Guaranteed Allocations w/Poll

What’s your take?

You read it all the time, “I want guaranteed allocations, I don’t like first come first served, if you value me as a customer guarantee my allocation or I’ll shop elsewhere.”

Some version of it is seen in the forums on a regular basis. Question, if you chose option 1 in the poll do you purchase your entire allocation every time one is offered?

I want guaranteed allocations.
I appreciate guaranteed allocations.
I’m neutral, if I want it bad enough I’ll order on time.
I need week to think it over.

I’m not sure there’s a meaningful difference between “want” and “appreciate,” unless you meant for “want” to mean “require.”

I voted “want.” I almost never purchase my entire allocation. That said, it is true that “if I want it bad enough I’ll order on time” IF my memory and work schedule allows for that. Some offers sell out nearly instantaneously, which can be aggravating if it’s a FCFS situation. And, although I don’t “need” a week to think it over, I certainly like having time to think it over.

In general, I want guaranteed allocations. I would be happy to call it a subscription and go from there!

As to “entire allocations”…this can inflate beyond my ability to buy.

If I buy two cases of wines from winery X each year, suddenly making my allocation four cases for me to stay on the list would not work. I’d be fine with past purchasing volume being calculated in my ongoing ‘allocation’ with my ‘promise’ to keep buying.

I would vote: guaranteed baseline allocation that is fixed, with wish list abilities if they desire.

I am not here to demand anything of a business I do not own nor control.

That would be another forum.

That’s what I meant just not how I worded it.

I voted “want.” I almost never purchase my entire allocation. That said, it is true that “if I want it bad enough I’ll order on time” IF my memory and work schedule allows for that. Some offers sell out nearly instantaneously, which can be aggravating if it’s a FCFS situation. And, although I don’t “need” a week to think it over, I certainly like having time to think it over.

So my question is why should you be guaranteed something you don’t purchase all of?
Or
What’s in it for the winery if they have to re-release the wines you passed on in hopes of selling it to someone else?

When people feel they have missed out they often allocate their money to another offer. I’m obviously talking allocated wines, not something where you are offered 10 cases or more and there’s some sent to retail and restaurants. From a businesses perspective I would want my customers to buy what I offer them. I like Anton’s idea of basing allocations on purchase history. I buy “x” nottles of this every year and “y” bottles of that. You want a large format? Wishlist.
Going to be in a meeeting all day? Good thing you got a “save the date” email a week or two in advance so you could be sure to email the winery and secure your order if you were not going to be available. I’ve done that with Hardy in the past. It really works.

What happenes when it’s not a vintage of the century? I think I’ll pass. Then they jab at the winery when wine goes to the second wave because they “couldn’t sell out.” Couldn’t sell out? Or were they too cheap to buy that allocation that had to be guaranteed?

Guaranteed allocations with no purchase obligation seems a bit one sided to me.

I don’t really care which mechanism is used, I care about the outcome.

What would make me unhappy is a system under which I can buy the wine one (or more) years and then later get a “first come” offer which sells out if I don’t respond within some unreasonably short time (say, two weeks). If I wait longer than that and it sells out, I can’t really complain about the system. And if the system (how many offers go out, maximum order size, early window for repeat customers before the wait list or general public can order, etc.) is designed to prevent this, then I don’t really care if I got a “guaranteed allocation” or not.

Hence, I referred to the idea of “subscribing.”

Even without a promise to buy, I think the wineries I ‘belong’ to know my buying patterns and can decide if I am worth the risk/peril of a guaranteed allocation.

Why whould I want to wait two weeks to get paid for something that someone else will pay me for today? A lot can happen in an unreasonably short two weeks.

We can parse it until doomsday.

You asked for preferences, you got them.

In general, if I have been a steady customer and my ongoing business is not worth allowing me to buy without a “first come first served” threat, then I wander away from those lists. No demands, just buy or do not buy.

There are wines that sell out in a matter of hours - I don’t like to scramble and have a life. You can opine about two weeks all you like, I would simply ask for a day so I could check my emails at random and continue my relationship with the winery. I would think that’s not too great a strain on revenue and if it is, they don’t need me, for sure!

I also drop lists that require buying wine X in order to buy wine Y.

Interesting. I’ve never had this situation, and I suppose I would have tried that too, but often I don’t know in advance when I’m going to be tied up or snowed under. Moreover, I’ve received many “save the date” e-mails and never interpreted them as “you can also respond to this and order early if you’re going to be busy when the time comes.” If they really mean that, then they aren’t “save the date” e-mails, they are “get your orders in” e-mails. But either way, I get way too much e-mail, so I have never been a fan of the “save the date” e-mail that seems to have become the rage. I would rather get ONE e-mail with an offering to which I have a reasonable time to respond.

My experience with highly allocated offerings is that if you cut your purchases back, then your allocation gets reduced accordingly in the future, and that seems eminently fair to me, a nice way to balance customer satisfaction with the needs of the winery to make the process manageable.

I’m with Anton. You asked for preferences, these are my preferences, others may have other preferences. Seems to me that if customer loyalty and relationships are of no value to the winery because their wines are so wonderful that demand will always support high prices and complete sell-through, they should just auction off their entire production every year. That would be one extreme. That would 100% be the winery’s right, and I wouldn’t complain about it in that sense, but I also wouldn’t be a customer.

On the other hand, if the winery wants to build up a base of loyal repeat customers that include me, I’ve given you my thoughts on what would keep me around (in addition to the obvious of making wines I like and selling them for what I’m willing to pay). And if “waiting two weeks” to get paid is a problem, send the offering out two weeks sooner!

I’m not arguing with you Anton. I asked for preferences. I am now asking back-up questions based on those preferences. I didn’t know I had to disclose that in advance.

I just think that we has wine buyers want to be spoiled when with every other transaction we do in life it’s first come first served. The wine business is unique in which they work all year long spending, spending, spending, spending, spending and when they finally have a product sell to in order to pay the bills all-of-a-sudden the customer wants them to wait an unreasonably short two weeks before informing them whether or not they are going to buy. But guarantee that wait!

So like I asked earlier, what’s the benefit to them to guarantee the offer?

The wine business is hardly unique in this regard. If you have Lakers season tickets, they don’t offer your same seats for next season to you and the rest of the general public FCFS, nor do they make you wait for a magic date to renew, but then respond in a matter of hours or lose your seats to another guy who’s willing to respond and pay immediately. OTOH, if you don’t renew for this year because you think they’ll stink, you can’t call up next year and get your same seats back (or any seats if they’re sold out). There are many other examples.

Edited to add:

The benefit to the seller of guaranteeing the offer is - hopefully - a stable base of repeat customers. It’s all about scarcity. If there isn’t any scarcity, offer it all FCFS and it won’t sell through for quite a while anyway, and no one can complain about not having time to order some. If it’s scarce enough that demand will always be there, vintage in, vintage out, at higher and higher prices, auction it all off every year and who cares if your past customers get outbid by the new kids on the block? If the scarcity level is in between those two, the winery can, by guaranteeing allocations to its repeat customers, leverage the scarcity in high-demand times (be they excellent vintages, good overall economic times, your grape varieties are in fashion but not too many others make them, etc.) to help sales in low-demand times (again be they weaker vintages, bad economic times, shifts in fashion away from your grape varieties or tons of new competition jumping on the bandwagon). This is because customers will have an incentive to buy every year, for fear of losing their guaranteed allocation in the future. If it’s FCFS every year, customers can take a pass in low-demand times without any reduction in their chance to get the wine in the future if they are fast enough on the “reply” button, so there’s no incentive for them to buy year-in, year-out. I don’t have any data, but I suspect the fear of losing an allocation also makes long-term customers less resistant to price increases, but that’s just a guess.

This is my experience as well - and let me tell you, it is sometimes very difficult to get an increase in an allocation once it is cut back. What is the point of waiting sometimes several years to become an eligible buyer and then only receive a FCFS offer? If it is FCFS, why not open it up to the wait list as well?

Regarding waiting to get paid for two weeks, what about the fact that we, as the buyer, sometimes have to wait months to get our purchases delivered? Cheers!

Non-sequitor. Entertainment vs Consumble Goods. If you buy those seats and the Lakers suck do they give you free tickets to another game/season to make up for the flawed product?

Perfect.

A lot can happen between my buying in the spring and getting my wine in the fall.

There is obviously an equilibrium, but what is the winery gambling by offering me a guaranteed allocation for a set period of time? If I don’t buy, then they won’t make me the offer again, so the ‘flakes’ get rapidly filtered out. Also, if I don’t buy, it’s as if I weren’t on the list in the first place, so what would they do with the wine after a 1-14 day sales delay?

I feel like that is an invitation and my cue?

I think your example is the non-sequitur, not that I see how any difference in what is enough of a “flaw” to require a refund makes any difference to the “guaranteed allocation” question. Buying a ticket doesn’t guarantee you a win, or a close game, or a certain level of play, and thus the lack of any of those things isn’t a “flaw” in the sense of making the product defective or requiring a refund or substitute. OTOH, the ticket does guarantee you a Lakers game. They can’t send the UCLA team out instead and call it even. If they cancel the game due to a power outage, they schedule a make-up game at no extra charge. If they stink, or their opponent stinks and it’s a boring blowout, no refund. Same thing with a winery, some things are flaws that justify a refund or replacement bottle (corked bottle, etc.), others not (this vintage isn’t as highly rated as last year, I’m not sure I still like pinot as much as I used to).

But none of that has anything to do with either a) why customers would rather it be easier rather than harder for them to order your wine year after year; or b) what’s in it for the winery to go through the additional hassles of using a guaranteed allocation system (or some other system that gives repeat customers some reasonable window of time in which to order before being shut out) instead of just using FCFS.

I would surmise that some of these wineries might not have enough wine to guarantee everyone on their list an allocation-

In such case, (IMHO) FCFS seems to me to be a pretty legit and straight forward system- If you want it, be firstish.