Rant: Unprompted vintage substitution

I ordered 2016 Alessandria Barolo Monvigliero via Vivino (they had a promotion) and no vintage substitution was requested. Today I receive the 2015s with no prior contact or acknowledgment from the store except a note in the package saying that they had replaced my bottles with 2015s because the 2016s were OOS (listed as 9 bottles in-stock on their website so it wasn’t a Vivino bug as to why the 2016 was showing in-stock).

Why would any self-respecting wine store think this is ok? Even if you have no clue as to the relative desirability of various vintages, the 2016 is listed at 99.99 on their website versus 84.99. You don’t just substitute with a cheaper/inferior vintage without any contact or recourse. What a waste of time and resources for everyone involved. Be better, Black Bear wines.

UPDATE:

Vivino sent me the return shipping label from the store, wines were returned and I was refunded to my credit card. Vivino then returned to me a $50 coupon to replace the original one, but this time with no minimum, so essentially free $50 coupon. It was annoying that this was an issue, but resolved to my satisfaction.

Yep. Totally agree. Not ok. And I don’t understand what’s involved in the thinking that it would be ok.
Let’s give the customer something he didn’t ask for with no notification or discussion. And it’s a $100 bottle of wine. LOL. Embarrassing.

Does the Viv Vino ordering system pass those details like ‘no substitutions’ onto the fulfillment merchant?

And yes its pretty cheeky to switch in an $85 wine for a $100 wine.

Take a picture, send it to them, and let them know you’re fine with doing a chargeback, and they can send a shipping label to get their swill back.

A small merchant will likely fight an $800ish chargeback but you’ve got the facts on your side.

Rant worthy, agreed.

Yeah, that is very poor. Very. I would simply do what was suggested above and ask for refund & shipping label.

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The next best thing is when they make you open an account, take you payment and then you find out they don’t have you wine. This has happened to me more than once. By the time I found that I wasn’t getting what I ordered and paid for, it was sold out everywhere.

Completely agree - this is lousy. I could see if you had bought the 2015 for $85, they were out, and they gave you the 2016 for the price of the 2015.

Every reputable retainer that I’ve dealt with has always contacted me to ask if a vintage substitution is okay when the listed wine is sol out or they listed the wrong vintage.

Have you contacted them and requested a refund yet? Please keep us posted.

Cheers.

Oh I called as soon as I opened my shipment, but the store manager wouldn’t talk to me on the phone and had the salesperson instead direct me to Vivino for any order issues rolleyes.

I would take it up with both - that sucks . . . and where is Black Bear Wines located?

Cheers

Rant is warranted.

I just had something similar happen to me today from a well-known retailer I have been a customer at for years. Bought several bottles of 2019 Prum Auslese online, and definitely did not click the option for vintage substitution upon checkout. Picked up the bottles today and half were 2018 and half were 2019. I have no problem drinking 2018 in general, but I specifically wanted only 2019 here. My email confirm said they would all be 2019.

I guess I can appreciate how an online inventory system might not be real time to the second (though not sure why it can’t) and mistakes happen, but at least let me know instead of giving me the wrong bottles with no warning. I found out when I got home and opened these up. Called and turns out they do not have the quantity of 2019s I ordered online so I was given vintage substitution without notice.

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Definitely not acceptable. Even less acceptable is making it difficult to exchange or get credit. Vivino seems to be a crappy company anyway; one poor experience when they seemed so hard sell, I didn’t bother ordering.

Yeah, not ok. Hopefully it was an honest mistake and not intentional.
I wonder how many ordering a wine of this caliber wouldn’t care about the substitution. We’re all biased as we’re members here, but it can’t be many can it?!

im not sure how that could be an honest mistake if there was a note about it and everything.



I agree with everyone, this is not cool. especially if there was an option to disallow vintage subs when ordering and it was marked.


I will say though, this is exactly why I would never order through Vivino. same reason I will never again book a site through a third party website like Expedia after the initial rounds of COVID cancellations. its a responsibility nightmare to get anything taken care of if something goes wrong.

Right! Oops, glossed over that part.

I could just maybe imagine if someone was ordering a wine of industrial wine that probably doesn’t vary much by vintage and where the buyer likely doesn’t really care. You got a case of 19 Apothic instead of 18 Apothic. I still think it’s a bad practice, but I could maybe see it there.

People buying $100 Barolo, though, no way in hell.

But hey the leaders of Vivino have the bandwidth to make Netflix documentaries of how ‘disruptive’ they are, rather than work on operational excellence.

How are people going to know how disruptive they are if they don’t put those marketing dollars to use?

Maybe I am naïve, but I’d pulled the wrong vintage of wines from my cellar and opened them. I assume the same could happen when boxing up a shipment. That said, they should quickly make things right.

TW

Except they wrote a note acknowledging the change.

I’d love an update on this situation, wondering if Vivino made it right.