As you may or may not know, we updated our member platform on November 19, 2019. It resulted in several issues, affecting your experience with VMP. We failed to communicate in this process, and we apologize that you’re reading this on January 10th, 2020 instead of November 10th, 2019. The issues created by the update left many of you confused, frustrated, and questioning your confidence in Vinyl Me, Please. We understand why:

We were too slow shipping orders, with many holiday products/gifts not arriving on time

We were too slow in responding to your customer service issues

We made too many mistakes in the process of shipping your orders, including shipping things to the wrong address, sending duplicate orders, and shipping the wrong things

We failed to proactively communicate to you during this process

We recognize these mistakes and sincerely apologize for the inconveniences caused in this process. This post serves to give more insight into why we decided to make this update and provide details on what corrective actions we’ve taken since. More insight on the most prominent issues is visible here.

Why we updated the platform

Our legacy platform may have seemed fine from the outside, but it required constant maintenance, including daily fixes and updates to perform basic functions. In essence, we were duct taping our old system together on a daily basis, and we were concerned that we would run out of duct tape before the end of the year. Given the information we had at the time, we felt the instability of the legacy platform posed a larger risk than performing the update.

Actions taken since platform update

Since the update, we have been focused on assessing and resolving the highest priority issues as quickly as possible. Our warehouse ran overtime through the month of December and into January to get orders shipped as quickly as possible. We have also added 4 more people to our customer support team, who have been working to answer questions as quickly as possible. We are continuing to prioritize the cleaning up of lingering issues, resolving unshipped orders, and responding to unanswered customer service questions.

Looking back, there are several things we would have done differently, but none more critical than communicating in advance of the migration and providing regular updates along the way. With this learning in mind, we have formed an internal action response team with a mandate for proactive customer communication.

VMP has evolved over the years and the reason we’re here remains the same: to experience music more deeply. Despite the issues this update has caused, this could not be truer going into 2020. Whether you are new to VMP, or have been here since the beginning, we are proud to call you a member, and we’re excited for all that 2020 has in store. We look forward to moving ahead and returning to the goal of exploring music together.

Sincerely,

VMP Team

More Details

Details on some of the biggest, most important issues experienced through the update are listed below. For issues that remain unresolved, we are actively resolving these issues and communicating directly with affected customers.