Thumbs down to Amazon

The World’s Largest Online Retailer has refused to allow Fay Ray to sell our CDs through its site.

The band registered as a seller, jumping through all the hoops required to sell on Amazon. It met the labyrinthine requirements, and dealt with obfuscation from impersonal staff who answered questions with questions.

Three times.

Finally, having proved that, yes, Fay Ray had produced and paid for the manufacture of the CD, and yes, the band owned the rights… it was told it could not sell the CD on Amazon, and no further discussion would be entered into by the AI robots that seem to populate Seller Central.

Chastened, the band went to sulk in the corner, wondering why, as the manufacturer of its own product, The World’s Leasing Online Retailer would not allow it to sell that product.

The answer became clear a few weeks later. Bass player Anthony Travis said

“I was avoiding doing any real work, idly browsing the web. I put a search in for ‘Fay Ray Contact You CD’. As well as our own site and Facebook page, I got a load of hits on Amazon – both in Marketplace for between £11.95 and £21.10. With Amazon as the seller, the cost is £28.50 – nearly three times our RRP – for the CD we produced and supplied in good faith to our distribution partner in the U.S. No wonder they don’t want us selling it on there for £10 plus postage”


CD available shortly in the U.S.

Delivery and import charges outside the UK are pretty steep. Unfortunately these are set by eBay and beyond our control.

Good news is that CD-Baby has stock of physical CDs, which should shortly be available in the U.S. through their website.

Track names should be available in iTunes, Windows Media Player etc

Any of you using the Contact You CD with iTunes, Windows Media Player etc [of course you’ll only be ripping it for personal use, won’t you😂😂😂] will notice they don’t read the metadata [Track name, artist, composer etc] included on the CD.

Just to let you know that the CD data has been uploaded to GraceNote, so apps should recognise the CD and fill in track names etc once GraceNote updates its database.

Usually takes a few days apparently.