…its shipping costs.
Haven’t bought or been on the site in quite some time but no longer a buyer. I was hitting too many duds after trying them after time in the cellar. The bottles all looked fine. No signs of damage but many were dull and not representative of the same wines purchased from the Winery or retail.
I have experienced the opposite.
As a valued customer, we want to inform you of a change to the overall shipping rates to your location when choosing to use WineBid’s contracted carrier services.
WineBid used to have a warehouse in Elmhurst, IL that was closed in January 2018. Since then, all wine has been stored in our Napa warehouse. As a courtesy to our Midwest and East Coast customers who were previously serviced from the Elmhurst warehouse, WineBid had subsidized the shipment rates as if your wine was still being shipped from Illinois. Rate subsidies ranged from 46% to 102% for Ground and from 10% to 193% for Air methods.
Current shipping rates have now adjusted to reflect that you are shipping your wine direct from Napa. While this change will make your shipping rate more accurate, it also means you will see an increase to the cost.
Freight, packing and insurance costs are billed directly by the carrier, then WineBid integrates these carrier rates so they can be billed directly through your WineBid account as a convenience. Shipping rates are not marked up for any retail profit. Shipping via WineBid’s contracted carrier rates is by no means your only option for shipping wine; if you have an outside shipping company or storage facility you would prefer to use, we coordinate with outside couriers on a weekly basis. After making arrangements with an outside vendor, you can schedule a 3rd party pickup directly from your WineBid account.
We realize this change may impact how you choose to ship your wine. For a list of contracted shipping rates and methods, as well as other shipping options, please see our Shipping Calculator page. For additional questions, please feel free to reach out to Customer Service by phone at 888-638-8968 or email.
I with Victor, my experience has been solid, acceptable. Not perfect, but that’s not expected either when you are buying wines with some years on them from a source like this. Now that said, I mostly buy Bordeaux, which is perhaps more durable than other non-Cab based wines.
Shipping cost to FL went up a bit, but still lower than what other wineries and retailers in CA charge me.
I saw it across Napa Cab, Barolo and Burgs. I was batting about 60/40 so lost interest. May be just bad luck…
Same. Not all but maybe a good 10-15% were off, heat damaged or something. Plus they took away the Chicago site for local pickup.
It was the French wines I was buying that were off, heat damaged or who knows what. Usually with 5-10 years of age. When I bought American wines 1-5 years old, no problems at all.
What ticks me off a bit about this is the decision without notice just before main shipping season starts. In fact, D&R held shipments from Napa this week because of unseasonably high temps. And I usually plan to ship in November as a precaution.
I appreciate that the shipping fees may have been subsidized previously. If I knew that at some point, I had forgotten. But the timing here is not coincidental.
On the wines I have always been vocal about my relative success with bottles bought on WB for about 20 years now as well as precautions I take to try to avoid bad bottles.
Jayson:BINGO!
I bought wines that I thought would ship at price X, now they’re going to charge me 2X, without warning?
Bullshit way to treat customers
I’ve had reasonably good success with bottles from WB. I do take some precautions: never signs of past seepage, never low fill. Bummer about shipping costs, but that’s the cost of doing business in this hobby
The problem isn’t the raised costs, it’s the way it was sprung on us and applied to previous purchases, to wine they now hold captive. I’ve got a couple $20 bottles I wouldn’t have bought at the new shipping rate.
I am done with them after they shipped out my wine without asking me in the middle of the recent heat wave (last week).
$50-55 per case to NYC, which is not that different from many retailers. However, I hadn’t updated my settings (last used in 2013) which authorized WineBid to ship without regard to consolidating, and as a result I’m getting three cases at $50-55 each, and one single bottle at $22.
I too have had no issues with wines from WB. I like to use them because of the good volume of aged Cali Cabs and other out-of-the-ordinary stuff I tend to get.
I agree that the timing of this change sucks. I locked in with them years ago because of the Elmhurst warehouse, 15 miles from my house. I would get charged nothing for shipping because it was their normal transfer between Napa and Elmhurst in their temperature controlled trucks. That also meant I could take delivery on my wine any time.
With the wine now shipping out of Napa, there really isn’t more than a four month window where you can safely have them ship. That means some stuff you buy might have to be held by them more than the free six month timeframe, so now there will be costs for storage. It’s that, or ignore the auctions from April through June.
Time for me to switch back to local auction places like HDH and Chicago Wine Company.
+1. I sent Russ a message last night on this exact point. I totally understand the transition; it is the way it is being handled that I take issue with. I view this as a pretty easy fix on their part: grandfather in earlier purchases and start the new policy with the next (10/13 closing) auction.
I stopped buying from WineBid after they billed for storage during winter. It was a paltry amount, but it really was annoying. I mentioned it in a previous WineBid thread, and was contacted by the new CEO. I have to say I was impressed, and decided if I do need something I would now buy.
As for experience, I did not buy much in the past, and I would rate my success rate close to that if Zachys and Heritage. Very good with a small percentage below par.
Well handled, Mark. That would be a smart business move to make it prospective. I think they have about four cases for me right now that I have accumulated over the summer.
PUBLIC APOLOGY: Hi everyone, I don’t want to be “commercial” here but since everyone is discussing this, let me just make a public apology. We screwed up on this one and we know it. We should have communicated earlier and given everyone more heads-up on the shipping changes.
Unfortunately, the shipping laws and rates, as well as the tax laws, have been changing rapidly and in some places significantly this year, and we’ve been working hard to adjust and be as transparent as possible. We don’t make money off of shipping, we work hard to negotiate the best options and lowest rates for you, and in fact we’ve been flat out losing over six figures on shipping every year. We also offer one of the lowest buyer’s premiums in the business. While we may look big online, we’re no Amazon- we’re just a small company of 40 people, (3 in customer service), working hard to bring the best vintage wines to you, doing our best to authenticate and inspect and photograph every one.
We’re very sorry to have let you down on the communication on these changes- no excuses, we could have and should have notified everyone sooner. Please feel free to private message or email me directly, or call or email customer service on Monday, so we can work with you to figure out the best options for your shipping needs going forward and for any wine you may have with us right now. We will work as hard as possible to satisfy every person who contacts us.
In the meantime, we do greatly appreciate the WineBerserkers community and all your comments and feedback, and we do sincerely wish everyone very happy tasting and sharing.
-Russ
I can’t complain too much given that shipping was really cheap before. Knowing that they were subsidizing it means that it was mostly playing with house money. However, it might’ve affected my purchases if I were buying the cheapest wines (10-15 before big)
I had already scheduled a shipment with the understanding of a given (albeit estimated) shipping cost, so it is a little annoying that the shipping costs spiked without warning (costs went up even before the announcement email hit)