Cracked Laserdisc Rare Please Help Fix???

I just ordered a very rare laserdisc that is irreplacable from Argentina. It is Depeche Mode - Some Great Videos.

The idiots cracked one side of it in the shipping, but it didnt go all the way through, just the plastic covering.

Does anyone know where i can get a new plastic layer put on this and fixed? i cannot play it right now and im am very bummed as i spent alot of money on this.

a web address, phone number? who fixes cracked laserdiscs?

thanks.... my email is djlee@theelectricfront.com too

does anyone else have this laserdisc btw?

I would NEVER put it in my machine even if it were fixed. The RPM of that big disc is to much to risk your player. Interesting thing would be even if it was fixed would it have video dropouts, or skip? I would think that the laser might not be able to read true past the glue, or whatever. If it came UPS make them eat the cost if possible. Sorry i cant offer any help.

i was thinking repair was possible because of the laserdisc faq section where
Henry Feilden said "there are ways to repair single side cracks"

"Q:I have a disc with a crack in it:

A:Cracked discs should never be put in the player.With disc RPM up to 1800 they could explode and destroy the player in extreme cases.There are ways to repair minor single side cracks,but I would not even consider them unless the disc is of huge value and totall un-replacable.Even repaired,they may not play at the point of repair.
"

I will eMail you Bob Niland's instructions for fixing cracks, which so far as I know have never been tested, if you really want them. What you must understand is that, even "repaired", that side will probably never play again. The data pits are molded into the acrylic outer layer, the face opposite from the one which faces the world, rather than into the thin protective layer which separates the two sides, so if the crack penetrates all the way through the signal is corrupt, probably irretrievably so, and oxygen has access to the aluminium reflective layer. Your best bet, though, is to get the insurance paid off [you did have it insured, didn't you? anyway, if the shippers could crack the disc at all it was because the sender packed it wrong, and you ought to squeeze him for your money back] and wait for another copy to come along. That title was released once in the U.S. and twice in Japan, so it's hardly irreplacable; in fact, LDDb lists one copy of the U.S. version [featuring "A Question of Lust", not on the Japanese editions] for sale right now.

in fact thats the one i bought from LDDB, the site hasnt updated the fact this guy sold it to me yet...it was the only copy i could find, paid 117 US..came from argentina....CRACKED..all i know is that the disc was registered mail and had a traceable tracking number through argentina.

he packed it horribly. just two cardboard thin flaps around the thing..no bubble wrap, not sponge...NOTHING!!!

i want my money back, but he isnt responding to my emails...plus im heartbroken...i really wanted this title...

btw did you email me that stuff? im hoping i didnt miss it or my spam catcher got it? my email is djlee@theelectricfront.com

I haven't yet. As I said, it's not a really good idea to try this. If the LDDb seller is not giving you any satisfaction, eMail Julien Wilk [who also is a member of this forum, by the way]. He won't be pleased!
Particularly considering the Shop Policy states I wonder if it was cracked before he posted it? In any case this is not an example of "Best Practices" for LDDb sellers. I would certainly be more careful [my LDDb ID is "publius", and I do have a shop but have not yet sold anything].

I was wondering if it was cracked ahead of time as well. He still hasnt written me back..but ill give him until 3pm until i start taking action.

He told me he was trustworthy and to check his ebay status, which i THINK i did, and he has a perfect record, so it might have been a mistake...however how do you only package a laserdisc travelling all that way in just two thin cardboard flaps with no bubble or sponge or anything else and tell me "packed well"

he better give me my money back...i will write that lddb guy, and call anyone and everyone.

the whole transaction is recorded through western union and the letter was registered with a tracking number..im wondering who to call to see if i can't get my money from the shippers?

Also if anyone else has Depeche Mode - Some Great Videos on laserdisc..ill buy it from them...this sucks

Hello,

Just got the story after a referral link showing from my access logs on LDDb.com.

First of all, the user maintaining this Shop hasn't logged on LDDb.com for the past 97 days. Also he updated his Email address there last October, I'll send you both via PM.

Second, I'll remove Selling rights for this user temporarily until things are cleared.

Third, since this transaction has been conducted outside LDDb, I have very little control over it. This falls back to a person-to-person transaction and leaves the website entirely stranger to this transaction. Shop Policy there does not apply and is non-binding for the Seller.

The point of making the transaction official there involves me as providing selling/buying contract between both parties. Concluding transaction outside LDDb put it "out of scope" and I should not even remove Selling rights to the seller. However since no transaction was never officially performed in this Shop through LDDb, I have little feedbacks from other buyers. I'd like to get the Seller's side of the story.

It happened to me twice before (from eBay) that the disc arrived broken:

Lion King AC3 US -> side 1 cracked on all radius
=> Seller never cashed back the check

Sting Videos -> cracked close to the edge, last chapter
unplayable (skips, wrong trackings)
=> Seller refunded me the LD (minus 50% shipping)

Regards,
Julien

I tried to purchase it from the LDDB but it wouldnt work...first my account had to be 48 hours approved or something, so i checked back in 48 hours and i still coudn't get it to work so i emailed the guy again and told him i coulnt get lddb to work after 48 hours, and asked him to enter the sale information with my info for me, and he told me hed sell it to me...he said he could comply, and said nothing about it being private and the terms on LDDB didnt apply.

Not only that i asked him why the record of the transaction wasnt on the website, and why the disc was still listed...he said he had entered all the information of the sale for me and that he had already written to have record of the disc being for sale taken off the site...obviously neither was true!!!

I thought i was buying it from his online store still and he was entering all the info to the LDDB site...but it appears i was mislead AGAIN!

I was under the impression this was still a LDDB purchase...and he was entering the information for me!

This seller wrote me back, and said the sale would go on..he said nothing about this not being part of his store, he mislead a newby to LDDB!

As for removing his store etc...im giving him 24 hours (5 more hours) to write me back before i pursue any action, he might not have checked his email yet...but this is entirely his fault for not packing the disc right after i specifically begged him to do so ahead of shipping, and its his fault for not telling me the purchase was outside LDDB. He went on like this was business as usual...

Hello again,

It's strange you couldn't buy anything after exactly 48 hours on LDDb. It could only mean that the Email address you used there bounced and was declared "invalid", but it's not. Your account was created April, 21st and you never tried to log in again since then (access counter is still 0 since account creation) although it might be because the cookie session is still alive.

Did you try to contact me when this happened?

Only the Admin (me) could "force" a transaction to a neutral account to then move the ownership of this transaction to another account. No regular Seller/Buyer has this kind of control on LDDb. I "could" remove items from Shop but it wouldn't be a very fair practive. Since Sellers are responsible for their Shops, I could only force a opening/closing (which I just did).

Only the Buyer can initiate the transaction and trigger:

o the removal from the Shop
o generatation of Seller/Buyer's notification Email
o update of past sales statistics
o transaction update mechanism (paid/shipped/etc.)
o allow cross-feedbacks to be posted

Since he couldn't "create" this transaction for you, it has not been registered anywhere in LDDb, from the system point of view, it never took place, that's why the LD is/was still listed there.

It would be like "Contact Seller" in eBay to offer him to make the transaction outside eBay. The Seller could never force eBay to make you buy anything, unless you put a bid on your side and that the Seller accepted to sell at this price. There again, transaction started from your side, not his.

Nothing can be started from the Seller, otherwise I would have sold all my LDs to the first registered Buyer, forcing him to pay for everything. Not very realistic!

Regards,
Julien

im not saying LDDB had anything to do with this..im saying the seller mislead me into thinking i was still making a purchase from his store on lddb, and that he was filling in the information.

i tried about 6 times to log in to lddb around 48 hours time and before...im not an expert on cookies, but i wouldnt lie to you.

at any rate this guy told me nothing about it being a private sale or suggesting to wait till i get some cookie problem fixed, and i even told him the trouble logging in i was having, and directly copied and pasted the error message i was getting. he made me feel it was business with his store as usual, but he would do the transaction info fill in with lddb. if this had been ebay with their protection policies i would have waited. i dint think there were any protections on LDDB< that it was just a nice site for info and some discs from private sellers, with lddb keeping records of sales for potential buyers. I had no idea that the purchase was outside LDDB though...and he never let me know that.

LDDB is a cool site, dont take this complaint as anythign to do with your site. If i had some problem with a cookie, or this guy midlead me a couple hours short of 48 hours of whatever happened....its his fault, not yours...

20 cents worth of bubble wrap and i would have been a very happy camper right now

the guy now emails me telling me im rude, that he is part of the transaction, and that he wont give me a penny back or make a claim with his mail company.

i begged him to pack it right, and he packs it with two feeble cardboard flaps and he thinks i should care about his feelings?

i paid him 17 US to ship it correctly, what the hell...

now he says he is blocking my emails...and that he doesnt even believe necessarily that its broken, when i offered to ship it back, take pics of the thing now...that i have witnesses when it was opened and kept all the feeble packaging...

he should understand im very angry....hes lucky he lives far away...what a jerk

Hello,

Got a reply from the Seller, I would like to check what he calls "well-packaged". Could you take a pic of the packing and sent it to me?

He doesn't really care wether I delete him from LDDb or not. Given this story and the crazy prices he has in Shop (basically he must be buying LDs to make DVD bootlegged copies and sell the LDs back later), I wouldn't mind losing a Seller here.

Was it shipped registered/insured (for $17, I would guess it should have been)? Then you could claim refund from the shipping company.

Shipping LDs properly is a tricky thing. I've received parcels that were either:

1/ wrapped in a single sheet of newspaper!!!
2/ ready to stand World War III

But rarely in between. I guess 1/ was from careless Sellers or people who never received a broken LD. 2/ was from people who already received a broken LD before and got pissed off because of that!

Still I don't understand why the transaction couldn't be registered on LDDb after more than 48h. There's nothing in the PHP code that could have prevented this. What screen did you stop at? Adding to Cart? Checking out?

Regards,
Julien

Well, maybe because clicking on a Shop's name, from anywhere, causes a message: "Sorry, this shop is temporarily closed". Any shop. Including yours and mine! I don't know how long that's been going on.

Since about 10 hours, a mistyping in a SQL query... that I can't fix from Office.

I'll fix it first thing this evening in Japan (morning in the USA). Let's call that a 16 hours "maintenance" (although I wish I could have spotted that earlier!)

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Regards,
Julien

As a compensation, all LDDb Sellers will soon have access to my personal eBay DTS LDs statistics for the past 3 years. Best tool to price things at their current worlwide market value!

Regards,
Julien

Julien its not your fault at all...its this guys fault...as for the packaging and the disc, i would be more than happy to take pictures of them and let you see..ill take them after lunch and post them here.

Sorry for the late response i had to work last night and just got back to the computer.

The error message i got was something like what you listed above, but i cant recally exactly waht it said, but i know i couldnt purchase the item wouldnt complete the transaction. It happens...he should have informed, the seller...that it was not an official puchase since he KNEW i was brand new and i copied and pasted some of the error messages to him!

the complete paper envelope, two cardboard flaps and the broken disc are right beside me. I mean if i were a scammer, i could have thrown away the bubble wrap it was in, but that wasnt the case...my guess is that guy is dumb enough to admit that as well, he thinks two little cardboard things can protect a disc all the way from argentina to canada.

You know it might be different if i didnt pay so much, and if i didnt really want this title, BUT THE MAIN THING, is that i begged him ahead of time to pack it extra well. Not only did he not, i buy alot of deniro pacino discs, and never has any of them come without either popcorn, bubblewrap, lotsa newspaper, a box to buffer or something...i think its a scam

i think he had a cracked copy and offered a burned dvd he had to appease the sucker who bought this thing...it may have been cracked ahead of time. Thats why he must have devliberately ignored my wishes for extra packaging (which i saved all the emails), and packed it flimsy so it would look like an accident.

I cannot find anyone to fix it either, nor can i find another copy anywhere on the entire internet to replace it ACK! which i would have paid for

Okay the pictures will be up as soon as i can. Im waiting for the batteries for my digital camera to recharge..give me a couple hours

The package was registered through a courier in argentina and traced till it left his country. as for insured i have no idea...i have a spanish friend who helped me fill out some form to let them know it came broken...but it doent say anything about whether they refund the money or not. I called my mail company and they told me the SENDER has to make the claim, and he rudely told me he wouldnt make any claim or give me a penny!

In canada if you register the package its insured for up to 100 dollars if mail company delivers it damaged...so i would assume the same from this courier since i paid 17 us to ship it, and it was registered..but he wont make the claim

Thank you for your interest Julien.

Lee -

I do not have a solution to your problem, but I just wanted to say that I feel for you right now. This may sound silly, but I am a HUGE Depeche Mode fan as well and have been looking for that laserdisc for a long time. If I were to recieve it for 100 dollars (and I would pay that much) only to find it cracked, I would be rather heartbroken as well. I can only hope a resolution to this problem comes quickly for you...and let's all hope that DM will release this title on DVD, where it properly belongs, in the near future.

i am heartbroken, its not even the money as much as the item itself..and depeche mode has said in the past they will never release it on dvd.

20 cents of bubble wrap!!! argh!!!!!

thanx for understanding, i really am in the dumps about it, even if i didnt have it, the fact this loser would let such a rare item be destroyed.

They've said that?

DAMMIT!

Well...some of those videos are pretty embarassing now, a good 20 years later. So I can understand their position. Somewhat.

This isn't quite correct. In order to claim insurance the package has to be declared at the insured value, so if the package you received had a customs declaration with $X on it, it may be insured, if not, you are probably out of luck. It sounds like this was a scam all along for the reasons you cited. I'd be mighty choked in your shoes.

Here are the pictures as soon as i had a chance to take them etc.


In this picture the very thin cardboard sleeve is shown, it is bent all over the place before but bent back straight. The guy just tore off a flap from a box of something that was shipped to him from new york.

The cardboard is paper thin almost, and with no effort the thing bends with ease. It doesn't buffer impact or weight at all!



In this picture you can see the literally brown paper envelope he used, its thinner than lined paper you write on!!!



In this picture you can see the area the crack covers. The other side is uncracked, however the OTHER SIDE has no data and wouldnt' have mattered ARGH!!!!



In this picture you can sort of see the side of the disc. Sorry for the crappy picture due to time limitation. The crack doesnt go all the way through, just cracked the plastic above the foil in the middle where the data is. The data under the plastic SHOULD be fine still! CAN THIS BE FIXED? please let me know how..someone said theyd email me a theoritical untested solution. would really like that still!

If anyone else has this disc (Depeche Mode - Some Great Videos Laserdisc) or knows someone whos selling it, please email me and let me know, im in the dumps bigtime!

djlee@theelectricfront.com

Actually there IS data on side 2- about 50 minutes of a white screen with silence, and seemingly randomly-placed chapters- I have about 3 Warner Music discs that have that as the "dead side" (and yes, I've actually watched them all the way through- what can I say- I'm a geek!!)
I got a disc that came like that from a store when the blowout sales were going on- I did try to play it which probably wasn't a good idea, but the non-damaged side played fine, and parts of the cracked side played fine except for a line across the screen, but skipped as it got further into the disc. The store let me return it, but if I were stuck with it I might have tried to see if I could fix it. There was a CD repair kit that used sandpaper to sand down scratches, and I wondered if it would fix that if you worked at it long enough. I fixed a couple CDs with that with great results, but it seems like it isn't being sold anymore. It's so complex that most people probably ruined their discs even more with it.
For $100, he should have used a TON more packaging than that, even if it wasn't necessary! A couple LDs I've gotten from Ebay sellers were shipped in pizza boxes with padding inside, which seems to work nicely.

i know you're desperate but in the 4th post...

"The data pits are molded into the acrylic outer layer, the face opposite from the one which faces the world, rather than into the thin protective layer which separates the two sides, so if the crack penetrates all the way through the signal is corrupt, probably irretrievably so, and oxygen has access to the aluminium reflective layer."

you said. "just cracked the plastic above the foil in the middle..."

so it seems to have been answered as to whether you can fix this disc.

okay, someone was kind enough to email me a desperate attempt method to making it playable again...however i dont have a crappy laserdisc player to test it on and im not testing it in my good machine first...argh

im just hoping that a laser hitting a cured area of acrylic solvent wouldnt be flammable.

but i understand, it probably will never play again, thanks for the info and empathy guys

does anyone have a junky cheap old laserdisc player they want to donate to test this untested crack fixing method? doesnt matter what the pictue quality is at all

Seller sent me a very unfriendly:


I will be waiting for his answer before taking decision to delete his Shop and/or his User account.

(I just sent him an Email and... he already closed his Email account -> SCAMMER strong signal!!!)


=> I will terminate his account right now.



Well, I happen to have in my collection a sealed copy of this release (missing the US extra track):

Depeche Mode: Some Great Videos (1986) [BVLP-97]
http://LDDb.com/laserdisc.php?id=27901

But I'm not sure the price I want for it is in line with your budget (since you already lost money on your first purchase).

Regards,
Julien

i think a question of lust MIGHT be an extra track on the dvd of the later videos ill go check.

Can you email me a price range?

i have an insane depeche mode collection and would be willing to maybe talk to you about some stuff...but email me a price range IF youre willing that is.

If you love it as much as i would have valued this disc, I wouldnt try to pry it away from you.

I really appreciate the information though.

As for that guy's claim that he packaged it perfectly, im sure you can see, thats rediculous!

Thank you Julien for bothering to read all of this. You're a good guy.

Ok i just checked my dvds, and a question of lust is on the dvd..so i think its the same original version, so i would be interested in your laserdisc without the extra video. djlee@theelectricfront.com

also guys i have an extra perfect collectors widscreen definitive laserdisc edition of star wars i might be selling soon after i press it on dvd for my own personal use. (which is legal since ill be keeping my other laserdisc box)so if anyone wants to purchase it, let me know.

Technically, it is not. Any backups must be sold with the original.

lol ok then ill back up my own box!

Technically, no such backup rules exist at all for films. There are backup provisions for computer software, but nothing for films.

DJ