Warped record

there are various types of warps, but I would classify them to playable and unplayable.

Bowl-warp is more-likely playable with screw-on clamp only on one "bottom" side. The other side of bawl-warp is going to slide your stylus possibly damaging both vinyl surface and cantilever

If there's warp with creasing, definitely no go.

I've got one of the later pressings of Bill Evans and exchanged this record twice all the time with some degree of warp. 

A playable warp would be the one not going too extreme

@czarivey 

+1 Yes warps come in all magnitudes. All but the smallest will be heard. You should return it. 
 

@ellajeanelle 

Sure… but I would relax. It isn’t a conspiracy. Different errors and knowledge comes from different channels. If you buy from Amazon it will happen a lot… Music Direct less. It is avoidable by going to record stores or using a different media type. But, it comes with vinyl.

ghdprentice

I know it’s no conspiracy! I was intentionally exaggerating my emotions!

It does seem that overall problems with orders happen more often now days than it used to though.

But I do stick to my belief that sellers are often counting on buyers not to return items due to inconvenience, and many don’t return them because of the inconvenience alone, me included.  Sometimes is easier to just throw something away, but I do have a cost limit that will motivate me to inconvenience myself to make a trip to drop something off for return. That limit gets lower with time, perhaps in my humble attempt to get a point across to shady sellers, along with leaving them poor reviews. I wish more people would do the same and perhaps change poor selling practices, even if just a little.

I buy a lot of older pressings, most of the high ticket ones are ok, but some aren't. I "invested" in a Furutech DF-2 flattener (Orb) a decade or so ago. Well worth it to me, though I can see how some people would regard it as an extravagance. Yes, if you got a new record from Amazon, easily returned. 

I bought a sound track from them quite a while ago-- around $40-- arrived from EU very warped. It took quite a few attempts to flatten, starting with the Vinyl Flat (a relatively inexpensive, "manually operated" flattening system) and got it playable with the DF-2. You may ask, wait, why not return to Amazon? It was out of print and the price skyrocketed pretty quickly to $400 for a copy (of uncertain warp condition). 

A lot of what I collected in the past 10 years was from the seventies- a real low point for vinyl quality, especially in the US.