Whenever I receive notice of a pending GSO delivery, I call and request the 12-4 window rather than risk having them attempt delivery at 8am, when my office is usually not staffed. I’ve had good success with them, as I have with UPS and FedEx. Shipping to a commercial address seems to be less problematic for all 3 of them.
I’ve had mostly good experiences with GSO on the shipping end of things. They pick up at regular times, and if they’re going to be late, they always call to make sure we’ll still be there for the pick up. The customer service folks can also contact their drivers to find out their current ETA while I wait on hold. Try doing that with UPS or FedEx.
I’ve also had a few times when I’ve been away from the winery and GSO tried to deliver to me. They actually pick up the phone and call to reschedule the delivery. Sometimes low tech still works.
Two big advantages GSO provides:
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They get packages delivered in one day within CA, NV, and most of AZ at ground rates, where it takes UPS/Fed Ex two days (and a bunch of money if you want next day). If you are in Southern CA for instance, this is a huge benefit for Napa/Sonoma shipments. I’m always disappointed when Napa wineries don’t offer GSO as it means my wine is in transit an extra day at the same price.
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As noted above, you can actually call and get things done. The customer service in their offices is far superior to UPS/Fed Ex.
If you’re not in an area where delivery is cut from two days to one, there’s little reason to use them. Their drivers are not up to UPS/Fed Ex standards and they’ll sometimes fall short of delivering if they run into complications (gate access situations, etc.) The company I work for started using GSO mainly to save the transit day shipping to Northern CA and AZ clients. We’ll use them locally for residential shipments (cheaper) and we can waive the signature at the clients request, which is often helpful.
I use GSO for most of my order shipping within CA, NV and AZ and have found them to be pretty good. Shipping to a business address has proven to be more ‘consistent’ than to home addresses, but as others have pointed out, you can always call and they tend to be quite responsive.
One other note - I’ve found that some drivers are much better than others, and it helps to let the powers that be know if you’ve had a bad experience with a driver. GSO is pretty customer service - oriented and will address the issues.
On the flip side, they have been growing rapidly for the past few years, and this has caused some issues and delays which I’m told they are working on fixing quickly.
Cheers!
I have stopped using GSO. Complaints have risen about them from customers over the last couple of years. I had one customer become so angry at them that they said they never wanted to buy our wine again! (Yes, pretty extreme and irrational. Nevertheless…) Also, too many shipments end up taking two days instead of one with no explanation as to why, something I’ve experienced as a recipient several times. And finally, our shipping partner now gets orders to Southern California in one day with UPS so why use GSO?
But the last straw was about three weeks ago. I missed a GSO shipment because they tried to deliver to my winery at 7:49 PM, even though the shipping label indicated they were delivering to a business. I called the next day and was told I could scheduled it for delivery between 8 AM and 12 PM the following day or I could pick it up today at their customer service center between 8 AM and 2 PM. I chose pickup. I drove to the service center but it was completely locked up with a poorly written note on the door saying someone would be back some time before 2 PM. Not real helpful. Called the customer service center again. They apologized and said they would call me when the center was open. Received a call a few hours later that someone was now there and would be there until 2 PM. Drove back and arrived at 1 PM to find the center still locked and the note still on the door. That was it for me. I do not want customers receiving shipments from me to experience anything like this.
We have had problems at our old residence with GSO more than once. The part that gets me is the unmarked van that shows up in the evening with someone in plain clothes and a box. Our new address has been peasant a GSO marked van with a driver that called me and waited 10 minutes for me to return home!
GSO makes deliveries to my commercial wine storage facility, and as far as I can tell, there’s never been a significant problem with their deliveries to that location. I get the emails that the shipments are on their way, and then I get an email that the packages have been delivered the next day. So far, so good…
Bruce
Feedback from our clients has been generally favorable. It does seem that satisfaction depends heavily upon the strength of your local driver. That said, last year around the holidays we experienced a TON of delays. It appeared that GSO just had too much business and couldn’t keep up with the demand. We will monitor this again closely this year and as soon as we notice any issues, we’ll switch over to FedEx until after the holiday rush.
I have been to their delivery hub in Irvine. If anyone thinks their delivery is climate controlled the whole way, ding ding ding ding, no!
I can’t speak for shipments coming in, but they leave the warehouse in a variety of vehicles: pick-up trucks, old Toyotas, whatever. The drivers would appear to be private contractors, kinda like the kid who delivers pizza.
GSO is pathetic. I have already posted on this before. On one occasion they just left the package in the hallway.
GSO is still garbage. They’ve rescheduled my Spottswoode shipment two days in a row without explanation. The call center drone muttered something about “vehicle problems”. Pure idiocy that comes from farming out deliveries to the lowest-wage workers possible with zero quality control.
Fed Ex will divert packages to our local store which happens to be open very late. Much easier than having to be at home where the package is being delivered.
Definitely a huge factor. Ours aren’t great (we ship GSO) but they get the job done. Generally positive feedback from our clients, and more than a few that prefer GSO because they hate their UPS driver!
Rhys sent notice yesterday of a delivery today, which was made by 11am, so no problems here.
I think I’ve only used them once to deliver to public wine storage and it was a problem.
My impression is you have to give them the details of when to deliver so they nail it first attempt. If that doesn’t work out there is a good chance they’ll run off the rails. They don’t seem to do well with deviations from the initial plan.