Repo Record — Local services in Charlotte

Condescending owners and low quality records.

The store is well organized, I will give them that, but I have never had anything close to a polite interaction with the owners. As others have said, if you have an obscure album you want to listen to the owner will huffily suggest you "look it up on YouTube" and you're lucky to get much further down that path.

They have arbitrarily taped several albums shut. Supposedly this is an "anti-theft" device they have employed... however that works. They explain that you have no need to check because all their records are "well-cleaned" and "VG+". Very generous descriptions to say the least. I saw one album that I chose not to buy that was festering with mold on the vinyl. At least it was only $2. But certainly not well cleaned by any stretch of the imagination. Several others had deep and obvious scuff marks.

If you can't check the quality, don't buy it... I have been burned by that mistake several times. And I'm not even talking about their dollar section, $5-8+ records will have obvious scratches and blemishes that would put them solidly into VG at best, or maybe even worse. The attached images are from a sealed ""VG+"" record. Note the deep scratches and the obvious paint damage. So now you see why the records are sealed....

Additionally, the price tags they use have repeatedly damaged the albums I've purchased because they are too sticky. Unlike the vast majority of other record stores I've been to, Repo does not offer any sort of listening station to check the quality of their records. Again, every other record store I've been to has figured out how to prevent this from happening.

The weirdest part? The owner reads and responds to all the reviews and takes some weird point of pride in turning away customers. I hope you have some quippy remark for me, Jimmy, cause I'd love to see...

For 5 years I have been periodically visiting and buying something in this store (vinyl records and CDs). But, there is one very unpleasant and unacceptable circumstance for many customers in this store! In no such similar store, and I go to many places in different states, I have seen such insanity! The owners of this store constantly seal the top of the plastic outer sleeve with a small piece of tape! In order to look at the condition of the record, I have to either take their word for it, or what they wrote on the outer sleeve (their gradation of the condition of the vinyl), or refuse to buy it at all. The last time, I wanted to buy more than 20 records, I selected them so that the owners would open them for me one by one and show them. After the third record, the seller (owner) said that he would not open any more and that I should take his word for it. Why this is done, I have never understood. In all the stores selling various music records, including vinyl, I have never seen such disgusting service and attitude towards customers. Many shops sell rare vinyl records that cost a lot of money, but even in this case, none of the owners of such shops allow themselves to make it so that a person (buyer) could not look at the condition and condition. I decided for myself that I will not go to this shop anymore. And I will not recommend it for visiting and shopping either. I give this shop the...

I'm grateful that Repo survives into the present day. That having been said, their prices have inflated to the point of irreconcilability. It's capricious in terms of both consistency of condition as well as demand. Most of these records were pressed into the hundreds of thousands. Or millions of copies, if they were mass-market distributed after about 1974. I used to visit 3-5 times a week when I was the Music Director/freelance musician at an establishment in that part of town. I hadn't been there in over fifteen years and I was frankly heartbroken. I was cynically overcharged for the number of LPs that I purchased when they were combined according to their price and subtotalled to an incorrect multiple of the items that I'd purchased. They aren't Kruggrrands and there will be about 100 just like them arriving next week. The LPs had not been cleaned. I have great nostalgic feelings for when my future wife and I used to sift through their $1.00 bins to find (now former, the market has deflated everywhere else) $1000.00 records. I know Charlotte is an expensive town in which to breathe. But I believe they'd attract much more business if they returned to a more customer service-friendly business posture. Hipsters might not know or care but at my stage in life, I...