Are these guys real or some form of scam ?
They are advertising some very rare bourbons but you can’t check out, reading some more on the site they are some form of broker and don’t have ownership of product. So do they charge you then never ship ? anyone ever bought anything
Pass.
No inventory or paid contracts…no purchase. Easy peasy.
There are a number of online “businesses” that don’t have product and can be run by a single individual. One I’m aware of is a “high end gifts” site featuring exotic wines, liquors, watches, jewelry, etc. It is obvious the company spends time mining web sites for the items offered. A couple times they contacted us and purchased hard to get wines, making the purchase, paying for the shipping and gift wrapping. Their only request was that there was nothing on or in the box indicating where it was purchased from. On one $375.00 purchase, I snooped their site. They made a quick $200.00.
You and the witch need a better business model.
But in this case they are offering rare bourbons at MSRP when they sell for 3-10 times
There are actually several similar sites. They have great deals but none of them are ever in stock if you contact them. I’m not sure if they are collecting CC and billing info or what.
Happening a lot in the wine world for sure. A couple of years ago, I did some digging and made some fake phone calls when a friend and retailer was wondering why allocations of Roumier’s top wines that seemed to match his own were being offered for sale within the state by other operations at higher prices even though those of us in the know were fully aware of who gets those wines and in what quantities.
Sure enough- when I made the calls it was a “pay first and we will have the wines ready to ship in a few days”- always with some excuse about the warehouse being offsite or some other delaying tactic.
I call it shadow listing. There are a couple of operations on winesearcher that are painfully obvious about it if you know what patterns to watch for. It used to be more of an across-the-pond play- list EU wines on winesearcher as available in the US, collect the money, buy the wines and then ship everything over once you had enough orders to justify the delivery cost. It is far less subtle now- markups taken on US listings hoping to catch people who want the convenience of buying and taking delivery in their home state and who are not price sensitive.
Not sure how effective the strategy really is, but given the low cost of setting it up- it would not take much business to make it worthwhile.
You gents would be rattled by the way wines have been and are represented in some major European markets. Same wines offered by many, not in stock, practiced for centuries.
So these ‘retailers’ wait for an order, then scramble to procure the item sold?
Well, I’ve actually ordered and received wine from these guys. They even took back a bottle of white burg that I thought was darker in color and thus concerned with premox so based on that transaction I would say they are a legitimate retailer.
If the operation has changed for the better, that is good.
Best case scenario - you’re giving this outfit an interest-free loan for however long you’re dumb enough to be strung along before requesting/getting a refund.
Worst case scenario - you’re giving this outfit free money.
Didn’t I hear about someone in California who worked on that model? ![[new-here.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/4/4f12a4e22d562f86ca4e3d18cc0affcfb2516fa8.gif "[new-here.gif]"){kind=small}