You never answered my question about what you were going to DO with all that Chartreuse? It’s rather high in alcohol, and I find a little goes a l-o-n-g ways. I noticed you were talking about “percentages” of your order, why not just say how many bottles you were buying?
Le François Annibal d’Estrées would roll over in his grave about this thread.
Are you sure? I think they like Chambers Street there also.
I assumed that was a joke.
Can one take a retainer in Rougeard? Seems like an interesting idea. Doubt my partners would like it though.
Mr. Wang, I agree with those who say your later posts show good humor. Welcome!
Is the following possible?
Chambers Street set aside the customer orders. Chambers Street then found out some of the wines were fake. Chambers Street removed the fake ones. Unfortunately most of your pile was fake. Chambers Street doesn’t want to broadcast that they get fake wines sometimes. They admitted it to you but don’t want to air it out for the world. Chambers failed to take the remaining good bottles and throw them in a pile and reallocate by percentage. You think they should have done that. I think that’s prohibitively complicated. You were stuck with your original bundle and if most of yours were fake, you lost more bottles than someone with mostly good bottles in his/her pile.
I see nothing in your facts making this scenario unlikely. Under this scenario Chambers seems blameless to me yet you are justified in being frustrated and suspecting it was unfair. Chambers doesn’t want to talk any more about how they got burned with fake bottles so you won’t get more of an explanation. Meanwhile Chambers might be fantasizing now that in your case they had gone ahead and sold you the fake bottles. You would be happy for a while and they wouldn’t be criticized. But instead they did the right thing.
For a small lot of something rare and esoteric it makes more sense to research your client base and identify the handful of people to offer the bottles to in a private email. Sending to a large audience is likely to blow up in your face when you can’t fulfill.
I totally agree. All they are doing is alienating potential customers. They did it the lazy way.
I would be curious to know whether or not the OP’s credit card was charged. CWS typically issues an order acknowledgement which clearly states that the order is not finalized until the invoice (CC is charged) is issued.
I order from Chambers all of the time. No issue here. Rant not justified. OP should find a different place to rant.
Are you customers of Chambers Street’s? It sounds like you aren’t and are just speculating, because these offerings are in fact one of the things that endears people to the store. (That and the guarantee on every old bottle.)
People understand that they sell out quickly and that you have to move very fast to get your choices. You think we’d rather not receive them??
Hi, yes ccard was charged on 3/18/16.
One would have to be a moron to want to receive an offer on something which there was no chance of obtaining.
Great to hear you have no issues there, if everyone had issues there then where would all the bottles go? Sorry for troubling you with the rant, I will find a diff place to rant next time.
Why not? People did it with PC for years.
I am afraid that if your taste runs to the interesting and esoteric, the one store you should cultivate is CSW. In the end, the loss is yours, and as you have seen by the huge number of flaming posts aimed at you that they have done right for many people on this board.
I happen to love the store, enjoy Jamie who is a thorough gentleman, and over the years, I have purchased a ton of ancient Barolos from them. What is remarkable is the quality of the wines, and the care they take in selecting them. As I said, the rant has backfired, and worse still, you have lost a lot more as you can no longer source from one of the best wine stores in the country
Thanks for your post! Whether I post here or not CSW wasn’t going to give me any bottles in either case. There are support from both side of the story here. I am glad you have a relationship there with Jamie, should land you to many more great bottles in the future!
I disagree with most of your post, but especially this part. the merchant admitted they had a large number of fakes in the bottles they offered, so that would seem to fly in the face of “the care they take in selecting them.” Mr Wang, I believe your complaints to be justified, and I am sympathetic to them. I would be very disappointed myself.
Interesting. I’ve gotten emails from HDH and CellaRaiders with VERY limited quantities of popular bottles, called them within minutes or even tried to order on-line, and most times struck out. That’s part of the game, and a retailer is trying to reach the largest audience possible. There is a small chance, not no chance of obtaining it.
who knows mark, what if he was privately emailing the rest of his coworkers and ridiculing you behind your back?
There are also plenty of very legitimate businesses that have had major customer service errors even though 99% of the other customer interactions have been awesome.