Revisiting the topic of distributors, maybe I was wrong

So a few months ago, there was a discussion on here about distributors, and I chimed in saying CD baby was more favorable because of their customer service experience even though they do take 9%. They also offer publishing services for artist who don’t or lack the effort to do those things themselves. I didn’t use them for that reason, but I chose them because for a one time fee per project or single your album is up permanently with no reoccurring charges. I left distro kid because they deleted my account and claimed it was due to fraud or something like that and I believe the issue was I had gotten a replacement bank card and I’m not sure if that had something to do with it, but they shut down my account when I had 14 albums uploaded, their customer service was terrible, and in the end they told me to just make a new account. I lost all of my Spotify following all my data. Now, distro kid does have an option to pay a one time fee to permanently. Keep your project up even if you don’t pay a reoccurring fee, but it’s unclear if they honor what they’re saying, and I am hesitant to revisit them. The thing that has been tempting me lately is that I finally got my new EP uploaded through CD baby and everything was going fine up until I tried to find pre-save and pre-order links for Spotify and iTunes. Come to find out this is a third-party service that you have to pay for and here’s the kicker, the free trial of this service doesn’t even come with that specific feature that I need and they even make it clear that that doesn’t come with a free trial. I’ll make another post discussing this service and services similar to it later. Now this is a small feature, but something as simple as a pre-save link being put behind a pay wall and separate from the main service I’m using it’s a little inconvenient and annoying. This makes me feel like paying a yearly $20 and then an extra 30 or so, for permanent placement on the stores would be worth it because I can also generate a pre safe campaign without the extra hassle. I’m just disturbed by distro kid’s reputation. Even going far back as last year and even this year. If you Google what they got going on it’s the same complaints. They don’t seem to be bothered by the Better Business Bureau. Should I just experiment with 3-4 different distributors per project? I just want a distributor that has a decent set of default features little or no percentages of royalties taken and an option to add or use certain services built into the website not through third parties. What’s everybody’s opinion on distributors and what’s your preference as of 2023?

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