Interesting. If you happen to run into a ‘ghost listing’ from us, please feel free to forward. I’ll make sure it’s not a glitch with our system.
+1
One thing I’m not clear about: Does Wine Searcher scrape prices from retailers who don’t pay to list their prices? I think they did that early on.
I thought that was still the case, with only paid listings getting delivered to non-paying W-S users, unless there is no paid listing of that wine, in which case you get the wines returned in the search anyway.
Not at all drastic.
A couple of things I’ve only really just noticed on the WS page based on this thread.
Standard Disclaimer on search results.
Although it’s free for merchants to list their stock on WS, there is some interesting language at the bottom of the Advice page…
Also it would seem that only merchants who pay for a Sponsorship actually get their stock list updated daily. It’s unclear how often non-sponsors get their stock lists updated.
I emailed W-S in January complaining about Arlequin (because those clowns had out-of-stock listings for almost every single Burg I was searching for) and they responded saying that something would be done. Clearly something was not done.
Hey Brian & Mark
Thanks for the support. Wine-Searcher removes offers - and entire stores with all of their offers - on a daily basis. But first we need to hear about an issue. So by all means contact us when you see a problem.
Ross
Hi Mike & Max.
I confirm that there’s been NO software policy change at Wine-Searcher regarding updates. Every day, we start picking up price lists from 5pm EST and then upload these to the website overnight so from the start of the new business day in the US new offers should be live. We are picking up more priceless on a daily basis than ever before. Stores like Benchmark that keep up-to-the minute inventory are a dream to deal with.
However, if the guys and gals on the shop floor, or the point-of-sale systems, don’t update the stock, then…
If you see a merchant that is deliberately posting a wine - or a spirit - with a view to bait and switch tactics, or showing misleading prices, then call them out. Or contact wine-searcher via secure email on the site. First thing we’ll do is query or challenge the store. And we do remove stores… daily.
Ross
I just want to say I appreciate wine searcher a lot. It is a great program. Of course there’s issues but there always be considering they are trying to get every wine retailers prices for our benefit and many of the wine retailers aren’t real time inventory. Maybe wine searcher adds a choice of only real time inventory retailers so people can’t find the problems but my guess is the same people would still want the whole list of retailers.
Ross - thanks for the reply. I have no doubt others have some examples of stores that seem to be doing it intentionally, but I’m pretty sure the ones I mentioned were not. And I just checked, and the specific erroneous listing (2008 Rinaldi Brunate-Lacoste) that I could recall at B-21 has now been corrected (after several days lag, though).
It can be a very good indicator provided one also has a solid general knowledge of the markets in general. I use wine-searcher pro quite a lot in my appraisal work when I am confronted with a cellar that has significant quantities of wines that are of some value, but not regularly traded at auction. In fact, now that the auction market is focused more heavily on the very high end, with many solid mid-range wines either not offered or offered in large mixed lots, I use wine-searcher more than I used to in past.
Results vary with any search, but generally speaking when you are looking up a wine that is well regarded and widely available, but not quite auction material, there is a band of pricing at the lower to middle end where major national retailers reside. Below that you will often listings from small local shops that may or may not be accurate (often they are accurate because the listing is for a store that does not ship), and at the top you will find the speculators, wine museums and shadow posters I mentioned in my earlier post.
For a consumer I think it is fairly simple- find the best price from someone who has the wine and will ship it to you (and for older wines, preferably a resource that is known for good storage.) For appraisal purposes, it is more complex- but I can tell you that after almost 20 years of doing wine appraisal as a side-line, I love having wine-searcher as a resource. Like any data source, it needs to be filtered to some extent with the expertise of human knowledge, but in this case it is a data source that never existed until it came along, and is still as good as it gets for what it has to offer.
PS- In deference to the wisdom of your observation, one of the biggest headaches appraisers and brokers deal with is the novice or aggressive seller who uses the highest WS price to determine value. I once ran across this for an estate where the seller had no market knowledge and was using the highest price without even considering bottle size. She thought her case of 1989 Lynch Bages was worth $3,000 a bottle based on an imperial (6L) bottle listing that was the highest WS price at the time. But still- that battle is with human interpretation vs WS itself.
I noticed something yesterday that could help explain some of the false listings. At PJ Wine here in NYC, there are some wines that are shown on the store’s website which are in fact are out of stock. But you only learn that when you try to add the wine to your cart. I don’t know how the inventory is provided to WS, but it looks to me like there’s some glitch in PJ’s system, and that might be carried over to WS.
On the other hand, Astor Wines’ site, which is cluttered with hundreds of wines that are displayed with “Out of Stock,” (there are so many that it’s a pain sometimes to search there), doesn’t seem to produce false hits on WS. Go figure. Perhaps because it doesn’t show prices for those wines, as PJ’s site does.
John - that’s something I’ve noticed too. Astor has all those pictures and no prices, PJs has stuff that’s just not there any more. They’ve not done a good job on the PJs website IMHO - it’s really hard to use, there’s too much noise on it, and the way they sort and list wines is a true PITA. They upgraded from some cheapo software a few years ago but I think they went even more cheapo on the upgrade.
As far as WS goes, it’s free, it’s useful, and I’m glad to have it. I can put up with some ghost wines from time to time, although if you’re trying to put together a tasting, it can be frustrating if you’re looking for rare wine.