But surely they must have contracts or at least options to buy these wines at a particular price. Otherwise they are simply gambling that they can make money on some potential spread.
These stores (at least Calvert Woodley and MacArthurs) buy the wine before they sell it. That is not a ponzi scheme or anything like this. Even when CW got into trouble with not being able to deliver on 1990 Bordeaux, it was not because they were gambling. It was because their source went bankrupt.
The allegations (I have no idea whether they are true or not) is that PC sells wines it has not yet purchased. I donât think that is a ponzi scheme either unless they are using my money to buy wine for other people. I do think it is riskier because if they guess wrong they could go out of business (depending on how big their wrong guess is). I have gotten delivered everything I have ordered from them but had very long delivery times on some prearrival wines. So, I now will only buy wines from them that are in stock, to reduce risk.
Itâs amazing how fast everyone here veered off from the actual question into the same old issuesâŚ
I personally donât care where people choose to shop. Each individual is open to take on whatever level of risk they are comfortable with. For myself, Iâd rather pay a slight premium to get my wine on time and to have some idea of where it has been. Even if choose not to shop with Premier Cru, I should be able to participate in a discussion of their practices, which seem to be unlike any other retailer.
Rick, in a way they didnât veer off of the question, they are suggesting that nefarious business models are the reason for the delay. That is how some appear to see this situation. It seems to me that they probably have some rather unique fulfillment and contractual arrangements with sources in Europe and they may sometimes simply not come through requiring an attempt to cover, and this causes occasional delays. Add to this the fact that they import themselves and it may simply take them longer to move the wines into their warehouse and out.
As for the same old issuesâŚ
I for one have had good luck with PC, and donât mind waiting for wines I wouldnât be drinking now anyway. The only concern is that the longer you wait the more chance there is that improper storage has occurred at some point, presumably before getting to their warehouse.
I also donât really buy the idea that they offer a price before they buy, because that would make for some foolish bets. I would assume, as mentioned above, that they at least have some form of option to guarantee a price. It seems that the idea being suggested is that they take money, invest it in merchandise or otherwise, only then making the purchase of the items for which they initially received those funds. But that seems to assume that they can either buy the wine for less later (presumably difficult or impossible in most circumstances) or else that the money they have made in the interem through other application of those funds is sufficient to cover any loss incurred by waiting. I just canât see that being a very successful model. It seems like it would, at the very least, fail quite often. And maybe it does but I havenât seen it. There are certainly cases here of wine never delivered or only delivered after unacceptably long waits. But it doesnât seem to happen as much as I would expect it to in a system like that described above. For my part, even if that is the system, I canât complain because my results have been positive. Two bottles cancelled out of hundreds. Prices tend to be the best by a lot.
In the instance of undelivered wine, I would assume that PC has an obligation to deliver. Standard legal practices dictate that they will have to cover contractual damages if they canât deliver in some set period of time. Absent an express provision granting them extra time to deliver it would probably be a âreasonableâ amount of time. If they fail to meet that delivery time then there should be an applicable damage. Of couse such hypotheticals do little to actually help the consumer in the average wine sales transaction. Its not like many people will really seek a legal remedy for the amounts of money that are normally at play here.
PCâs normal policy is to exact a penalty on funds returned, and I would question the legality of that policy based on what Iâve discussed above. They donât penalize on store credit though, and for most wine buyers here that is probably a sufficient alternative, rather than arguing the propriety of a âreshelvingâ fee. The only time any of this becomes an issue is if you really wanted the wine and would have to pay more to get it elsewhere or it canât be found at all. It seems that they would need to cover the difference in that instance, but I suspect that wouldnât happen too easily.
Actually, it was a container ship that split in half at sea which CW had the unfortunate luck of having the majority of their Bordeaux on it in containers that sank to the bottom of the sea. But they made good on every order.
So, âNo.â is your answer, then. ok.
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Yeah, but rumor isnât the same as knowledge. There are two possible reasons PC takes so long that I can seeâŚ
One, their importation business and practices around it. They have sources for the wines before they offer them for sale, but these sources impose a delay for whatever reason.
Two, theyâre advertising wines for sale that they donât have commitments for but believe that they can find on the European market.
But face it, the honest answer from any of US is âwe donât know.â People were, very logically, concerned in the 2008-9 timeframe because the economy was so uncertain. But aside from that the answerâs always been that the deliver the wines in good shape except in rare events but that you might end up waiting for a very long time for some bottles.
Personally, I donât buy from PC simply because I donât want to deal with the hassle of tracking whatâs outstanding or worrying (however needlessly) about where a wineâs been in between the time it was released and the time I would get it. Others make different choices. But the question is really not answerable and instead of speculating, people should just admit that.
Like MF Global??
The wait is significantly longer than 6-12 months longer than traditional sources. You would think a 2007 Fevre Chablis could be sourced somewhere by now. The best way to think of PC is a little like offsite storage: you pay them the money, they store your wine.
The ship breaking up was a different issue. I donât remember it affecting CW, though I could be wrong about that. Howardâs explanation for the 1990 Bordeaux problem was the one the owner offered to me and it also explained the period of about a year when their cut-out bin had astonishing deals. Because their source when bankrupt, they took position of its stock and liquidated it as a way of getting cash to cover what they owed. Theyâve kept the marketing technique of the cut-out bin, but the deals have never been the same.
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Since when has that been any reason for anyone here not to post? Accuse someone of running as fraud? Committing multiple felonies? Running a RICO enterprise? Why demand actual facts when baseless, fact-less, accusations are so very much more entertaining.
The very worst of this board comes out every time.
I think you are overreacting just a tad there, Neal. I donât think anyone has said that they think with absolute certainty that PC is engaging in fraudulent behaviour. No one here truly knows what goes on there, but the fact that people wait an extremely long time for the their wine, combined with their sometimes ridiculously low priced offerings do provide good reason for suspicion.
Read the rest of my post. I said none of those things so donât quote me and then imply that I did.
Andrew L - itâs over the line to accuse people of fraudulent behavior without either direct evidence or a VERY good set of circumstantial evidence. PC has a record of delivering - why some wines take so long is, simply, not known. The OP was asking if people knew (we donât) and for speculation on the mechanics (and damn few of us know enough about the Euro market and importing to be able to do that intelligently).
Exactly. and this is why, imo, any reasonable person reading the answers in this thread understands thereâs an implied âin my opinionâ or âI thinkâ directly before or after each answer herein given. Of course, not everyone is reasonable.
Sure there is, but even with that qualification I think accusations of fraud are over the line. Changing âTheyâre engaged in a ponzi schemeâ to âI think theyâre engaged in a ponzi schemeâ doesnât really soften the implications.
My point was simply that, aside from the couple of generic reasons I gave, NO ONE KNOWS. Instead of hitting Reply and pretending they do, people should have just skipped on. The OP isnât answerable except as a generic answer to a question like 'Why would it take more than a few months to get wine from Europe here especially when others get it here faster?"
Iâve imported small wuantities of wine via channels and one thing that people donât really get unless theyâve done that is that no one ships partial containers. For a large importer, this isnât an issue. For a smaller one thatâs assembling quantities over time youâll aggregate the wine in the EU and then ship full containers to save money. And THEN keep in mind that you donât want PC to ship your wine in, say, the summer. That means that April is likely the close of shipping season until October. If they miss the APril window that tacks on 6 months to the delivery time right there⌠unless all of you who care so much about your wine want it to cross the Atlantic and the continental US during summer.
That right there is one ignorant post, and offensive too.
Rick, I never accused PC of fraudulent behaviourâŚI posted a photo in jest, which I disclosed, as PC always gets everyone riled up. I said explicitly that I donât know what goes on at PC. Is there anything untruthful about the following two statements that I made?
(1) Premier Cru pending deliveries on cellartracker far exceed any other retailer
(2) There are people out there waiting 5+ years for delivery of certain items
Other than that, all Iâve said is that I wouldnât personally shop there, and that the above two facts are quite scary, and somewhat suspicious behaviour, given their pricing and the business practices of other retail units offering similar services.
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âRick, I never accused PC of fraudulent behaviourâŚthe above two facts are quite scary, and somewhat suspicious behaviourâ
Uh huh. No, you never directly accused them. You just implied it strongly with an inflammatory picture that had no context when you posted it and indirectly with the above verbiage. Yeah, you dodge the âdirectâ accusation but indirectly? Yeah, you do accuse them of something shady.
Oh and⌠youâre not the only person I was talking about.
Youâre entitled to your opinion, just as I am entitled to mine.
But Brian youâre NOT entitled to throw around accusations of a ponzi scheme without the slightest shred of evidence.