite simply, discord by name, discord by nature.

Moving forward, we shall look for an alternative space that provides a positive forum focused on a love of music.

In the meantime, please continue to contact us at members@albumcircle.com with any questions, queries and feedback - we will respond as soon as possible, within Mon-Fri Eastern Time office working hours.

Kind regards,

Album Circle
 
MikeH said:
we shall look for an alternative space that provides a positive forum focused on a love of music.
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Haha. We don't want you pointing out legitimate issues with our service and dissatisfaction of getting what you paid for. So we shut it down and hopefully the people that point things out don't follow us to a new home.
 
MikeH said:
They sent an email out this AM with info on how to contact:


Dear Member,

We hope this email finds you well.

Regrettably, after much deliberation, we’ve taken the decision to close our Discord server. Quite simply, discord by name, discord by nature.

Moving forward, we shall look for an alternative space that provides a positive forum focused on a love of music.

In the meantime, please continue to contact us at members@albumcircle.com with any questions, queries and feedback - we will respond as soon as possible, within Mon-Fri Eastern Time office working hours.

Kind regards,

Album Circle
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Honestly this might be the one that pisses me off the most. Zero accountability. Just blame another. The Trump of vinyl record services here.
 
I mean, from a business perspective, I was surprised they hadn't shut down the Discord already. They put up an unmoderated forum up, released a subpar (to be kind) product, and let early receivers run wild on their own forum without appropriate damage control. The only interaction they had was one person on the albumcircle account who noped out of that after a little bit of time. You can't let new subscribers or existing subscribers see that on an official forum. Make them find that feedback elsewhere.

Their excuse on it, basically blaming the users, is just garbage and Trumpish. This is their own doing.

As this unfolds more and more, it really just seems like a project helmed by people who really just didn't have a grasp on how to deliver a project like this appropriately with a particular blind spot towards the 2021 collector sphere. Someone at RT both saw a warehouse full of stock not likely to move in the near term and they saw VMP have pretty remarkable success with highly priced, exclusive, LE products and thought they could get in with a similar mindset. The issue is when you promise hard LE#s and autographs and unique add-ons in the VMP-price range, you have to deliver.

Just from a perspective of someone with a little background in this sphere and the PM side of the world, all of these issues they've encountered were self inflicted or easy to avoid, which doesn't bode well for whatever team is behind this. They locked themselves in with too defined of a product for something this early in the cycle and got burned. An open forum of feedback was a truly dumb idea given the infancy of their product and that this really seemed like a beta test to me more than a finished overall experience. The fact that no one on this team saw what was going to be sent out and raised the red flag is enough to me to know this is something that may have value in years, not months.

Honestly, I kind of think they should pause all remaining subs, and take this back in house and plan to do it right. Fans expecting, like, an exclusive Clairo pressing were probably pie in the sky but they need to deliver a higher quality product to compete and this model isn't doing it.
 
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