VI. Thou Shalt Pay For Thy Special Order.
As much as I like to buy for the shop there's no way I can anticipate every want and I love getting asked for new things and being able to fulfill that ask. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate when someone is willing to wait for me to get them an item instead of dropping their cash on Amazon or Discogs. It literally keeps the lights on.
At the same time, I am increasingly getting stuck with unclaimed special orders, particularly pricey ones. Folks ask me to get specific titles and then ghost me when the item comes in. Lately this has been a $50+ MOV hip-hop title and a freaking $175 Tool box set.
I don't have the luxury of buying now, paying later. I pay for these items before they ship to me and wholesale on vinyl is not much below retail, trust me. Worse yet is that I do have a very limited budget for new inventory and used buys each week and money committed to these special orders comes directly from that pool. So in the examples above, over $200 went to two releases two people left me in the lurch with and that could have been eight more cool $25 records to drop in the New bin. Or many, many more used records.
Effective immediately - I am still thrilled to special order anything you want that my distros have in stock:
I will quote you the retail price upon order and you will pay in full at the time of order;
I will provide an estimated date of arrival (almost always within one week) and will update you if any delays occur;
If the item does not arrive within two weeks of your order/payment, you may request a refund in full;
If you do not retrieve your item within one month of its delivery to the shop and my notification to you, it will be considered abandoned and no refund will be provided unless I can return to the distributor (spoiler alert: I can't).