Upscale Denver record club Vinyl Me, Please is fighting scam websites that were made to look like its online store, the Denver company said Thursday. But real changes are also happening as it moves away from its founding model and touts newly discounted releases and test pressings.
The fake website vinylmepleaseus.com and at least one other that was advertised on Facebook Thursday are “factually 100% a scam,” company officials posted in a Vinyl Me, Please Reddit forum. “The message that they shared with it is not accurate at all and those aren’t even VMP offices … Apologies for anyone caught up in the confusion, we are doing everything we can to get that site(s) taken down!”
While the spoofed site appears to have been deleted, its “everything must go” message was angled to play into fears that the company had declared bankruptcy, following recent months of customer complaints, product delays, lawsuits, and leadership turnover.
Vinyl Me, Please officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The company on Thursday did, however, announce a “Dings & Dents” sale, in which records are selected randomly by staffers — rather than being ordered by title or artist — then sold at a discount due to bent corners and other imperfections.
It’s not the only change. Last month, the company dropped its long-running Record of the Month model, instead opting for customer-chosen releases. That followed the cancellation last year of its international membership plans. In addition, Vinyl Me, Please has decided to sell its backlog of test pressings, some of which have sat in a closet for nearly a decade.
“We’ve accrued thousands of sets of test pressings, and instead of letting them sit untouched in storage, only heard by one or two staff members, we’re making these ultra-rare pressings available for the first time ever,” the company wrote in its newsletter. Like the Dings & Dents sale, customers cannot choose titles.
The 12-year-old company’s monthly subscriptions start at $54 and range up to $654 for the top tier, according to its website. Most of their records, priced between $35 and $65 each, are marketed for their exclusivity and collector-grade quality.
Just over a year ago the company appeared to be on solid footing, with multiple high-profile releases planned for 2024. But in March, the board of directors fired chief executive officer Cameron Schaefer and chief financial officer Adam Block, then filed a lawsuit against them claiming they’d misled the board and diverted VMP money to a new and separately owned, 14,000-square-foot pressing plant at 4201 N. Brighton Blvd.
Schaefer later told Business Den he believed he and others were fired to save on severance. In October, the company said it had found new evidence that three of the fired executives went “to great lengths to cover up their use of company funds to build a vinyl pressing plant in the River North Art District, including non-disclosure agreements and a codename for the project,” Business Den reported.
Last year the company said it was also facing shipping delays, and it cancelled its international membership plans, restricting new releases to domestic customers.
Some members have complained about the ongoing changes online, with YouTube videos such as “The Collapse of Vinyl Me, Please” and others garnering tens of thousands of views, and Reddit and other forums hosting complaints about delays, price increases, and difficulty returning items.
Reddit user Anna Seembor said that she still hadn’t received more than $200 in records she ordered during a Black Friday sale last year. She posted details about numerous customer-service calls that have not yet resolved the issue.
“I’m wondering if VMP refuses to ship my order because I cancelled my membership in December, or if they just don’t have enough money to pay the distributor to release my order,” she wrote on Reddit. “I’m leaning toward just cancelling the order and getting a refund instead of losing the money when VMP eventually files for bankruptcy…but I really wanted the records lol.”
In recent years, record labels, artists and other entities have also taken a bite out of the high-end LP reissue game, and local brick-and-mortar record stores (which often sell used VMP releases at a discount) have expanded with new and larger locations.
The company acknowledged that recent shifts in its business model may have upset some customers.
“We know this change is big and might feel like a departure from what has made VMP special,” according to a January blog post on its website, which detailed the Record of the Month changes. “Please know that our mission — helping you build a record collection your friends and family will fight over when you’re gone — has only grown stronger.”