I know there were quite a few people who have been unhappy with WineBid. I bid on and won two cases of assorted wine back on Feb. 1. My preference is set to group two weeks’ of auctions and ground shipping. I get an email on Feb. 10 that the wine will be shipped at a cost of $25.29 per case and my wine shows up in my office on Feb. 12. I’m not really sure how people expect to improve on that efficiency. ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
I hope it goes that well for me, I should have my first order shipping soon
I think they’ve really cleaned up and stream lined their shipping. More flexible also.
I like WineBid a lot, but I feel I always have to ask them to ship my wine.
They’re very responsive and ship it out asap - but it’s annoying that I have to bug em at all.
i pick up my wine from their American Canyon facilty. i have been pleased so far.
have to be there next Weds and need to call today so thx for the reminder!
I’ve always found Winebid to be responsive to whatever I need. I’d just call them up and they are pretty good about making it right going forward.
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Absolutely true. I’ve been buying occasionally from them for about 3 years now and back 3 years ago there were a lot of problems with shipping. Much much better now and I have had no bad experiences in the last year or two.
they recently shipped wine to me from one of the coldest places in the country to one of the coldest places in the country. I asked why and they said I told them back in november it was ok to ship. what does that have to do with january? Their reply was they ship as long as the lows in their location and my location is always abovce 10 degrees. I sent them a link to weather.com that showed the day they shipped it went down to 8 in chicago and the next day in buffalo it went down to -3. No furhter responses from them. Think they need to do some research before sticking their policies in my face.
I guess us peoples in California don’t see that part of the equation. For me, UPS ground is next day delivery from them.
I don’t think the we understand how to read temperature readings that go under 50 degrees in California. [taunt.gif]
I’m a very happy Winebid customer. The issue that came up in the past few months for some people was how they handle shipping of summer purchases. They hold the wine until fall, which is great. No storage charges, no complaints from me. But if you accumulate bottles over summer, don’t expect them to consolidate them into efficient packages.
Last fall I thought I had two cases exactly coming to me. Instead, on the same day I got one case, one 8-pack, one single bottle package, with the other three bottles not getting into any of the shipments. (They came later in a 3-pack, naturally.) That seemed like a waste of packaging, and of course it added to may expense. Yes, these bottles all came from the same facility and shipped on the same day.
What I failed to understand (to be clear: MY failure) was that purchases made over a few months would not be consolidated into efficient packaging. I’ll admit that it makes sense from their end. They probably pack this stuff over time, wait until the weather cools, then ship everything. But I didn’t see that on the web site, and didn’t when I tried to figure out what happened after getting the multiple packages. I wish they were more clear about these things, so I could adjust my buying patterns.
Is it the end of the world? No. Do I have any other issues with Winebid? No. But this strikes me as something worth mentioning. If it were my business, I’d want to fix it, either by communicating more clearly or by changing packaging so things are done more efficiently from the customer’s perspective.
UPS ground get to me in 2 days from their Chicago facility. I guess I was lucky with the weather since it’s been fairly mild the last 2 weeks or so.
It was 37 here last night. I grew up in Northern Canada so I can understand the cold. No thanks.
Vincent I could be wrong but I understood that the consolidation of shipments policy was changed during the summer but purchases previous to a certain date were not consolidated and left as was. I think now they will consolidate for you no issue. I do know they have changed so you have the option of consolidating the current month and I believe I understood that would carry over the summer months as well.
I bought some stuff on Sunday and had it first thing Tuesday morning. Hard to beat that!
Wow. They must have had it in stock. Mine is 4-6 weeks…
Same with me. They have been great with me and their shipping has been very quick and efficient.
Chris,
They were consolidating by month prior to last summer. I had my account set that way. The problem was that if you bought 8 bottles in June, 12 bottles in July, 1 bottle in August, and 3 in September, they’d ship it all at the same time, but in 4 packages instead of 2. I don’t think they’ve resolved that, and as I wrote, if they keep doing it…fine, I guess. But just tell me so I know what to expect.
I’m compelled to say that my January purchases were all sent to me the Tuesday after the last January auction close. I haven’t checked, but they used to have a “shipping calendar” posted where auction purchases from a given period (two weeks or month) wouldn’t be shipped for at least two weeks. That seems to have changed, which is really nice. Again, Winebid is excellent. Just need to figure out what I’m going to do this summer…
I had the same issue at the end of the summer (I actually started the thread over on ebob), and my shipping preferences were set to a monthly basis before the summer. And like Vincent, the way that they handle summer consolidation is my only real gripe - I’ve had great customer service otherwise.