The (almost) Case of The Bouchard Montrachet

Just a bottle shy of a case, I somehow scored these for under $40/btl. I’m guessing they ordered a case of Chassagne-Montrachet or Puligny-Montrachet and somehow got shipped the full Monty without anyone catching on. :wink:
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I would have brought this to someone’s attention. I would hate for the owner to have to eat that kind of loss.

did they have a shelf talker just sitting there with MONTRACHET $36.89? seems they even put it in their system at the price too. Crazy.

I would have brought it to the attention of the retailer.

Not sure I would brag about taking advantage of an obvious mistake.

Not very cool to essentially steal thousands of dollars from them. I hope you consider returning the wine and letting them know.

out of curiosity. Let’s say Mark told them about the price issue. The sales clerk goes to check with a manager. The manager says “no it’s right”. He buys it up. Would it be okay then?

Uncool to keep it.
Just my opinion.
Plus bad wine karma.

Every bit as OK as if he had taken them from your accidentally unlocked cellar and left $400 behind.

For you information:
Chassagne-Montrachet or Puligny-Montrachet are about $60 (not $40)
You bought 10 (not “Just a bottle shy of a case”)

Even if you asked if price was correct, you are not doing it okay.

I’m guessing someone just lost their job over this.

[smileyvault-ban.gif]

Bunch of threads on this stuff in the past.

I used to work in a business where people would ask for prices on lots of different things, and human error happened.
When my price was obviously wrong, a good counterparty would say “can you check that price again please?” That was code for “idiot, your price is way too good, you made a mistake!”. I would say “thank you” and figure out the right price again.
A bad client would try to take advantage of the incorrect price and I would generally discover the mistake relatively quickly and ban that client for life.

Anyway, in this example here, I absolutely agree that the store needs a shot to know they have the wrong price.
The customer needs to bring this to the attention of someone real at the store. Not the slowest, dumbest looking checkout kid or clerk, but some kind of a manager.
A simple “This price looks really good, can you just check to make sure that it’s correct?” would be good enough for me. Then it’s up to the store to “hear” what the customer is saying.
Though I have to say, in this example, where it’s so clearly wrong and by so much, I think I’d need the manager running the store to understand the mistake and tell me that it’s ok for me to buy the Montrachet for the price of the village wine. YMMV

I really don’t like the stories where people take bottles up to the register and get it rung up wrong.
Where the bottle is $250 and the register clerk can’t believe that wine costs that much and rings it up for $25 each.
That’s no better than taking $$ from the register when the clerk turns away for a minute!

As Peter pointed out, there are various topics dealing with “what was your greatest score/deal ever?”. Many have been lucky enough to find the odd treasure in an unlikely place. My luck held years ago, and involved calling the manager for a price check. On a different occasion a merchant sent 6 La Fleur Petrus 2000 mistakenly. I had ordered something much less expensive, and someone reached into the wrong bin. The bad-karma-thing got at me, so I called up. Anyway, I sent them back, got the right order, but there was not a thank you, much less a tasty gift forthcoming.
Oh well, I had my sqeaky clean karma and cheap swill to comfort me.

I’m not piling on. Not my business. Just my 2 cents.

8/10 will eventually premox. Price seems 'bout right to me. :wink:

In all seriousness, please bring this to the attention of the store.

Too bad they didn’t have a case. You could have asked for a case discount then.

Douchey move.

George

This is a repulsive thing to do. If you call the mistake to their attention and they still insist on selling it to you at that price (which has happened to me before!) then I have no problem with it, but to exploit someone else’s mistake to steal thousands of dollars of wine is to me no different than seeing someone accidentally drop a $100 bill on the sidewalk and slipping it into your pocket rather than returning it.

Great job on stealing and probably getting someone fired. High five!

I hate to pile on, so I will offer a bit of insight instead. This was the most poorly handled presell of Bouchard in the past 20 years. I would not be surprised if the store were billed for Bourgogne and shipped Montrachet.

Peter, thank you for not piling on to the witch hunt here. FWIW, these bottles were just sitting on a shelf next to other bottles around the $20-$80 mark. The price was clearly marked on a sign above the bottles, so it wasn’t like I took a single $400 bottle to the register and it was rung up incorrectly. This was also a place that was not in the business of selling much of anything above $100/btl. All this leads me to believe the store itself was shipped a case of this on accident after paying for a far less expensive wine.

Still, you stole it.