Conditions for returning a bottle?

Wine Pimps
1

The thread on “cutting a deal” for a wine got me thinking about a wine retailer’s return policies. For a good while, I thought that such a thing did not exist, simply because I had a hard time seeing how a wine’s provenance could be guaranteed by the retailer. Well, when I opened a bottle of wine for a dinner with my family some months ago and found that the wine was undrinkable due to seepage, I went to go pour it out. At that point, my dad said that I should take it back to the store I bought it at to get my money back. It was really a foreign concept to me but I e-mailed the salesperson that had helped me and he was a little vague about their return policy but said to bring the bottle and cork in the next time I was in and he’d credit me for it.

So I ask, is returning a damaged bottle normal practice? And if so, at which point are you liable to overstep the boundaries of acceptable returns? Prior to this situation, I had chucked out two completely undrinkable bottles of 2003 cabernet from the same store, that I had spent $65 per bottle on. Should I have attempted to return them?

1 Like
2

Keep your receipt. Bring back bottle as soon as you can, with most wine in bottle. Even if you already poured 4 glasses, just refill bottle with bad wine.

Retailers should honor return policy 100%. They just contact their distributor and get bottle replaced or given a credit.

Never be satisfied with an off bottle. It’s your money. Bad bottles happen. We will replace.

1 Like
3

it depends on why they’re undrinkable. Corked? Return. Oxidized or obviously heat damaged? Return. The wine’s fine, you just don’t like it? Suck it up and deal with it.

1 Like
4

yup. and for me, there is no price limit (or floor, really), especially if i purchased from a retailer that i frequent. i would like to take this opportunity to give major kudos to K&L for their liberal return policy - they’ve taken a handful of corked bottles back from me, no questions asked. one time i even brought in a bottle of Gruner that i thought was off, but I wasn’t sure. one of the staff tasted it and agreed it didn’t taste the way it should, but said the bottle was generally fine. i was completely willing to chalk it up to learning experience, and just move on (and even said as such, more than once), but they insisted on taking the bottle back and giving me store credit for it – now that’s classy!!

1 Like
5

Never had a problem returning a bad bottle back to the store, no receipt necessary. Retailers get credit for that.

I would never attempt to return an older bottle purchased from a retailer. Then the risk in on me.

6

By older, do you mean one that you had purchased many years ago or an old vintage that you had purchased recently? If the latter, how old is too old for you to return? The 2 x 2003’s I purchased from the store were opened within 6 months of having purchased them, and both bottles tasted like rotten eggs and were completely fogged up. Both went straight into my Eurocave after purchasing. Are these conditions suitable for returning the bottles?

1 Like
7

What T-Bone said. That is our policy. If I know someone I don’t even worry about the receipt. But having the receipt is a good policy to have in order to prevent people from trying to return a bottle of Bailey’s that their grandmother got as a gift in 1987 and is now curdled (it has happened). Keep in mind, however, that in NY returns are only supposed to be for “defective merchandise.” If you buy a case of wine for a party and want to return 8 bottles the day after because nobody drank wine, you are SOL.

And as Otto mentions, in many retailer situations older wines come with a Caveat Emptor and may not be able to be returned for a refund if defective. For me, those are usually wines purchased from a private collector so I have no recourse to get credit if it is defective.

1 Like
8

The 2003s would be fairgame for a return. Older wines might have been damaged either before they got to the retailer (for retailers who sell older wines purchased from cellars, etc) or by you (if they sold a wine to you and 10 years later you return it). But a wine that’s a few months old and obviously flawed should be returned and taken back.

Some flaws, notably TCA, have nothing to do with storage but it’s still hard to return them after years… usually because the store has to eat the cost vs returning the bottle to the distributor.

1 Like
9

Guess you don’t buy from Premier Cru. [stirthepothal.gif] OR, maybe you do? [scratch.gif] Because then ALL the bottles you get from them would be old by the time they reach you. [berserker.gif]

1 Like
10

By older bottles I mean bottles that a retailer purchased from a private collector and then resold. The the risk is on me.

1 Like
11

I understood Otto. I was just using the opportunity to stir the pot on PC. [stirthepothal.gif] I am thinking that I might be stirring an empty put though. [pillow-fight.gif]

1 Like
12

If the bottle is flawed, absolutely return it to where you purchased it. I’ve never dealt with a winery or distributor that won’t replace it, they may not have the same vintage but will replace it with current vintage. There was a guy that had a corked bottle, he posted on one of the BB about it and was having a hard time getting it replaced as it had been purchased 3 years before, the retailer told him it was too late to go back to the supplier and by then the supplier had changed . I contacted the new distributor on the guys behalf and my rep delivered a newer vintage of the same wine for me to ship to the guy. It is not good business to let a customer be unhappy with a bottle that is obviously flawed. In this day and age if we don’t take good care of our customers, why would they want to spend their hard earned money.

As Otto said, it is different if the wine was purchased from a private collector, that’s a hard one to have recourse on.

1 Like
13

Sorry Steve, can’t accomodate right now, I have a cold, will be back in full form in a couple of days. [tease.gif]

14

We had one guy return a 20 year old tawny port.


Said it tasted old.


Unreal, but the store gave him a credit.

1 Like
15

Our store policy is very liberal, plus, the kind of thing that T-bone mentioned happens more often than you would think. With us usually, it’s a customer who brings in a bottle which he/she thinks is corked, and after our staff inspects it, deems it is NOT corked. Still, we give them store credit. If a customer sincerely believes their wine is flawed and makes the time and effort to go back to the store to address the issue, then we respect that. We may get burned from it in some instances, but it’s good will overall.

1 Like
16

I want to bring back bottles because they’re empty! [stirthepothal.gif]

1 Like
17

If the bottle smells like a wet basement or wet newspaper, it is corked. If it is fizzy, it is probably maderized. If it smells like burnt hair or a sewer, it has bad brett. Please, please, don’t dump it out, bring it back as soon as you can and get another one. Since something like 95% of all wine is consumed within three days of purchase, we rarely see wines that were sold more than a year ago. And that is problematical: Once you’ve owned the wine that long, maderization may be your fault, not ours. Nonetheless, we take back bottles no question asked, even though every one of our receipts is printed with a warning that we don’t take returns.

If the wine is not flawed, and you just don’t like it, and you’re pleasant about it, most of the time we’ll give you your money back anyway. That’s how we do. We’ll wrangle something out of the distributor. What we won’t do is put the wine you return back on the shelf: Once it is out of our possession, we don’t know what’s happened to it, and we won’t take the chance of putting something that might be bad out for resale. Even if we have to eat it. We have a reputation to protect.

But if you bring back a case, and all of it is cooked, we will most likely not give you your money back, because it is most likely your fault. If you leave five cases in your trunk for four hours when it’s 95 degrees out, and 130 inside your minivan, because you had to stop at Aunt Martha’s on the way home, that’s your problem. Because 99 times out of 100, we told you when we loaded it into your car to be careful because of the heat.

And for the most part, our customers understand all of the above. Those few that don’t, well, what can you say? I’d like to say, “Hey, not every bad thing that happens to you is someone else’s fault.” But I don’t.

1 Like
18

When I lived in Westfield, NJ 10 yrs ago, I went into a wine store there and bought a white burg for dinner that night. Went to dinner and it was badly corked. The next day, I bring it back. The person at the counter takes it into the back for the “Manager” to evaluate. Now, the place is pretty packed. This manager, a young kid maybe 22 yrs old, comes out and loudly asks the crowd: “Who’s delicious Chard is this”? I raise my hand smiling, as I figured he was kidding around. Nope, dead serious. He says to me: “There is nothing wrong with this wine. It’s delicious”. I basically told him he “had no clue what he was talking about, and just by handling this way, this store is about to lose me as a customer. I told him you can either refund the $100 on the wine now, or you can hold onto it, check with the owner who will tell you that you know nothing about corked wines. In that case, you will probably be working somewhere else in a few days.” He waited to speak with the owner and had me come back the next day, where the owner refunded my money an apologized. [whistle.gif]

About a month later, I am in CompUSA and have a computer questions. They call for the Manager…guess who comes out? Beautiful Chard Guy! He looked a bit sheepish but not sure. I was too busy wiping the tears of laughter out of my eyes. [rofl.gif]

1 Like
19

Funny story, Steve. Which store was it? My brother lives in Fanwood, so I know all those stores.

20

The store is still there, but have not been there in many many years. It may have changed hands. [scratch.gif] It was Peterson’s. I lived right around the corner. And they USED to have a really fun wine storage room with some cool wines in there, and nice prices. The rest of the store was pretty weak.