TCWC - First Class Customer Service

WINE TALK
1

A quick word of praise for The Chicago Wine Company (TCWC). Given that they are local, I order from them fairly often.

Long story short, I ordered a couple of wines that were ex-domaine and they were shot. I made an inquiry about a couple other bottles of older (20yo) wine and mentioned I was a bit concerned because of my prior experience. I did not ask for a refund and I ended up ordering the second wine.

I received an reply that said the wine had been shipped refrigerated the entire journey to the US and that they pulled a bottle of the first wine, agreed it was off. They ended up giving me my next order – which was actually a bit more than the first – for free.

Great, great customer service. I will continue ordering from them with no hesitation. A nice plus is that they deliver free to Chicago area wine storage facilities with no minimum order size. Top marks!

2

I bought a few bottles recently for local delivery. When they found out that they were for my wife, who was travelling on business, and it was as surprise to brighten her trip, they went out of their way to deliver the wine in person (no shipping) with some stems and a decanter (still in the box) they had leftover from an event.

Like Corey said, great service and great guys!

3

Terrific stories. I haven’t worked with them in decades. Time to change that

4

My only experience was quite the opposite.

Ordered a bottle. After placing the order, I noticed that the note and score provided was for a different wine altogether. Whatever, I blamed myself for being impulsive by not conducting my own further research and kept the order. A month later, I open the bottle and it was shot to hell; totally undrinkable. It was a top tier, 16 year old, Vin de Paille and should have been able to hold on another 35 years.

The following day, I email letting them know. No response. Wait several days. Email again, no response. Wait several days, email again. Finally, I get a response, offering to refund my shipping charges and totally absolving themselves from any responsibility for the wine itself, basically implying that I’m full of shit given the drinking window from RP and no other customer complaints.

I kindly turned down the offer to be reimbursed for shipping and never shopped there again.

5

Andrew I think its a question of how much they can push back on their seller. If it was a single bottle of something they probably brokered it from some private party. Their ex domaine / negociant stuff there is a better chance for them to do something about it. I assume most retailers are checking/tasting stuff that is supposedly to have been properly stored abroad anyways, so they are probably pissed that bad bottles snuck through.

If one is dabbling in older wines, some are going to be bad. Sometimes its not even understandable other than corks are variable.

6

Got some great deals and good service from TCWC. [cheers.gif]

7

I agree - but I think this does not cover the issue here. The company offered something with tasting notes and scores which did not represent the actual wine being sold - not a good thing indeed . . .

Cheers.

8

I’ve always been very happy with TCWC

9

I’d chalk that up to a mistake, unless a pattern emerged. In my experiences going back several years, they have always been very transparent about the wines on the website.

10

I’ve been very happy with them in the past going back to the mid 90s, I’ve never had a problem. Great people from what I’ve experienced.

JD

11

I’ve ordered off their site probably a dozen times while living in various other states and they’ve always been spot on service-wise. They’ve been prompt about high resolution pics on older secondary market bottles, and have been excellent about communicating when arranging shipping and details on pre-order wines. They’ve become one of my go-to shops for my older wine needs.

12

How do they compare to dogs?

13

Ahh, sorry I missed that nuance on the first read.

I guess I would try to figure out if a glitch is evidence of something systematic, or its a fluke, and the past isn’t going to be reflective of the future.

14

I didn’t notice any other cases of that happening. And to be clear, I don’t expect retailers to do anything when I have flawed bottles, however, I do make it a point to support the ones who do, even if in some cases, it costs me more to do so. What really bothered me about TCWC was that I had to email 3 times to get a response to my after I advised them of the bad bottle.