Back in April I ordered the 2 disc Bowie Reality Tour from discorama.com. When i got it, I noticed the discs were scratched from EMI's lame cardboard packaging that I so love to bitch about. I ran the set through my scratch machine & as it looked like new afterward, I wasn't in a hurry to play it.

Discovered the other day that cd #2 is defective. I am aware that the long delay between purchase & playing the set is 100% my responsibility. I emailed discorama. I didn't necessarily expect them to accept a return 3 months later, & I stated that in the email. But what does piss me off is that I have received no reply at all, & I've purchased quite a bit from them.

As their prices have also been going up, the complete lack of any reply makes me a bit hesitant to continue ordering from them.

Ironically, I had to download & burn cd #2 to have the set that I PAID FOR.

Cardboard packaging with no innersleeve or tray is my #1 bitch about our lame music INDUSTRY.

They finally wrote back & said no. I'm not overly upset about the no, but the 7 day response time is a bit irritating.

I'm really tempted to create a personal policy of "if it's in a cardboard sleeve with no tray or inner sleeve, it's open season for free downloading".

What a bunch of CRAP by the labels.

I once had an experience with a very expensive CD set that I bought from a B&M store that accepts no returns on imports. The set was a 3 CD set of Deep Purple - Live in Japan. I bought the set, took it home and played it once. The next time I took it out to play something from it a week or two later the entire set had oxidized on the playing surface, rendering it unplayable. This was a dream set to me, so I purchased another... and the same thing happened again.

I tracked down a quality control executive at EMI USA; got a phone number for him; called and told him the problem that I had with the 2 sets, and he was kind enough to send me a replacement for the Deep Purple Set and 2 other EMI import albums that I had wanted, that were equivalent in price to one of the DPs. It took a while but I got the sets replaced. The Deep Purple replacement set plays fine now, years later. the originals were from a bad print run.

Of course the set I am talking about came in a jewel case, and not one of those crappy paper sleeves, but maybe if you take your complaint directly to the manufacturer they will replace it for you.