Missing bottle in shipment…lesson to check shipments!

[Robert_M_yers]

Last year (spring I think) I was excited to receive an email that I had apparently forgotten about an order for 6 bottles 2015 Balthazar chaillot. Apparently I didn’t yet pay so they asked me to pay the ~$70 per if I wanted them. I was happy to have more and impressed they reached out.

After receiving I never opened the box and just put them in my passive underground cellar with some other stuff I’m waiting to inventory ect. Well recently I was looking for a certain bottle of champagne that I had also bought in a six pack and happened to open this box.

Immediately Obvious that the bottle was missing, yet more interesting that every label is very well stained. I’m assuming that the missing bottle leaked/broke and the shipper removed it and continued on with delivery.

As a one time truck loader for Fed Ex in college I always remember that notification was included with damaged packages, so I found that odd?

I’m really not expecting the retailer to replace this bottle and I haven’t even notified them, but I did maybe learn a lesson to at least take a quick look at recent deliveries!

Has anybody else had a surprise after a lengthy time before unboxing. I have a few I’m a little nervous about now

[Chris_Seiber]

My wife and I adopted our daughter from Kazakhstan, and the first of our two visits was 5 weeks long, dead of freezing winter, in a mid sized mostly industrial town. This was 2008, so no streaming, saving seasons of shows on an iPad, or any of that.

We were very constrained in bringing enough to live on for 5 weeks, but we allowed ourselves two sets of DVDs that I smartly bought used on eBay. The one season of Freaks and Geeks (absolutely brilliant, in case anyone hasn’t seen it), and the 18 episode season one of Arrested Development. I didn’t open the Arrested Development DVD case, and lo and behold, the second of the three DVDs was flat out missing.

So we only watched the first six episodes, and to this day, have never gotten around to resuming it. I should have looked.

[alan_weinberg]

I’ve heard of sealed cases of wine having only 11 bottles.

[Robert_M_yers]

My wife and I adopted our daughter from Kazakhstan, and the first of our two visits was 5 weeks long, dead of freezing winter, in a mid sized mostly industrial town. This was 2008, so no streaming, saving seasons of shows on an iPad, or any of that.

We were very constrained in bringing enough to live on for 5 weeks, but we allowed ourselves two sets of DVDs that I smartly bought used on eBay. The one season of Freaks and Geeks (absolutely brilliant, in case anyone hasn’t seen it), and the 18 episode season one of Arrested Development. I didn’t open the Arrested Development DVD case, and lo and behold, the second of the three DVDs was flat out missing.

So we only watched the first six episodes, and to this day, have never gotten around to resuming it. I should have looked.

Ok I see this is going to Asylum now

[Arv_R]

Sorry to hear about that. I’ve certainly opened shipments right away…and still had problems anyways. Although in that case, there’s a better chance for some recourse if one acts quickly.

[Robert_M_yers]

I’ve heard of sealed cases of wine having only 11 bottles.

X-ray?

[Mark_Golodetz]

For the last fifteen years or so I have had every delivery go to warehouse.Apart from avoiding the hassle of waiting around to sign for a delivery, it means that if this happens, there is an unbroken chain of custody and I never had access to the wine. Twice in those fifteen years, I have had missing bottles, and both times the retailer paid up. Not just missing wines; several times, somebody substituted a lesser wine into the delivery. Once a different vintage, once a totally different bottle.
So Robert’s missing bottle is rare, but it does happen, and cases, even unopened ones, should be checked.

[Jeff_P]

I’ve had mishaps on shipments. Subbing more of one wine and less of another but both times the retailer has made it right (one is pending)

[Al_Osterheld]

I had one shipment that was short a bottle, probably just a packing error. Retailer made good. I’ve had a few mistakes in shipments, some in my favor and some not. In one case, I received a case bought on futures of a fairly allocated wine, then received a second case shipped to me. Let them know and shipped it back.

-Al

[Wes_Barton]

I’ve heard of sealed cases of wine having only 11 bottles.

X-ray?

Schroedinger’s Dozen?

[JBrochu]

wine dot com kept shipping me Ramey Russian River instead of the Ritchie Vineyard I ordered. They sent a pickup call for the first shipment, and then sent me a second shipment of Russian River. They told me to keep that shipment, and finally got the order right on the 3rd try. I was fine with getting a little stash of both for my troubles.

[M.Kaplan]

.

[Robert_M_yers]

I bought a case of ‘82 Lynch Bages pre-release from a local LA shop and on arrival it went straight to storage. When I opened the box 10-15 years later, every bottle had a protruding cork. The whole case was cooked. Lesson learned.

Ouch. I hope that wasn’t the only case

How did you handle that? Did you open one after the other or hope that the next might be better on another night?

[Markus_S]

This is why the Canadians and Brits have Boxing Day, to uncover errors like this.

I received a box once that had a missing bottle and the other bottles having splash marks of wine with the bottles assembled willy-nilly wrapped in paper and not a standard shipping box, so evidently something happened en route. No note either, but the retailer credited the missing (broken) bottle after having me document it.

[alan_weinberg]

This is why the Canadians and Brits have Boxing Day, to uncover errors like this.

wouldn’t Unboxing Day make more sense?

[Steve_McL]

The two kinds of mishaps I have had were:

1. Case dropped, bottles broken in a distribution center, Fedex never sent the remaining bottles onward. Would not let me drive over to save any unbroken bottles, of which there surely were a few.
2. Shipper used UPS to send to my local Fedex Hold-At-Location shop address. Fedex won’t accept packages from UPS, so back they went across the country…

On a positive note: I had one East coast retailer send me twice the # of entry-level Burgs I’d ordered due to an inventory tracking error. Wish it had been some nice Chambolle, but hey…
When I mentioned it to them later the answer was “Eh, fugeddaboudit”.

[Michael_Martin]

I’ve heard of sealed cases of wine having only 11 bottles.

Having worked on a bottling line, I can tell you it happens. When you should end up with an even number of cases and at the end there is one lonely bottle left. You realize somewhere buried on a pallet is a case of 11.

[David_Bu3ker]

Solid case of 2001 Donnhoff Hermannshohle Auslese - ended up with two different AP numbers in the box. 9 of one and 3 of the other. Very different wines. Interesting if odd. Fun to do the comparison.

[Geoff_Weathersby]

I am amazed at the restraint of people waiting for months to a decade before opening. I’m like a kid at christmas every time the wine fairy (FedEx, GLS, UPS, whoever) comes to the house. Even if I’m not planning on drinking for years I still want to experience the unboxing right away! Of course I’m now trained like Pavlov’s dog and every time I hear a truck I look to see if it’s wine (or Amazon)…

[Michael_Martin]

I am amazed at the restraint of people waiting for months to a decade before opening. I’m like a kid at christmas every time the wine fairy (FedEx, GLS, UPS, whoever) comes to the house. Even if I’m not planning on drinking for years I still want to experience the unboxing right away! Of course I’m now trained like Pavlov’s dog and every time I hear a truck I look to see if it’s wine (or Amazon)…

I agree, aside from just checking bottle condition, I have also opened boxes to discover free schwag: cork screws, bottle stoppers, wine totes. To sorta quote Forest Gump, a case of wine is like a box a chocolates….