Wine Futures and chargebacks

I recently bought some La Mission 2019 on line from Wallys, who then were not able to process he order. Apparently as far as futures are concerned (not wines already at the store) they were not taking Amex. Something to do with charge backs, although I didn’t understand what the problem was. I doubt very much whether the store is in trouble and will go under in a couple of years as they have serious money backing them. Anybody know what is going on?

LMHB? Must be nice.

My only guess here is that they do not want to eat the AMEX transaction fee on a charge back should there be tariffs and a customer decide to get their money refunded.

On a charge back they are tagged twice, once for processing the initial purchase and then again on the charge back.

How did they contact you about that? I’ve made several futures purchases from them this campaign, including a 750 and 1.5L LMHB, but all show as “processing” and none have been confirmed by email. I’ve sent them a couple notes with no response after a week or more, which is a little unnerving. I wonder if they ended up oversubscribed on LMHB and you got squeezed.

I thought on a processing of a customer refund, the transaction cost is also refunded to the merchant. I think of a “charge back” as where a customer disputes a charge, and the issuing bank “charges back” the amount to the merchant (in effect a forced refund) but its’ been a long time since I’ve been involved in the credit card industry so I could be mistaken.

Just asked about this in my office. We are charged a fee both on the initial transaction (swipe) and the “refund” or charge back.

You had better call them. I got an e mail yesterday saying they could not process the order because of the Amex. If you want LMHB, they are down to twelve bottles or were when I talked to them.

Interesting the magnums were cheaper than the equivalent bottles.

Amex was the card company that got hit the hardest on charge backs from Premier Cru. They may well have simply put a global ban on accepting futures orders for wine shops???

I don’t think so. I have bought from three different stores in addition to Wallys and they have all accepted Amex

Thanks for the correction. Sounds like no matter what happens, V&MC get their piece. Crazy.

I always use AMEX for futures, safest card in case of a bankruptcy or business closing prior to delivery.

I got the same email from Wally’s and switched over to MC. But if you have Amex connnected to your Paypal account and pay via Paypal, shouldn’t that work too?

Most likely, but then if you have a situation needing a chargeback, you’re going to be dealing with PayPal vs Vendor instead of Amex vs. Vendor.

I don’t have experience in either of those cases, but my instinct would be to have Amex at my back rather than a fintech.

Better yet, just avoid futures, since I can’t understand the risk reward upside nowadays. While not as experienced as Mark and others, I have bought them since the 1998 campaign, so don’t think I’m a naif in the woods…

I believe in the case of a refund, the merchant is typically refunded the “interchange” fees (which go to the card-issuing bank) from the initial transaction, but not the (much smaller) processing fee charged by the merchant’s processor in connection with the transaction. In addition, I believe the merchant’s processor will also charge a (similarly small) fee to process the “refund” transaction. Ultimately, it is a “net positive” to the merchant when processing a refund, even though it doesn’t get a refund of its initial processing fee and even after it pays the additional fee to process the refund, because the interchange fee that IS refunded, is so much larger than the processing fees charged by the merchant’s processor. All that said, different merchant processors do things differently…and some may not give any refund at all (even though THEY get a refund of the interchange fee from the card-issuing banks via Visa or MC or Amex).