Prevent Bad Buyers with Discogs Seller Settings

2024-12-30

If you're here I assume you've had some trouble with bad buyers on Discogs.

Well, it’s always good to find something within our own power to help prevent less than ideal situations, and in this scenario it’s the built-in Seller Settings.

In short: You can restrict eligibility for purchases to buyers who have over a certain feedback rating which will prevent first time buyers, and/or chancers from buying vinyls from you.

To do this, navigate to your Discogs account, click Seller and scroll down to Minimum Buyer Rating.

I’m recently updated this to a setting of 95%. Obviously what you choose is up to you.

But why bother?

New Account, Double Purchase & Apple Relay

The first reason would be to reduce time wasters - who wants any kind of non-paying buyer? - but for me there’s a separate catalyst:

I had two copies of the same vinyl for sale for over a year, and in December 2024 they both sold within days of each other. Then I mistakenly sent the second buyer the vinyl despite only the first buyer paying.

The problem with the second buyer was that they were a new user on Discogs, and they had used Apple Private Relay to hide their email address; not only did they have zero reputation to lose, but there was nowhere to track down the email of the user once I’d sent them the vinyl.

After three weeks they still hadn’t responded to requests for payment.

The timing of the double order seemed weird. Not sold for a year, and then conveniently bought twice, the second by a new account during the time period the first order remained unshipped?

Was this just a co-incidence? Who knows.