good to know. most I have dealt with do not. They take note of it, or at least so they say. Taking note doesn’t help the buyer though
Which is why I modified my original stance above. I think if something’s damaged in shipping, etc that the seller and buyer should split the loss. It doesn’t seem fair for the entire burden to fall on either one. The Seller would never have shipped the wines if the buyer wasn’t buying so they’d still have their wine. The buyer would not have sent the seller money except for wanting the wines. IF the shipment is intercepted, destroyed, etc it feels fair to split that loss. I’m less sure about what should happen if a seller packs a shipment well but due to a buyer screwup the box sat in the sun, etc.
Acker offers 90 days money back for any reason, I believe. I returned a cooked lot for refund.
Ah… good point. My opinion on that is if it sits in the sun on my front porch and is cooked… I would consider that my fault as the buyer. Also if it’s shipped without a signature being required and is left on the porch only to be swiped by some kid walking by?.. once again, my fault as the recipient for not asking the seller to request a signature from the shipping carrier.
last thing any private seller wants is for a signature to be required. The more detail the worse as there is a higher chance the carrier picks it up as wine and rejects the shipping.
![[rofl.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/a/a7452fcd8e675af869f8da01174474a545b03944.gif "rofl"){kind=small}
gee, sorry I have some thoughts and posted them. Either of you could have weighed in, but apparently don’t have anything remotely intelligent to add…
retail or auction? I find it hard to believe this is an auction policy.
Auction. Their terms & conditions give them the right to decide, but Kapon widely pronounced they would offer money back for any cooked or damaged wine according to the buyer’s opinion, no questions asked. I’m not sure they are still doing that, it has been several years.
It seems that there are really 3 (mostly, but not entirely, independent) items being discussed in this thread: shipment terms, packing specifications and product quality.
It would probably not surprise anyone to learn that there is a entire body of work dedicated solely to shipment terms.(Google ‘INOCOTERMS 2010’ for more information that you will ever want.) The shipment term most discussed on this thread is ‘CPT’ (Carriage Paid To), which means that the Seller pays for carriage of the goods, but delivers upon tendering the goods to the transport carrier. Under FCA, Risk of Loss also transfers from Seller to Buyer at this point. There are multiple shipment terms; each of which denotes delivery and transfer of risk at varying points in the transport process between Seller’s location and Buyer’s location. In any transaction, Seller and Buyer are free to agree to fix the time and place of title transfer to the goods and risk of loss. As previously noted, different risk profiles will more than likely be accompanied by different pricing.
The second issue is packing specifications. In most commercial transactions, the Buyer specifies the packing specifications/requirements. Rick touched on this above, when he said that he wants his shipments shipped in styro shippers. As long as that is understood and agreed upfront, the Seller would bear responsibility for damage due to that requirement not being followed.
The last item is product quality. From an implied contractual standpoint, this is the most difficult issue, since everyone has different sensory thresholds. For example, what level of TCA is acceptable vs. not acceptable?
The real kicker is that, while the above items may be interesting to discuss, they are moot. In reality, neither party has legal recourse against the other, since it is an illegal transaction to begin with. Thus, as stated several times, it all boils down to a level of trust between the Seller and Buyer. And that applies whether it is a private or commercial transaction.
The biggest issue I have is the packaging. Several times I’ve bought wine and had it show up in a box filled with newspaper or in a worn out box with trashed styro-foam. Knowing hwo the shipping companies handle packages, I’d like to have my purchases packaged properly, to the point that I’ll ship the seller a new shipper.
After that, deal with the condition of the wine. Fortunately, here on the board, almost all of the members maintain their wine and “cooked” hasn’t been an issue.
Wine, non-durable, subjective in quality and impossible to evaluate without killing, is a fairly unique product. All in all, I think that “buyer assumes risk” makes sense for wine. Buyer beware. I buy or sell almost none on the secondary market, just my thoughts FWIW.
I tend to make deals in CC with people I feel I know to some extent. I hope that these are friendly transactions made as part of a community. If I ship you wine or you ship me wine, I assume we both know something about careful packing of wine, but just in case, it doesn’t hurt to discuss it a bit.
Wherever possible, I try to make the transaction in person or with a reliable friend as “mule”. If we ship, and something goes wrong that is neither person’s fault (e.g. the carrier breaks or confiscates the wine), I would hope we would find some reasonable and fair way to deal with it.
I wonder if it has ever happened on a CC transaction?
+1
When I sell bottles on WineCommune I use the same disclaimer. Thankfully, nothing bad has ever happened in 100+ transactions (buying and selling), but at the end of the day, I couldn’t live with myself if I was being unfair to the person I was dealing with. I do make sure that my packaging is secure, and if something went wrong, I would strive to reach a mutually agreeable solution. However, if I ran into someone else who I thought was being unreasonable, I have the terms in my back pocket for protection.
The represented that it was from a case, several of which had been sampled and “were fine”, and all of which had been “properly stored”. I didn’t explicitly ask for a refund, given the age of the wine in question, but just let the seller know the circumstances when we opened the wine, and leaving a pretty clear open-door invitation for him to propose a solution. He responded politely, but in a way that made it clear that he felt the risk was all on me.
Lesson learned.
Yeah, that doesn’t feel right to me Andrew. Had the bottle been corked… your risk. We all know bottles have a risk of that and good bottles from the same case don’t preclude that risk. TEmp damage? nuh-uh.
The next question should be, what’s the relationship between the buyer/seller? If it’s someone you trust, then you can accept that they say it’s temp damaged. But people throw around “temp damaged” all the time, if this was an old bottle, there’s bound to be some variation, it’s not that black and white. Older wines should definitely be buyer beware, it’s hard to guarantee anything.
If there are feedback mechanisms as there are on wine-commune, and to a lesser extent commerce corner, I tend to avoid buying from folks with no reputation, or scrutinize those deals in more details.
I know that when I sell wine, I try very hard to pack very carefully, and ensure that that the buyer is happy. I know I will sell wine again in the future and I care about my seller reputation.
However I do caveat that at the end of the day, the buyer assumes the risk. I have yet to be in a situation where the buyer wasn’t happy, however, so don’t know how I would respond if something bad happened to the wine… and I would never knowingly sell wine that has a remote chance of being damaged (other than possiby corked, which I have no control over). I’d like to think that I am more the rule than the exception, but who knows.