Over the past year, I have had three wineries substitute wines in my order. Two times it was a bottle changed from what was ordered to something else. Another time it was a change in vintage on the same wine. This isn’t a complaint, I liked the changes. I just felt it was odd that they were done without any communication before shipping. A reason was provided for one once it shipped but no reason provided for the other two. For all I know they were mistakes.
Are these outlier events or is this something that happens with some frequency. Before this last year, I had never experienced this so three in one year, while still small makes me ask.
For me, this is problematic. We are wine geeks. We care about vintage, we care about grape variety / blend, we care about terroir. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.
For a casual wine drinker, getting an ‘equally good’ wine instead may be absolutely fine, and if it’s a little more expensive than the one charged for, then many would be happy with that.
If I’ve ordered a chardonnay, then I don’t want to receive a Sauvignon Blanc. If I ordered a 2022 vintage, then chances are I factored that vintage into the decision making (maybe it’s a leaner year than the voluptuous 2023).
A sensible business asks whether substitution is acceptable at point of sale. Whilst I hate opt-outs (especially the usual small print hidden ones sat next to the ‘let us spam you’ opt-out), they at least protect the winery from legitimate requests for returns & refunds.
IMO substitution without asking me, is never acceptable, for any product (i.e. beyond just wine). When asked, I’m reasonably flexible, often having something I also wanted, but which didn’t make the final cut, or simply ‘another one of those is fine’.
I don’t know how US law is, but ours is very clear that if it’s not what the customer ordered, then they have every right to a refund and return shipping will be at the retailer’s cost. Hence why any business needs to either cover themselves via customer approval for substitution, or to get their customers’ approval when the stock issues arise.
I sympathize. I’ve had unannounced vintage changes happen on multiple occasions, buying both commercially and for personal consumption, but never a complete swap, and it’s disconcerting. The new wine may be just as good or even better than the former, but it’s the lack of communication and the apparent disregard for the importance of vintage (an elementary concept) that jangles. Further, there may be very specific reasons you decided to purchase the wine/vintage that you did of which the seller is completely unaware. Back in the day, when I was buying wine for restaurants, distributors sometimes switched vintages without telling me for wines on our lists that we were selling lots of and restocking on a weekly basis. I always politely intervened and re-explained (what we had talked about when the buying relationship was initiated) that yes, vintage does matter! Relationships are EVERYTHING, and they are built on trust. Good communciation is critical to maintaining that trust.
I don’t recall a packing slip on either of the two unexplained shipments. I checked the bottles against the order. If I had a packing slip, I would have at least some idea as to if they were mistakes or intentional.
Substituting without communicating is pretty ballsy on their part. What if you said “No thanks.”? Either they are out some wine or out some shipping costs.
I had this happen once. I queried the winery. It was a mistake. They shipped a replacement and told me to keep the one sent by accident. Have you asked the winery explicitly? They may have made mistakes and would be happy to rectify them.
No I haven’t and I have no intent to do so. As I stated in the OP, I am fine with what I got so nothing to address from my end. My prior experiences with different wineries is that the attempt to resolve issues is disproportionate to the issue itself. Wineries have other issues and they don’t need to be bothered trying to fix something that isn’t a problem.
Never had it happen to me but I’d probably just roll with it like you did, unless it was inferior to what i paid. I would assume that on occasion there may even be a trade up in value. But it definitely is not the norm.
I know that I (as a winery) and people who worked for me (as a retailer) have mis-picked wine on multiple occasions. Especially for vintages, it can be really easy to just grab a bottle from the wrong box (or perhaps a bottle was pulled out, not used, and then returned to the wrong box) and not notice that the number was slightly different on the label. Generally you’re trying to be quick when you’re packing orders. Ideally it would never happen–and I’ll say that when I was in retail the price often correlated with how much time you spent rechecking–but if you (or anyone else) got a different wine (in any way) from ordered I’d assume a mistake and reach out to the winery or shop. In my case, on the few times it’s happened I’ve been happy to just re-ship the bottles. It’s just part of the cost of doing business.
I might still ask out of curiosity, assuring them that you were fine with what you got and just wanted to know what happened. That would answer your original question, which the winery would be able to answer much better than anyone here could.
I have had miss-shipped items on rare occasion, but never were they portrayed as a substitution. I have had shops (not wineries) contact me when an item was out of stock/improperly described in the catalog. In those cases, substitution has sometimes been offered but always prior to sending me the shipment.
Subbing something in without consent, even if the sender thinks its a complimentary upgrade, seems like a commercial foul.
These were wineries. For retailers I’ve only once experience a substitution of a different wine without checking with me (it was an Italian online deli and they were feisty about defending their freedom to do that, so permanently lost my business, and fwiw that didn’t matter as they stopped trading a year or two later).
Is this another example of wineries rather taking their mailing list customers for granted? If they have waiting lists for people to join, in order to buy their wines, then it’s easy to see how they might be carefree about losing a few customers. If the customer isn’t happy about the substitution, then there are additional customers happy to take their place.
In days gone, waiting lists to get on the mailing list was talked about here and on ebob. Is that still common now?
As a winery, I can honestly say that I have had to substitute vintages in rare cases when I either ran out of a specific vintage before all orders were filled or certain wines were in deep library inventory and would have delayed shipments by quite some time. And we are talking just a handful of times.
In most cases, I have simply written the different vintage on the packing slip . . . but my guess is that I have most likely forgotten to do so at some time.
I would have no problem if a customer were to reach out with concerns and would have no problem making things right in their minds.
No. These wines were bought directly from the winery and not as a list release. Anyone could have purchased them then and anyone can purchase from them today.