Cereal_Killer, I suspect so. Have reached out to Discogs, quote " Without going into the specifics, essentially there are new regulations in place in your region that prevent us from being able to operate in a compliant manner. Discogs reviewed all available options, but for the time being, the only unfortunate realistic option for us was to cease operations. This means that we are unable to process any transactions from your country, even if you are shipping the items to an accepted region. Please do not update your Buyer or Seller Settings to reflect a different country, this will still result in a Marketplace block.
Know that this doesn’t mean that we may never again open Marketplace operations in your region again, but for the time being, this is the only available option to us. We will continue to review the situation in your region, with the hopes that we one day may be able to return."
Veldra
This really sucks, not sure if it’s a PayPal thing with Singapore or GST. At least tell us so we know, or come up with some options.
yeah the lack of any clear reason is awful. I am hoping this is a temp thing, but even so this really hurts. There any so many albums that i cant get easily unless i use discogs, so this is awful news for vinyl collectors in Singapore
My internal com is north'ing towards PayPal & Discogs integration that is clearly not aligned with the interests of a Singapore GST E-Commerce guideline.
Clearly, there must have been "online boardroom conversations" leading up to this isolation of both Singaporean and Indian markets - both Buyers and Sellers excluded out of Discogs.com indefinitely.
As is with Elon Musk not giving too much of a two-hoot about Tesla EV car sales in Singapore, it is evident that Discogs is rhythmn'ing a similar tune.
Now, the only way to circumvent this "involuntary isolation" by Discogs is to build up a "360 neighbouring relationship" with surrounding country men / women / collectors, and by proxy means of achieving sales and purchases.
This is but of course, a really saddening situation.
Discogs was built on the fundamentals of "international easy access" to music media, no matter where one is from - new and old collectors alike.
The destructive forces of "numbers" are in effect, for those at the top managing levels' eyes refusal to meet bilaterally, is this resultant effect of inaccessibility to music in 2023.
A petition should be enacted to those at Discogs, and PayPal alike.
Something must and should be done - the question is who is motivated enough to forward the road less taken.
I believe there is must be a miscommunication to Discogs that resulted in this.
Basically, GST is only incurred for imports into Singapore.
So, if you sell and export to overseas, you cannot collect GST. Instead, if you are GST ed, you can instead get GST rebated.
If you buy and use an overseas forwarding address, there is no GST involved. As the transaction is out of scope. But, if you then use that forwarder to import into Singapore, you have to pay GST via that forwarder. Instances like this would be if you use a vpost address and hence, you pay GST upon paying for the freight.
The area that seems unclear is what was communicated to overseas sellers or to Discogs wrt importing into Singapore. It has always been the onus of the importer to pay the GST and for the freight company to collect the GST on behalf, not the seller. But, recently, it is really unclear as to what was communicated to Discogs that resulted in this fiasco. Sad case. We can understand why Amazon and eBay can collect GST on behalf as these companies have operations in Singapore. But, certainly not Discogs or the thousands of Discogs sellers.
i hope discogs can manage this on the low value goods tax asap . other companies such as ebay etc can update their system with the inclusive gst . Or they are monitoring till 2024 when singapore gst reach 9%
hey guys, i'm new here and didn't know about this. Just ordered a couple of albums and sent to a friend's address in US. After paypal payment went through, i saw a banner at the top of my page saying "Buyer billing country blocked: Singapore". Not sure what this entails in of my order though. Would appreciate any advice thanks!
mangoman2001
After paypal payment went through, i saw a banner at the top of my page saying "Buyer billing country blocked: Singapore". Not sure what this entails in of my order though.
I guess the "billing country blocked" is due to Discogs detecting your Paypal address is in Singapore.
As long as the seller has received payment it should be fine. Send them a message asking them to confirm they've received your payment on their Paypal. But be warned they might not want to ship to a different address than what is listed on Paypal.
Yeah I got in touch with him he received the payment and shipped it out so seems like he doesn't mind. Does this mean in a sense we can still order through Discogs from SG?
