Dozens of subscribers to the Vinyl Me, Please record club say they’re confused and angry about unfilled orders, a lack of refunds, and weeks of silence from the Denver company.
“I’ve been a VMP member since 2014, so it’s been especially disheartening to see what they’ve become after supporting them for so long,” said Nashville-based Stewart Eastham, who is seeking refunds from Vinyl Me, Please (VMP) of more than $1,000 in unfilled pre-orders and annual membership fees.
“It seems VMP has stopped shipping records entirely and they’re still charging for memberships that promise new releases,” he continued, echoing more than 100 complaints reviewed by The Denver Post across Reddit, social media, YouTube, and VMP’s Discord server. “There has been zero communication and no response from customer support for over a month now.”
Like others, Eastham complained about the once-thriving LP club to the Better Business Bureau as well as Shopify, which VMP uses for its online shopping cart. “This year they suddenly went completely dark,” reads his BBB complaint, which was filed April 22. “I have contacted them over and over, trying to get my money back, but they won’t respond to anything.”
Record pressing plant is thriving in RiNo after Vinyl Me, Please debacle
The records he ordered last year — including those from the Black Keys, Young Thug and Black Sabbath — have not yet arrived at his doorstep, even as his full annual membership fee of $580 was charged at the start of March. His Orders page at VMP lists them as “In Stock,” according to a screenshot. He has not yet filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, he said, although other customers have said they did.
The Denver Better Business Bureau and the FTC’s Western Region, based in San Francisco and covering Colorado, did not respond to requests for comment. Vinyl Me, Please has not responded to multiple requests for comment from The Denver Post.
Chris Kaley, a member since 2015, said he’s never seen such poor service from VMP. He is currently owed hundreds of dollars in records that he ordered last year, and blames layoffs at the company for the lack of response or customer support.
“They fired everyone,” he said. “Who’s left? They’ve never been this late in ten years.”
Customers say the troubles are ironic, given that VMP in February denounced a look-alike scam site that had been advertised on Facebook as a going-out-of-business sale. While the highly detailed, spoofed site has disappeared and resurfaced at times, its “everything must go” message was angled to play into fears that VMP had already declared bankruptcy, following recent complaints, delays, lawsuits, and turnover.
“Most people I know have started chargebacks for any order within the window,” said Daniel Banifatemi, who has more than $1,000 in unfilled orders.
“No one I know has received a response from VMP support since February at the latest,” he said.
Several customers said they requested that their credit card company or bank reverse the charges once it became clear VMP was not responding to their refund requests. One customer The Denver Post spoke with estimated they’d spent $10,000 across 400 orders with VMP since first joining.
“It’s pretty clear that the end is here,” said Matt Hayes, a member since 2020 who’s owed $260 in records he ordered, including Beastie Boys to Shabaka Hutchings. “There was a (recent) 40% off sale which the community saw at the time as a way to burn all (customer) credit that had been saved.”
In late 2023, VMP appeared to be on solid footing, with multiple high-profile releases planned for 2024. But in March 2024, the board of directors fired chief executive officer Cameron Schaefer, chief financial officer Adam Block, and chief strategy officer Rich Kylberg, then filed a lawsuit alleging they’d misled the board and diverted more than $200,000 of VMP money to a new and separately owned, 14,000-square-foot pressing plant at 4201 N. Brighton Blvd.
Schaefer told Business Den he believed that 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. (That plant reopened in summer 2024 as the independent Paramount Pressing and Plating, which has been successfully churning out records since then.)
Last year, VMP acknowledged it was also facing shipping delays, but has not responded to subscribers’ concerns about price increases, delays, refunds and other issues, members told The Denver Post.
In January, 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 decided to sell its backlog of test pressings, some of which have sat in a closet for nearly a decade.
The company on March 12 settled a race-and-gender discrimination lawsuit brought in 2022 by its former head of A&R, Alexandra Berenson, according to a court filing in New York’s Eastern District Court. She had alleged that then-CEO Schaefer fired her in late 2021 in retaliation for a discrimination complaint she made against him. Terms of the settlement weren’t disclosed.
VMP last month also laid off three of the company’s most prominent employees: vice president of music and editorial Andrew Winistorfer; art director and designer Clay Conder; and senior manager of customer care and community Paul Bass. .
VMP’s monthly subscriptions currently start at $54 and range up to $654 for the top tier, according to its website, which is still actively offering memberships. Most of their records, priced between $35 and $65 each, are marketed for their exclusivity and collector-grade quality.
VMP’s homepage appeared to have been updated as recently as Friday, April 25, with a selection-preview of coming titles for current subscribers.
“It’s sad, because VMP has really highlighted some amazing music and built thriving communities that still live on despite their best efforts to dismantle them,” said member Hayes.
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