Does anyone know why GSO/GLS withholds the identity of the shipper from the recipient? When I get notifications, unless the winery also sends me an email saying they’ve sent me something, I never know where the package is coming from. It’s not the most annoying thing in the world, but it’s a weird thing to keep private.
As to why I don’t ask GLS -their website “Contact Us” page won’t let me make any inquiries and their “chat” feature also doesn’t work, likely because of the TWELVE trackers there I had to block. They really really really want to sell their customers’ info to people, I guess.
I just got a GLS delivery on Wednesday night. When I got the email notice, there was no mention of the shipper. The delivery showed up at 8:30 pm and it turned out to be from Tercero. One of BD orders
Yeah, I am wondering if this is from Campesino or another BD vendor.
Another thing I just noticed: there is nowhere in the notifications that says what address it’s going to. So it might be going to my offsite, to my house or to the wrong address.
They are horrible. We take great pride in our customer service and using them just doesn’t fit that goal. Surprised wineries are still using them as their pricing isn’t that much lower than most.
FedEx ground is cheaper in almost all scenarios now and given the significant delta in customer service, I rarely use GSO/GLS anymore. Only if I have to get something to SoCal tomorrow at this point - and that is still dependent upon them actually picking up when scheduled.
I continue to use them as they are a cost effective and efficient way to ship wines within their areas. I know my pick up driver well and it’s very very convenient. Costing is getting similar to FedEx, but in my case in most cases, it is still cheaper.
My challenge is that when they are on, they are great. When they are off, their customer service leaves a lot to be desired.
I have a few customers who refused to have me ship using them, but in most cases, it works out great.
Last year they delivered two cases to the wrong address. Driver faked the signature. No local contact to reach and they had no idea where it was left. They had a picture of it on the porch but without the address. Luckily, the owner of the house went over and beyond and delivered the wine to me later after no one came back to get it.
I’ve read a lot of complaints about them over the years, but from a consumer POV, they’ve always been great in my experience. I loved their delivery service when I was in CA, since they would deliver just the case of wine - no additional packaging, no styro for me to deal with, no extra cardboard. Even here in Oregon they’ve been pretty good on the few deliveries I’ve gotten from them.
I’ve gotten two recent deliveries from which oddly showed up at nearly the exact time of day (12:00 noon and 12:01 pm] and both times the driver just rang the bell, left the wine and didn’t ask for a signature.
I did get a response from using the Contact Us function on their website (last month). But, the response was “we’re looking into it and will get back to you”. Never did hear from them again, though.
As Eric and Larry wrote, when all goes well (which is most of the time), they can be amazing. When something goes wrong, can be quite frustrating.
They used to send an initial email that had both the originator and delivery address (as recently as 2022), but don’t seem to currently.
I’m one of the unhappy consumers who have had too many issues with them. Made me stop buying from wineries that didn’t have other options. That said, this was all 8+ years ago and from what I hear they are even worse now.
I’ve had a couple of weird experiences with them, but mostly fine. I do appreciate that usually they will leave boxes without a signature. I don’t have to worry about being around to receive the box…
My impression - and this is from a few years ago, so it might be different now - is that the various cogs of GSO/GLS operate pretty independently, and so there is variation in the efficiency of drivers, warehouses, etc. But back in 2013 or so, when I lived in Inverness, a tiny town about 30 minutes away from the rest of civilization, it was effectively impossible to get my wine delivered. I could never prove why they would just say they’d tried and I wasn’t home, but I wondered if it was because they didn’t want to make the trip. But when I switched to having an offsite in San Francisco, the same thing happened. They would often show up before or after the offsite’s posted business hours, or say they’d shown up and no one was there. Once I had to visit their Marin warehouse, and it was woefully inadequate - the back door had been shattered and was duct-taped back together, and there were visible cases of wine just hanging out. I couldn’t get in, because even though the main office swore they were open, no one was there for the day.
I haven’t had so many problems in Los Angeles - the weird thing remains their notification system, as per my OP.
I 100% agree. I have had no problem ever with GSO/GLS in Las Vegas. Several issues with FedEx and UPS, but nothing major though (knock on wood).Cheers!
