Premox woes drove you to the hard stuff?
I think Andy disagreed with this definition of a fraudulent offering: “They sold a product they don’t have. When a retailer sells something they don’t [physically] have in hand, then (in my opinion) they are committing fraud. Even if they have an order for it with a wholesaler. They should wait for the delivery to occur before advertising and selling it.”
Oftentimes unrealistic, as SteveG noted.
There are a number of businesses (and a great many wine shops) that sell things they don’t have at hand. That isn’t fraudulent, so long as they aren’t misrepresenting that fact. But if you take someone’s money for a product, fail to deliver, and then refuse to refund the customer’s money, how is that not larcenous?
Alan, I’m curious as to what you tried to order? My best guess would be that it’s something you want, and they were the only ones listing it on Wine-Searcher.
I’m trying not to sound like a know-it-all, but unfortunately the retail side of the wine business continues to erode, and I don’t see an end in sight. These fly by night retailers THINK this is a good way to bring in business, when it’s quite the opposite. Worse, Wine-Searcher continues to take money from these outfits, and wait until the list of complaints against them stacks itself quite high. Furthermore, these pop web companies aren’t being handed rare, hard to get wines. No responsible wholesaler will do that. yourwinecellar.biz isn’t getting their hands on DRC, or Marcel Juge, or whatever wine you want to insert in here that takes some serious work to find. I think the #1 reason these websites pop up is because the retailer behind it isn’t well regarded, and they think hiding that and coming up with a different name will help them (FWIW, this is easily in the top 3 WORST names I’ve seen yet).
I’m really sorry you had to go through this. This is a lot of time and aggrevation no one needs.
Apparently buying wine futures from a store means the store is also committing fraud. As they are selling something that isn’t always a finished product yet and something they don’t own or have in possession. 
Andy, you’re better than this. A shop selling futures is by definition and explicitly selling the future right to wine, they tell you up front that they don’t have the wine to deliver, that the wine won’t be available for a matter of years, and any wine shop worth its salt explains the circumstances in which refunds are available. Does that sound anything remotely like what happened here?
Not delivering goods that have been paid for, absent a satisfactory explanation, seems absolutely larcenous, but I think Andy was separating the non-delivery from the initial offering before the goods are in hand, which he doesn’t consider fraud and is, in fact, rather common.
the place did not represent that they had no stock. Confirmed order, took money, promised delivery, didn’t deliver. Gave me a date for delivery when called on it, missed that date, gave no future date. Responded to emails that they would let me know when to expect product and never did. Then agreed to refund and didn’t. Said repeatedly they’d get back to me and got back either with automatic responses such as “we will respond soon” or with an apology, never a delivery promise. Finally said they had refunded the money but when I checked w cc company, they had not. So I initiated refund via cc company and posted here. I have the email trail.
So if you take out the fraud bit, it isn’t fraud. Got it.
Gee, sounds a lot like PC. This wasn’t by chance a “weekend special pricing”, was it? ![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
As SteveG mentioned. It is very common in retail to sell something not currently owned or in possession of by a retailer. They taken an order from a customer, order from their sources, and then, hopefully, deliver said item.
If they have taken the customers money with no intent to defraud, then there is no crime. As we all know, many wine stores (and all stores for that matter) use their distributors lists to get customers to order. Simply as there is no way a store can stock everything in a distributors portfolio. Sometimes the distributor is out, sometimes they tell the store who is now trying to get something for a customer they are out but should have some in very soon. Sometimes they can source it, after some time, sometimes they can source it the next day.
Being bad at communicating with a customer is not in and of itself fraud. Bad business practice, most likely. Fraudulent, no.
That said, if there is a history of taking people’s money and not delievering and not issuing refunds that COULD BE fraudulent. As fraud is a crime of intent, proving it is often very difficult.
In this case, one bad customer experience does not constitute fraud.
Here is the Google Maps street view of the address listed on their website: Google Maps
Nothing that remotely looks like a bricks and mortar wine shop on the block as far as I can see.
The address is listed for a company called APS Fulfillment:
APS Fulfillment is ready to serve you and available for a tour anytime – call us today to see for yourself how we can help grow your business by providing accurate and cost-effective fulfillment services along with integrated direct mail marketing production.
Not a lot to indicate they are a legit business.
Andy they do not have to have “a history” of failing to deliver. One instance of false advertising as described by Alan and a refusal to refund over an extended period of time is fraud.
Jeebus, just rent a backhoe, it would be quicker.
Andrew
Give it up and just admit for once you’re wrong. 4-6 weeks or so and what was described is not criminal fraud.
Let me put it this way. Please take your lawyer skills to a judge or prosecutor or even a defense attorney who does fraud cases and ask them if what is presented is fraud. I’ll bet you lunch they’d also say it’s not fraud. Poor customer service, yes.
Allow me to remind you…one needs INTENT. So far, from what had been stated, there is zero proof of that.
This sounds familiar. Seems like I heard some of this 5 years ago about a company in Berkeley. Only difference was a lot of people defending that business.
I looked at the site. Out of a sampling of 12 random wines only 2 seem to indicate they were in stock. Everything else had this disclaimer on it when you clicked the 2 day lead-time required to confirm availability Why? icon that is prominently displayed in bold. No idea if it was there when Alan’s order was placed or not.
Of the 96 listed Bourbon’s on their site, a random sampling showed only one that was not listed as needing a lead-time. Heck, even Jim Beam, Maker’s Mark, and Knob Creek’s basic bottles were not in stock. In other words, it’s pretty obvious they take an order then try to fill it from a supplier.
Why does this product require a lead-time?
This product is available from one of our suppliers, and from time to time we discover that items that were once available become out of stock when we try to order them. To be on the safe side, we prefer to confirm availability of these special order products within a timeframe we can control. If by chance we discover they are out of stock, please accept our apologies.
Obviously they dropped the ball in Alan’s case. But we’ve got only one other reference and that was a positive experience. If we start getting a lot of issues similar to Alan’s, then yes there MAY be something amiss. AGAIN, one bad customer service experience doesn’t equate to fraud.
There was one thing I saw that was odd. The site indicates it an on-line only store (“We are an online store only, so we do not accept any walk in”) based in Florida. Yet their terms state all litigation, federal or state, will be in Los Angeles, California. They can’t ship to Florida unless a waiver is signed (No indication what the waiver is for).
this is from one of their emails: “Payment will only be processed after verification of inventory. You will receive a confirmation e-mail upon payment processing.”
They did charge my card, never told me, never got the product and never shipped it, never refunded despite saying they had, then denied the ability to refund and told me to take it up with my credit card company. By charging my card, per their verbiage, they had confirmed inventory, no?
Perhaps their distributor showed it in stock and when it went to ship from them it wasn’t there?? That happens to retailers just like it does to consumers.
Of course that is speculation as we don’t know their side of the story.
Perhaps send them this thread link and see if they want to respond.
Sorry, but you can’t survive long with that model. We learned many years ago when one of our reps suggested we offer several wines on line because his company had plenty. Put it on the website. Got an order 4 days later for a case of the wine and when we called the rep to deliver it, it was sorry sold out, guess I should have called you. We don’t do that anymore. You can’t live in somebody else’s pocket and be successful. If you don’t have it, don’t offer it for sale.
Now knowing that and being an ex-cop, I can see how this stuff happens and realize it isn’t fraud because you aren’t “intentionally” offering something for sale that you “know” isn’t available. Unfortunately, many who use this model will get behind the 8 ball and fail or resort to criminal activity to survive.