Nope, we' re just delighted that you're ordering from us instead of a big-box retailer or an online behemoth.

It's complicated, so put on your thinkin' cap. :)

Here's the order of operations: Up until we close at 9:00 p.m. on Thursday it's first come, first served, regardless of what method you use to order, until inventory is depleted. Between 9:00 p.m. Thursday and 10:00 a.m. Friday, online orders will take precedent over other any other methods of contacting us (as we take payment for online orders automatically).

So if you're ordering between 9:00 p.m. Thursday night and 10:00 a.m. Friday morning, your safest bet is to place an order online for in-store pickup.

After 10:00 a.m. Friday morning we revert to first come, first served for all order methods.

Note that sometimes the site states "out of stock" when we still have stock available for walk-in customers, so it never hurts to message us, use the contact form or call us to confirm.

Not always. We intentionally have separate virtual inventory "buckets" for the site and shop, so we may have more in-store inventory available for local pickup. Just call, message, or swing by to check in-store availability status.

A couple reasons. Either we haven't received our initial shipment yet or we sold out and are expecting more soon. In the latter case, we'll provide an estimated arrival date in the product title and description, noting that this is subject to change. Regardless, you can place an order and it will secure your place in line. If we're unable to secure the inventory you can cancel your order and we'll give you a full refund.

The Short Answer:

Just message us, use the contact form, call us or swing by and we'll either get it set-up online (if we think more folks might be interested in it) or, if you're local, order one just for you. Sometimes there's a delay from when a product is initially announced until we have the cost and retail info we need to get it set-up, so if you contact us on the day it's announced we may not yet have the info. Which brings us to....

The Long Answer:

Unfortunately, some of the labels either don't trust indie retail to have set-up information before they announce (which is silly given our vested interest in keeping them happy) or they want to capture the lion's share of the preorders themselves, before indie retailers have the chance to set-up the product (which is hard financially on indie retailers and sucks for fans who want to support both indie retail and their favorite artists).

We love and appreciate that so many artists and labels offer us indie exclusive products and, like them, just want to delight you, our mutual customer, by allowing you to shop how you want to shop, when you want to shop, across all channels. Seems fundamental and simple, but.... $$$$.

More often than not, it's NOT an industry cash grab, we just haven't heard about the product yet and appreciate you giving us a head up. There are thousands of new products released each month and only a few AFK lackeys, so the extra nudge can really help. Thank you!

We accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover and Google Pay, online and in-store.

We accept Apple Pay from qualifying mobile devices and in-store.

We accept cash in-store. Speaking of cash, we also give cash for select items, you can learn more on our Get Cash page.

We accept credit card payments over the phone, only from folks whom we have had a prior transactional business relationship.

We do not accept Paypal or Venmo.

To quote Tennessee Williams, "Lies and mendacity!"

Unfortunately, there are a lot of bad folks out there who take advantage of the relative anonymity of online shopping. The most nefarious is called "Triangulation Fraud." (Google or Bing it for T.M.I.)

The bottom line is, as an indie retailer, we can't bear the potential fraud risk, as the credit card companies don't consistently guarantee our payments unless we ship to your billing address. It's the only way for us to avoid being caught on the losing end of the "triangle."

This also protects YOU. If your credit card is ever stolen and it's used here, it can only be used to ship cool records to your billing address. (That would be a pretty stupid fraudster, but it's kinda nice to have a personal shopper, right?)

Big-box retailers and online giants have multi-million dollar fraud budgets and can afford to take the hit, as a mom & pop retailer, we sadly can't. Thank you for supporting indie retailers. We know it's sometimes inconvenient. You rock!

Many foreign countries do not provide the address verification services needed to confirm that the billing address matches the shipping address. Without that our seller protection is limited.

We maintain valuable relationships with our vendor partners and we strive to honor the spirit and content of our agreements which limit what we can export out of the United States. While there are some products we can ship outside of the U.S. the complexity of determining and tracking those is beyond our current logistics capability.

AFK will never store your credit card number or CVV, whether you transact online, in-store or over the phone. As we don't store your credit card information and use payment processors that encrypt your data, we are "PCI compliant."

The payment processors we currently use online are Shop and Shopify Payments, who also integrate with Apple Pay and Google Pay.

In-store and over the phone we use Square as our exclusive payment processor.

If you chose to use the digital wallets these processors provide (like Shop, Apple Pay and Google Pay) you are subject to their privacy policies and terms & conditions.

Bottom line: AFK doesn't store your credit card information, which makes it safer to shop with us.

Visit the Shipping page.

Visit the Returns Policy page.