Within the last 2 weeks, I have had an ebay seller and an Amazon seller (warehouse deals) send me CD-R's without describing them as such in the seller's description. I left a negative feedback for the ebay seller, who then emailed me back, saying I only paid five bucks "and it sounded good, didn't it?" On the amazon sale, I paid $31--why in the hell would I pay $31 for a CD-R? I wouldn't have paid 31 cents for it had I know that's what it was. Why would a seller just assume a buyer doesn't care? CD Baby started doing that to me and I stopped buying from them. Definitely pisses me off.

I believe with Amazon that you can return the cd-r., especially since you spent so much. I spend alot in the Amazon Marketplace and have gotten a few cdr's and have either returned them or got a full credit. Get up, Stand up, for your rights!

It's not on. You paid for a regular cd and that's what you expect unless it clearly said otherwise.

Wow. That's ridiculous. It hasn't happened to me yet, but it is certainly infuriating.

I would definitely return it...after burning myself a copy.

CD Baby is known for this. In their case while I feel it's wrong, it's legal if that's what the artist provides to them.

I would suggest reporting both sellers to ebay & Amazon at minimum. Unless they're the giant corporate sellers that ebay & Amazon bow down to, there will likely be consequences to them.

I'm also 99% certain that Pay Pal has a way to report counterfeit items & get an automatic chargeback.

Make that two...

No, just one. Wouldn't want to be greedy.

I did return the amazon title today. The ebay title I kept, it wasn't worth returning. CD Baby had sent me 2 CD-R's so I stopped buying from them. Charging regular cd prices for a cheap CD-R is like buying a DVD and getting a rental, except even worse. I believe CD Baby actually says now that you are getting a CD-R, so I have no problem with that.

The cdr I got from CD Baby was a Wendy Waldman. It also had only a front cover, no back. I believe to this day the only mention of it on their site is my review.

I bought a CD-R today on ebay of an official Japanese promo release of Sheryl Crow's "Detours", with different cover art. Paid $7 for it with a "make an offer" bid. This is an actual record company release and not a seller making a recording and they listed it as a CD-R. That's the way to sell.

I agree, though they're lucky ebay didn't pull it. Ebay has a policy that "only the actual copyright holder can sell cdr's". Of course, we all know it's not enforced much with collectible public domain movies, but they do have that policy............

I picked up a Stan Kenton CD at the Virgin Megastore a couple of months ago that was a CD-R. I was agitated, but I'm not sure why. It sounds excellent. The booklet was professionally done, though I could have printed the disc label myself with a $50 Epson printer. The copyright holder produced the CD. Yet, I feel like I should have been charged less or at least told what I was buying. Maybe this is an unreasonable line of thinking due to reading too many IMWAN threads about CD-R's. After all, it is about the music, right?

Jim

I think if you're buying a CD-R, it should be half-price or less. No more than $6 or $7 dollars.

I've been over this with CD Baby too and got the same answer: that's what the artist provided them for sale.

They said they try to make the information known in the listings, and I have seen this on numerous occassions, but it's definitely not 100%

I'm another former CD Baby customer who gave up on them after purchasing way too many CD-Rs at the full price of a silver CD. Getting a refund was never a problem, but the site simply refuses to make sellers distinguish that a recording is CD-R. I've had a few bad experiences with Amazon sellers, but have only bought one CD-R from a major retailer...that being Tower, and it was a bizarre import item, anyway.

Not that anybody else besides me collects Britney Spears discs, but there have been a significant number of officially-issued promo CD-R's (sometimes referered to in Ebay listings as "acetates") seldom including artwork but often containing remixes or interviews "officially" unavailable elsewhere. For completist collectors, the question becomes, do I need these in my collection? Quick online research will tell you which promo discs are pressed and which are CD-R's (glass-burned promo discs usually have catalog numbers) but collectors will drop quite a bit of cash on Ebay for these things. To each his (or her) own, I suppose, but some of these discs, especially those advertised as being from somewhere in South America, seem phony to me--how hard is it to download a bunch of remixes off of the internet, burn it to a CD, stick it in a jewel box, print the Jive logo and track info onto a piece of white paper and add the all-important "FOR PROMOTION ONLY--NOT FOR RESALE" tag?

Just wonderin'.

Wow. I get sick and tired of seeing comics on DVD being sold when I'm hunting for back issues.
I have to go out of my way to include -DVD -CD in my advanced searches to avoid shit like that.
I don't understand why they are tolerated being sold on eBay. The comics on the CDs/DVDs
clearly are owned by other people.

And I did not know about CD Baby. I bought one album from them, which was fine. I would have
been seriously pissed if I had gotten a CD-R. I will not use them in the future.

You have to remember that CD Baby sells all the indie stuff that other dealers won't bother with. So often that music is ONLY available on CD-R.

I agree. My only bitch is that the listing should clearly state it's a cdr.

Jumping to CDBaby's defense... I love these guys! They carry a great selection of stuff from people who couldn't sell their CD's anywhere else. From my experience, CD-R's are the exception. I've ordered many discs from their site and I've never received a CD-R from them. I have noticed some titles that are specified as CD-R's, which is fair (full disclosure). Again, if a disc is a CD-R, then that's what the artist has provided to CDBaby. Don't blame the Baby!

Jim

The last few Hot! Productions CDs I've bought from Amazon sellers have turned out to be CD-Rs, though they weren't advertised as such. At first I blamed the sellers, but then I finally figured out the discs were coming from the label itself. They used to produce regular, manufactured CDs, but for whatever reason they downgraded to CD-Rs at some point.