Not sure how widespread the issue is, but considering the lack of effort and lack of communication with WineBid customer service I am taking the issue to the board.
Apparently, in a batch of shipments 3 weeks ago (in the heart of fall shipping season) winebid’s storage and shipping provider GSN (Global Storage Network) erroneously shipped packages with We Ship Express to those that requested their wines be shipped. They (We Ship Express) apparently mislabeled packages by a sorting error of 1…so somewhere along the line for example say box 20 got the label for either box 19 or box 21 as the count was off by 1.
I requested 2 cases be shipped, of which 1 came incorrectly with another person’s shipment. I immediately reached out and they sent me a new label to send on that person’s order to the right person. I have heard back once from them since and they cannot tell me anything about my wine, where it went, who has it, (yes, I get privacy issues), except the fact that “they’ll make it up to me”. What does that even mean? Will they also pay for the storage fees I had to incur because of the heat and not being able to ship my wines?
I am probably lucky, what about someone that bought maybe Rousseau, DRC, expensive Bordeaux or who knows what that is rare and expensive? I’d be beside myself, and I am definitely not buying from them going forward until they fix this issue. I get it’s a pain and like herding cats to ship like this, but at least be in communication with your client base and show some care about the situation, that is almost as important as getting out there to get the wines onto the right customers.
If you find yourself on the other end of these packages, please do the right thing and get the wine back to the right person. You are not screwing winebid if you keep it (We Ship Express is liable to WB), you are screwing the other fellow wine lover that was looking forward to some cool wines. Besides, from what I can tell, winebid is putting all of the cost for this onto GSN so they don’t care.
I received someone else’s shipment and a third person altogether received mine. I did get a call from a winebid rep who was polite and informative a couple days after the snafu. The mistake was as described, someone in the shipping facility was off by one sticking labels on boxes. I was told a total of 12 shipments were known to be affected and there were still some people they have not managed to hear back from. My box is in possession of one of those people. Here’s hoping they have just been busy and aren’t coincidentally people who received more expensive wine than they ordered. My box contained some hard-to-find burgundies and a 1989 Lafite. This is my first shipping error in over 20 years with Winebid and it’s hard not to see it calling into question the wisdom of spinning off the shipping operation. “You had one job!”
PS The Fed Ex man came to my house on Friday to pick up the box that wrongly came to me. I checked the shipping label he had with him and it is being rerouted directly to the correct recipient and not just sent back to winebid. So hopefully people affected will get their wines soon.
Personally I doubt I would have agreed to ship off the box without resolution of your missing box. Now you lost all your leverage. Waiting to “hear from” the guy who got way better wine than he ordered and has no legal requirement to send it back seems rather precarious.
Really? So Keith, an officer of the Court, should keep possession of goods to which he knows he has no legal or equitable entitlement and and knows who does?
I didn’t say keep them, I said wait for a resolution from WineBid. Based on his post here, he hasn’t gotten a sufficiently acceptable response, which is why he posted here.
From what I understand from a thread recently about receiving wine that you didn’t order, a company can’t force you to send it back. Something about alcohol licensing? I can’t find the thread now. Of course you are going to send the wine back eventually, I would just hold my leverage until I felt like the company gave me a satisfiable resolution.
I believe that only applies to an unsolicited order. Like say some random wine club sends you a case and says if you want any of the bottles, send payment or return it, otherwise we’ll bill you for it. If you ordered something/have a relationship and the merchant made an honest mistake by sending you the wrong order, they could ask for it back or for payment. If you refuse, they could choose to sue,
(not charge your CC) you for it. The question would be, is it worth the cost to do that?
In addition to what Jayson said, I don’t really view this as a question of leverage. This isn’t like trying to get a refund on a disputed order. There is a clear error, and I think all parties are in agreement that they want it fixed. It’s probably a matter of whether WineBid can reach the person who received Keith’s box and get them to send it to Keith. If they don’t, then WineBid will surely refund Keith. Keith returning the box to its rightful owner, or not, will not change the calculus.
I wish I could find the thread because I think it was a little more broad than that. e.g. a store accidentally sends you an extra case of wine you didn’t order or swaps the bottles and sends you something more expensive. I may be remembering incorrectly.
I’m not interested in any “leverage” that could be derived from keeping something that doesn’t belong to me, and I’m not dissatisfied with Winebid’s response either. What are they supposed to do, designate a street in a border town and demand everyone show up with their wine at high noon? I replied solely to contribute information to others who might be affected. Mistakes happen. The way to achieve resolution is to do what I did and help them fix the mistake. Winebid is an honest business that doesn’t need any leverage to do the right thing, and even if they did I am sure that holding on to the reputation of their brand would suffice.
What Keith said, but I just wish their response to me was better with some kind of details. I was one of the first to come forward with the issue and in no way would have done anything different for the same facts that Keith mentions. I have a wine business too and know the pain of herding cats and shipping them. I wanted to bring this to the board as some people get endless shipments this time of year into their professional storage in many cases and might have NO idea they got someone else’s wines. I have some Chave and Pouillon champagnes in here I was really looking forward to! Anyways, I hope this kind of post just helps all involved, winebid, GSN and all affected buyers!
I don’t purchase as much as I use to from WineBid and never worry about shipping since I live close, but I would not appreciate wines bought at auction getting a tour around the states even when its shipping season. Did they offer to refund the shipping fees or the auction fees? You shouldn’t bare the cost of their incompetence. They’ve been doing this long enough that they should have some customer service procedures in place on how to compensate the customer for their screwups. As was mentioned earlier, WineBid = GSN and if not that shouldn’t be the customer’s concern, its the partner they picked or created in this case.