Now that we all face the nightmare of shipping again after BD, I just wanted to take a little unofficial poll and gauge:
How long would you be willing to wait for a wine shipment if it was guaranteed to be temperature controlled all the way?
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Most of the time it doesnāt matter - considering I buy most of my wine on pre-order and wait months or even years to receive it.
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If you need a mule to Anchorage, I go there for work all the time 
Good to know! I have one customer in Anchorage that always drop ships in Seattle to save money.
But listen to this - my buddy is a captain on a Global Express based outta Van Nuys that goes back to Stockholm regularly. Just before Xmas I sent a whole sampler pack on it back to my designer (who lives there). Pretty cool - the bottles went first class and got there in about 9.5hrs! He was pretty impressed.
Haha and you complain how expensive Fedex is! 
One day Iāll tell the story of the most expensive six-pack of beer in the world. Involves a 747
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I think a lot of us would say we donāt care when it ships since we have no place to put it anyway
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They changed the laws up here and it goes into effect in 2024. Unless the legislature writes in an exemption for smaller companies this session Iām probably going to have to get offsite in Seattle and have most everything shipped there and just pick it up a case or two at a time when Iām in town.
Until then, the weather aligns so rarely between California and Alaska that I already try to get most of my shipping in two 6 week windows in March/April and October/November. Iād much rather wait for shipment than have it delivered when itās below zero or when itās 80+ down south.
Iām on track to spend about $10K in shipping for this BD release. And over the course of the year, I spend easily $40K with FedEx, maybe even a bit more. In fact, theyāve assigned me a dedicated customer rep because Iām such a good customer! 
When my shipping costs get over $50-60K/year, which they will soon, I canāt help but come back and flirt with the idea of a full time employee and a temperature controlled Sprinter van and having deliveries done in-house. It would solve so many problems. Not only the potential of saving money if volume increases, but ancillary stuff like:
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Sales benefits. What increases in sales can be achieved when you can ship in any temperature?
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Savings on the packing - now you could ship in the original case, or just a reinforced one, not have to use shippers and big bulky cardboard boxes only designed for the single purpose of handling abuse by FedEx/UPS.
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Not to mention the environmental benefits and time sucky aspect of not having to ship bulky shippers to your warehouse to repack wine into. They already come in boxes - use those.
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And what is the ancillary and retentive benefit of not having customers get disappointed because you shipped too cold/too hot?
Maybe one dayā¦ 
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Are you enrolled in the retail wine shipper program with FedEx? Our amazing and wonderful, definitely incredibly responsive, FedEx rep only brought this program to our attention years and years after shipping daily with FedEx. Could have saved thousands upon thousands on shipping costs had this been brought to our attention when we initially enrolled as a certified alcohol shipper with them.
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Littorai used to deliver wine to customers in northern California via a guy with a van, wine in cases rather than shippers.
-Al
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Iām not sure I am! Iāll ask my rep about it!
Iāve found it necessary to just stick with saying ārepresentativeā and definitely do not give it a tracking number. Takes at least 3 or 4 times before it finally says āconnecting you with a representative.ā The bot is useless.
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it literally just hangs up on me instead of connecting to a rep.
on top of that, the chat with UPS feature on the website literally goes away as soon as someone logs in. want to reroute a package through the chat feature with your UPS account? gotta log in for that. once you log in? good luck finding the chat feature!
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Just got a bill for $145.44 to ship 20 bottles cross country via FedEx ground. 
Last year this same place was $58.21 for a case, so they were already ridiculously expensive, but now moreso!
Thankfully all of the other retailers so far this fall have been much more reasonable.
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Thatās a ridiculous price for FedEx Ground. Thatās our 2-day shipping price pretty much, I wonder what changed with their rates from last year?
Shipped out two 6 packs of wine to two different clients in France on the 24th of April with the International Priority service at FedEx. Arrives in FR on the 26th with a clearance delay, which was expected.
This clears customs on the 29th and says out for delivery on the 30th. The tracking on both packages say āpackage not delivered/not attempted.ā They both donāt end up getting delivered until May 5th.
Still fighting to try and get a refund for a service failure on these to this day. The latest response I had from FedEx was because of the clearance delay, after a discrepancy such as that the packages requires ācareful assessment and planning by our logistics teamā that could cause delivery to be delayed 
I had a fun experience with a retailer and ups today (not ups fault this time)
I ordered a nice well-priced bottle from a retailer that apparently ships, it said delivery within 2-4 days, great, weather is nice and cool. 8 days later it hadnāt shipped so I called them and they said theyād talk to the shipping manager and get back to me. It shipped Monday to arrive today, the hottest day of the year. Also, it was shipped at the ups store, like the āshipping managerā just took the package to the ups store and bought a label there. Luckily I was able to redirect to the ups store and intercept it this morning at 9 am while it was still in the 60s. Itās 90 now.
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I was to receive 6 cases from Garagiste in May. UPS delivered four, broke one, and lost another.
Today I received an email saying I was getting a delivery from Garagiste and the tracking dated back to the lost case. I just received that delivery and in the box was a gallon of dishwashing liquid.
The label said it had to be signed for by someone over 21 and the contents weighed 39 pounds same as a case of wine. The return address was a warehouse in New York.
As an aside the Garagiste was quick to resolve the original snafu.
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What vintage?
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