The only retailer who has ever credited an older corked bottle was Chamber Street.
Personally I have never asked, nor would I expect a retailer to make me whole. A corked wine is not foreseeable, and the retailer was not at fault selling it to you, so not sure why he should be expected to take the hit.
Flickinger is a decent very well run outfit ; I do hope you weren’t planning to hurt their business by naming them in a public forum.
Well played, that made me laugh pretty hard
Total Wine let me return a Pontet Canet that was horribly corked. Exchanged it for Smith Haut Lafite.
Benchmark will credit you for wine that’s flawed within 6 mo of purchase so drink up
If you bought a TV and turned it on and it didn’t work. Would you return it? The retailer had no inkling it wouldn’t work being brand new in a box. Why would a bottle of faulty wine be any different? put a bad power supply in the TV, put a bad cork in the wine.
Here’s a long thread I started on the topic back in 2015. Warning, there are some pretty heated opinions in there in both directions.
Now apply that same analysis to the consumer. What has the consumer done to deserve taking the hit?
And the retailer is the only one he or she has any recourse to.
Apples and oranges.
A new TV that doesn’t work goes back to the manufacturer, and the retailer who sold it would not lose a thing. More importantly, a manufacturer should have known there was potentially a problem and should have routinely tested it before sending it off to the retailer; he will clearly be responsible for footing the bill.
A corked bottle is not foreseeable; unless it is a current release, the retailer would not have not have any redress with importer, distributor, or winery, and unlike the TV shop, and is now being asked to eat the cost of something he clearly has no control over.
I didn’t know a subject like this could get heated. Oh yeah, it’s the internet.
I’ll respect the decision if they don’t offer a remedy. It’s not anything a buyer can detect, and for experienced wine people, we know it’s part of the deal. Perhaps they see a longer term benefit for issuing some sort of credit or something, but I’m still waiting to hear from them.
I’ve had some luck returning corked wines to the producer (only in the US, and both times well-regarded wineries), but typically I just eat the loss myself. The benefit of contacting the winery, even if they aren’t willing to do anything about it, is that they are getting feedback on their choice of closure.
I consider it one of the risks of drinking older wines. I have never asked for a refund unless I know the retailer will be able to get compensated.
Not sure if you have ever worked in retail to know how many DOA items there are, which could be from a solder coming loose in transit, a part that doesn’t exhibit failure until used for more than 10mins. Or anything.
So Walmart don’t get redress from Sony or Samsung for a faulty TV? Why wouldn’t a wine retailer be able to get redress from a wholesaler who sold them a faulty good? and the wholesaler from the producer? (ignoring baked on norms that are in place at the moment)
Why is a corked wine not forseeable? You stated the TV manufacturer should have tested the part. Why can’t a winemaker test the corks? (like a lot of them do nowadays). When a bottle of wine costs about as much as a TV, I just don’t get why everyone is giving them a free ride and absolving them of any responsibility in ensuring their products are fault free.
Let’s consider that statement but substituting the retailer for the consumer.
A corked bottle is not foreseeable; the customer never has any redress with importer, distributor, or winery, and he is now being asked to eat the cost of something he clearly has no control over.
Seems like it’s at least as unfair to the consumer. The retailer at least made a profit selling the bottle (e.g. bought it for $30 and sold it for $60 or whatever, I’m not sure what the typical retail markup is). And the retailer has another party he may have recourse to, whereas the consumer has nobody else.
You say “I consider it one of the risks of drinking older wines.” What if someone else were to say “I consider it one of the risks of selling wines which are meant to be aged?”
In practice, I’m like you, I just eat it and move on, but I disagree with you that it’s right that we should have to do so. I think the right thing is that it should be treated like any other defective product the consumer buys.
The specific bottle isn’t forseeable, but a retailer could know that X% of the wines it sells are going to be corked, and Y% of the corked ones will get returned (Y being a tiny number, I’m guessing).
So this isn’t a bolt of lightning out of nowhere to the retailer that a customer comes in and wants a refund for a defective bottle she purchased there.
I opened a bottle of 2019 Napa Cabernet last week that was corked. Initially, I thought that I’d bought it from the mailing list and emailed the winery. The next day, I remembered that I’d bought it locally and tried to return the bottle, without expecting anything to happen. (I can’t remember the last time I tried to return a corked wine… it has been years.)
The wine shop offered me a refund or store credit, but also politely explained that they only have about 3 months to return bottles to distributors. I’m not sure that is fair to the wine shop, but it is what it is.
Went to a more expensive shop down the street and asked about their return policy. They claimed that they will always take back corked wine, regardless of when it was sold. So, I now think of the higher prices as buying insurance against corked bottles (kinda of like in a restaurant, where the insurance is even more expensive).
Winery got back in touch with me and offered to make the wine shop whole for the bottle if the distributor didn’t. Classy move.
This is one big advantage of buying direct from wineries – I can write to Rhys, Kutch, etc. and tell them a wine was corked, and they’ll just send me a replacement and/or a credit.
To a smaller extent, what @JMReuter observed in simply buying a domestic wine whose winery is still a going concern, you at least have a chance to get a bottle replaced. If I bought a corked Montelena at retail 10 years ago and just opened it, there’s at least a chance Montelena would stand behind it, whereas I assume there is very little or no chance with a winery outside the USA.
TV is not a perishable product like wine. You can’t push a button and make another bottle of 2000 Mouton (please no Rudy jokes)
Good points, but think about this.
What exactly makes the business liable for said bottle?
Another part of this is customer loyalty as well. If it’s a great customer, you take it back. You know how many times someone brought back and bottle, got the refund and was never to be heard from again? Not blaming you, or anyone on this thread, but the parts of the process that goes into this decision by a retailer is baked in to a lot of crappy customer behavior (refunds or otherwise).
No matter what the situation with any client complaint, I have always learned to know who the client is in full picture before making any decision. If the OP was a frequent client, and buying things like QC, I would have said, I’ll credit you that amount on your next purchase, and he probably would have been fine with that. Strangely, if it was a first time customer, I would probably do the same thing in hopes that they do keep coming back.
Speaking as a producer here, while I would always want to know about the issue and want to make the customer whole… as a ‘customer’, when this happens to me, I just feel too guilt-ridden to actually report it and end up eating the cost myself. Especially if purchased from a retailer some time long before.
Also on the producer side, I will say that I’ve had wines returned for being ‘corked’ that were anything book. My spouse, who is a winemaker for a different winery, had a new one just a couple weeks ago when a customer claimed a magnum of Blanc de Noir had a ‘leaky cork’… even though it opened up with full pressure. Sometimes you can’t make it up…
The same thing that makes retailers of every other product liable for defects in the product they sold and made a profit on?
I’m not sure if that’s a trick question or if I’m misunderstanding the point.