I do think that if he contacts the store and they ask for a return, he should get something REALLY nice for covering their mistake.
I once bought one of these (although in much worse condition):
from a woman at a garage sale in NOLA who was convinced it was a sign for a music shop because it was heavy and made out of metal and that it had no strings on it. She wanted $50, I made her take $100 and she was overjoyed. I fixed it up and played it for years then sold it for $1000.
Did I steal from her?
This happens all the time with a number of items. Here what happens an order is made and a sales rep enters it into the system. the order is invoice and pulled by a warehouse that has no care or clue of what they are selling. So we often get cases that have the name of the wine right on the box and yet the sticker for the invoice pull has a completely different wine. so a box that says cloudy bay SB and has a pic and could be identified by any of you is sent out to a store from a distributor saying it was yellow tail shiraz and a sticker right on the box stating as such. The driver brings it, he see the same thing and yet the ticket say these are the boxes so he drop them. Than it is up tot he store to properly check in the wine and make sure they are signing for what they got. In this case some signed it in the invoice will say one wine and price and the wine will not even be close. In most cases if a store see a discrepancy they send the case back and check it off the invoice. If the error is in their favor and they choose to keep it you would think they would have the sense to maximize their dishonesty and charge the real price for the ill gotten wine. The real problem mark has is that is was really hot last week. The distributor of this wine Southern Wine and Spirits has no refrigeration on any of their truck. their Idea of temp control is if the driver has a big gulp in the cup holder. So depending when in the day the store got this case more than likely the wine is cooked. this is why we do not take deliveries from non refer truck in the heat or we go to the warehouse and pick it up ourselves. In the whole system this will not come back at or on anyone except if that was our allocation of this wine and they now do not have the case we were to get.
I’ve found through experience that the “resolution” of the Southern inventory system is a pallet (55 cases) plus or minus 10 cases. If they show less than that in inventory, it could be any random number.
We had an order yesterday rush urgent ticket. helped by our rep of a very allocated product they got it released and special delivery to us by another sales rep. they were so proud to have done the great service for us as were we until it arrived the invoice was right so the right product was ordered but even with the NAME AS BIG as the side of the box printed on it the warehouse sent us a completely different product. and the sales rep delivering brought it right in the store put it on my counter and was smiling ear to ear here you go I just shook my head thanked him and ask what he thought he was delivering? for the first time he looked at the box and the look he gave was priceless. from victory to defeat in 1 second. we both laughed and went about our day. Different distributor big big big they hire warehouse workers that could not get burger jobs but can lift 75lbs.
I also love how they will deliver a $1000 wholesale wooden six pack with a couple of great big sneaker prints on them!
Again, this one is easy:
“My god, this is a beautiful guitar. I think your price might be very low on this.”
“OK, well, that’s my price.”
“Are you sure? I think this is valuable.”
My experience has been that about 50% when you do that, they sell it to you anyways at the listed price, another 25% of the time they give you a thank you gift (i.e. in the case of our little budding Phil Falcone, maybe they let you buy one bottle at the price, but not 10) and you earn perpetual VIP status for as long as that manager works at that store, about 12.5% they fix the price and don’t even thank you, and about 12.5% you’re the one making the mistake and the manager saves you from buying something you didn’t intend.
The point is, wine is a luxury good and there’s no reason to be stealing a luxury good or even coming right up to the line of stealing and maybe your toe is touching the line. Yes, if you don’t buy it, someone else would, unless you SAY SOMETHING TO THE MANAGER, which is just patently the right thing to do when you see a store mispricing a product by a factor of 10.
OMG that is my pet peeve! Roberto I have guys that freak about this so we spend time cleaning the wood so that it looks like someone gave a Fuc* about the wine. or a driver/warehouse guy will take a big permanent marker and write on the box of like MAYA or Harlan or Hundred Acre or whatever and these are boxes that the collectors want to show and want pristine. They could be selling spark plugs or hand grenades just as easy as wine to them it is all the same
David, the guitar was rusted and needed to be sandblasted and re-chromed. It was NOT beautiful when I bought it but I knew what its potential was.
Also, at least here in California, “fixing the price” would be illegal. See my post of the relevant statute above.
To be fair, one of my CA lawyer friends says you’re mistaken, Roberto, in this case. Because the price listed wasn’t for “that commodity” - i.e., the straight Montrachet.
Outside of CA, I believe the common law rule is that a store does not have to honor a mistaken price, but I’m not talking about legal liability here. I agree that there’s nothing criminal about what happened here, it’s just icky and dishonest.
Didn’t the OP even show the receipt with the wine coming up on the sales ticket from the computer as Bouchard Montrachet, not Batard or Chevalier or Puligny?
Agree with this
The very first case I ever bought was the 89’ Boxler Riesling Sommerberg for my gf at the time. Was shipped Sommerberg SGN. Didn’t know the difference until a year or two later.
Suppose the price was off by a factor of 5, or 50% of what would be considered market price (whatever that is). Is it still the potential buyer’s responsibility
to talk the store up?
good you aren’t giving legal advice ![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
If I go to a garage sale and recognize something listed for $10 as a piece of art worth in the thousands do I have an obligation to alert the seller ?
I agree the right thing to do here is to figure out where this (large) error occurred and correct it and collect the karma points (some tangible appreciation from the store would be nice/appropriate). I suspect doing that would be somewhat complex.
Mark has no legal worries here. He has a receipt that clearly states 10 bottles of 2012 Bouchard Monty for the price he paid. Roberto’s posted price laws are a California thing, might or might not be the case in IL, but Mark’s receipt makes this question moot.
As for asking that the price be checked…that happened automatically when Mark checked out. The bottles were almost certainly bar scanned and the price retrieved from the price database. Mark would be asking the store to have their wine buyer check the wine and price against their distributor invoice. It would be/is the right thing to do…but I agree the response would likely not be appreciative. Thinking about this as I write, a letter to the store explaining the situation and giving them a chance to correct it is probably the best answer. It avoids an unpleasant confrontation…and gives the store a chance research the issue before responding.
I’d bet money the store ordered a village white, possibly a village Chassagne, and got this instead.
The person that got the other 2 bottles: did they know what it was (probably not, probably confused Montrachat with Meursault)…and did they like the wine?
This is not a little mistake. Retail on this bottle according to Winesearcher is $800-1000. If we are talking potentially a $7500 - $9500 loss in revenue somebody -whether it is the retailer, distributor, importer etc is going to want to know where that money or inventory is. Now that it has been made public, exactly where that is it will make their job much easier.
George
The retailer could deny him service and not sell him wine if they discovered the error. Either way, it’s a pretty dishonest thing to do when you know there was a mistake. I’ve been undercharged before and have always gone back in to reconcile the receipt when I’ve noticed.
If you’re dealing with a smaller retailer it’s even more important to reconcile these mistakes. Corporate retailers can easily absorb losses from mistakes, but much less so for your local wine shop. These local business owners are your neighbors. Why would you want to take advantage of them?
50% off market price is a factor of 2, not 5. A factor of 5 would be 80% off market price.