Serendeepity — Local services in Milan

For about 2 to 3 years now, I have been searching for a specific album by Jimi Hendrix that I wanted to purchase the day I bought my vintage quartz turntable. I travel a lot and sadly haven’t had any luck, not even in Colorado and I went to more than one location searching high and low.

Monday July 1st 2024 I was exploring Milan, Italy on foot and came across a sushi restaurant that I wanted to try out, unfortunately it was closed. So I looked next door out of curiosity and seen vinyls. To me that is Gold/jackpot. I didn’t pay attention to what the record store was called, I was drawn to the display in the windows and stepped right in.

I was amazed by the selection, over stimulated. I swear I only explored the top floor for less then 3 min and the album I have been searching for years immediately popped in my head. So I went searching in my phone for the photo, went up to the gentleman at the counter and showed him the photo I asked “Do you have this?” He said “Yes, it recently came in” my eyes widened, mouth dropped, I didn’t expect it, I expected another no. I said, wait you are serious ? I have been looking for years! He got up went approached the location it was in shuffled through and pulled out the beautiful sealed vinyl. I imagined light beams projecting from behind of the front cover I honestly wanted to cry. I asked if I can take a photo of him with it. I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears. He said “You came to the right place.” I thought the timing was perfect especially while exploring in Milan and I’m from Boston. Anyways, not until the next day I realized what the name of the store was called after sending it to a friend and the fact I wore the same colors the store represents, is wild to me. It was indeed Serendipity at it’s finest! Thank you so much! I look forward to traveling more through this...

My experience with this store is, to say the least, completely disappointing. From what I had seen from reviews online, I decided to put my trust on Serendeepity and to buy a limited edition record to launch on Record Store Day 2024 (to those who don't know, these are usually special editions which are very limited in stock, which leads them to sell out the day they launch or in the next few days) with them, since they seemed to be a respectable and trustworthy establishment. However, 4 FULL DAYS after my order was placed and confirmed, to my surprise, I receive an email from the website and from Paypal stating that my purchase had been refunded. The store gave me ZERO explanations to why such thing had been done, which makes me believe that they straight up lied to the customers while showing in their website that they had the record on stock, even placing promps such as "only 2 left!", where in reality they did not and were simply greedy, not counting the number of items that were in fact in stock. To see such action such as this one, knowing that this is an extremely hard record to come by due to the popularity of RSD and only realizing their mistake 4 DAYS AFTER, is disgraceful and shameful. I obviously do not recommend this...

After more than 2 week of several attempts to contact this place through different channels - I’m obliged to come here to give a review as a last attempt.

I’ve ordered the Olivia Rodrigo - GUTS Spilled RSD vinyl from here to deliver by UPS. Once I got the package the extra purple outer sleeved was completely ripped open on the side + the outer sleeve was also very damaged and scratched off at the bottom. Additionally, both inner sleeves are ripped on the side.

Clearly the vinyl was not packed well enough or not in the appropriate way because this is a first for me.

I paid 69€ for the vinyl with shipping - which is not a negligible sum of money…

What I find even worse is how the store deliberately ignores my several attempts to contact them.

I would never buy from here again and would definitely not...