Last week I got the following email from Firewines after making a recent order. Just wondering if anyone knows what is up. I have yet to receive any refund but the email suggested it may happen this week. I emailed them back last week asking some questions but haven’t heard back. But it hasn’t been that long yet.
"I apologize for the delay in emailing you; we wanted to ensure we had a pretty clear grasp of things before we wrote. A team-member exploited a recent back-office change in our merchant service account to make an “unauthorized” withdrawal. This breach broke through several safeguards we had in place; creating costly overdraft fees between firewines banking and merchant accounts.
At this point the firewines.com website has been “paused;” this has allowed us to work from both ends in our audit and investigation. As we address refunding customers, I ask that you review your order below and reply confirming its accuracy? Throughout the remaining process, please use your firewines order number in the subject field; this makes tracking our communication with you easier. We hope to have this inconvenience wrapped up by the end of next week. Until then, please use email as the best method
of contacting me; I will reply as quickly as possible."
After reading their email, I think I have a pretty good grasp of what’s going on, but if I wanted clarification, I think I might call or email them. They’ve been pretty straightforward in their notification, this would lead me to think there’s a pretty fair chance you might continue to get clear answers from them.
Thanks Rob. To be clear, my intent is not to complain about how they are handling this unfortunate event, but to see if anyone has any other info about what’s going on. I did email them and will patiently await their response, but in the interim figured I’d see if anyone else knows anything. I hope this doesn’t go down the road of “how dare you post this…just email them yourself and don’t post shit on the internet.” We don’t need to overreact to a simple question
Ok, here’s what I know. A friend of mine has a cousin and this cousin has an uncle who works with a guy who once worked in a wine shop in Oregon. It wasn’t Fire Wines, but he did get fired from there eventually and it was a wine shop. That wine shop closed years ago, but before it closed, they had a huge going out of business sale. Although it wasn’t Fire Wines, some people did call it something like a fire sale. Of course, all analogies break down somewhere, but here’s where coincidences start to pile up like empty bottles at a Wine Berserker off-line; This guy says…oh, wait, my phone is ringing…
I must be missing something: Guy asks a simple question on, gee, A DISCUSSION FORUM, and gets a smart ass answer in response; I guess he violated some sort of internet protocol, maybe the one about asking questions to which you don’t already know the answer.
So it sounds like an insider has been making fraudulent transactions, and the merchant services account may have been suspended.
My best guess is that you are completely protected. The merchant sounds like a kindergartner swimming with sharks.
I’m incredibly old fashioned about buying wine. I really like the idea of walking in to a brick/mortar wine shop and seeing the wine…or atleast adequate assurance that there is some kind of physical inventory. Despite my own and hundreds of reports of positive experiences, there’s something mildly disconcerting about retailers selling wines that they don’t physically possess. That concern rises appreciably when the retailer sells the majority of their wines that way. If and when the music stops, somebody (and probably more than a few geeks) will be left with an investment in ambient air.
Does Firewines carry physical inventory? An appreciable percentage of what they sell?
My understanding from talking to another Portland retailer with a very similar business model is that they do not carry much inventory, but this is my first purchase from them so I could be wrong.
I’ve only ordered wines online, and the wines I ordered were in stock. I don’t believe they have a bricks & mortar wine store. Set up more like Sec Wines than Vinopolis (my two favorite retailers in Oregon).
Sec Wines in Portland seems to be very similar in model to Fire Wines. Neither has a store front and so are on-line orders only, and they seem to have very similar inventory (perhaps sourcing from the same distributors?).
I really couldn’t agree more. I guess I also don’t really like the undercutting of businesses that actually take the risk to hold inventory. It’s easy to charge less if you’re never risking anything.
Business models change all the time; I’m ok paying less for the digital version of the NY Times, for example, than for the actual physical version of the paper. I don’t see either example, the Times or the wine seller referenced above, as risk free enterprises.
Agreed that paying in advance for your subscription to the NY Times is not risk free. Chances are pretty good that they won’t “go under” tomorrow, or with a lot of your $s worth of paid for and undelivered news. The New York times has been around since 1851. Firewines?
News exists, but the New York times goes out and gets it, cultures it, formats it, turns it in to print, packages and distributes it, etc. The wines exist, but my understanding is that Firewines doesn’t add a thing to the quality of the wines, or provide added value. They simply take orders and transfer the wines through to the retail consumer. Seems a lot more like a newstand than the NY Times and not even a good newstand because they don’t have any newspapers. You have to order the paper (only the ones they offer), wait and then have them ship it to you. The result is that you’ll save a few bucks. The risks seem higher IMHO.
I did not get an email, but would say the following about Firewines:
I have ordered a handful of times from Firewines. On two occasions, when I ordered online, I got a phone call 2-3 days later informing me that the wine I’d ordered was out of stock. I don’t think that their inventory posted on the website is linked well to orders that come in.
They did, to their credit, apologize and on one occasion paid the shipping. Warren seems to be a decent fellow, and in spite of those hiccups, I will likely order from them again. Prices are very competitive, and their stock is fairly unique for the west coast.
I do not know how their business is set up, but seems to be similar to SEC.
I agree that Vinopolis is a great wine shop, and I enjoyed visiting their shop on Washington, but have not been since they’ve relocated.
![[scratch.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/4/42a16863a8714da3c1604419e3eb9206bb87aa50.gif "scratch"){kind=small}
So your dialogue devolved from your first post to this? Can I ask what the joke is that I don’t get?