amen - welcome, paul.
you sure?
Yup
all on pre-arrival?
Speculation Alert
Poking around, I came across an article about PC from 2011:
After a five-year search for another Bay Area location, owners John Fox and Hector Ortega decided to move their business from a warehouse-like shop near the freeway in Emeryville to a more residential and customer-friendly spot at University and San Pablo avenues, General Manager Paul Costigan said.
âWe wanted to re-establish our retail presence,â he said. âBerkeley is a healthy, wine-loving community, and the company has been dedicated to the East Bay for 30 years.â
According to Michael Glasby, the storeâs senior sales representative who has been with the company since the store opened in Oakland in 1996, the business was sustained for many years by its online sales to wine collectors. The shop is now looking to transition back to face-to-face customer service and wine education, Ortega said.
http://archive.dailycal.org/article.php?id=112167
Just a hunch, but my guess is that things were heading south in the futures game at least as early as 2011 when they decided to move into their retail location. If things were firing on all cylinders, why change a business strategy thatâs making money (yes, I know people make bad business decisions all the time), especially when it is so capital intensive?
Los Vinos Hermanos
Wow, I should start buying stocks with AMEX!
anyone else recall PC sending out email offers with specific offers for those using amex cards?
Take one down pass it around 158 different wines availableâŚ
Most expensive $99.99
krohn 20 year is gone post andyâs note the other day
And PC didnât even send me a thank you note 
LOL
iâm not a lawyer, but iâve been an accounting consultant that dealt with both credit card processers and separately several entities in bankruptcy.
When you dispute or âcharge backâ a charge on your credit card, the person that pays for it is the merchant, UNLESS the merchant has no funds, at which point the credit card processor pays for it. Itâs not actually amex, visa, or MC that pays, itâs the merchant. This may be a regional bank, or it might be someone like first data. That entity then has a claim against the merchant with no cash. These are also the guys that are supposed to police the merchant to make sure no fraud is occuring. This is probably by FAR your best bet here. If you do get a check out of these guys that clears, itâs probably a âpreferential paymentâ and youâd have to give it back. Iâve actually seen cases where merchants went bankrupt and were telling people that called to make a claim so they could get their money back as the merchant had no cashâŚall the while they knew the processor was going to have to eat it (which they did).
If they owe you money, you fall into the âunsecured creditorâ class of the bankruptcy proceeding and you effectively get nothing until the secured creditors are paid. This seems like a case where nobody gets paid because there donât seem to be assets. There may be a personal claim that can be made against the owners as well where there are more assets, but Iâd be shocked if rank and file customers get much of anything here above pennies on the dollar (and that only if they are lucky).
Curious if anyone has had any luck in getting their credit card company to give you credit for your PC purchases that are more than 2 years old. Would be interested in the successful line of attack?
Jeff,
I have no way to know if it was ever different. Whether they ever priced and sourced wine before they sold it. Whether the money that you paid ever went to the wine you bought, when you bought it. Whether ships truly got lost at sea. Whether it really took 18 months to load a shipping container. Iâll never know. But my hunch is that the scheme was always the same under Fox and that PC was just more liquid years ago with new money constantly coming in the door for all the great Bordeaux and Burgundy vintages from 2000-2010. But stellar Bordeaux, and reasonably priced Burgundy, in recent vintage is a desert. So too, has the money flow dried up. As such, the long con is finally wrapping up and the ponzi styled scheme is collapsing. You decry that you will lose money. And that others will lose money. But thatâs the very reason that you shouldnât wish them wellâŚso that more people donât lose money as PC solicits at ever more impossible prices. You know, money is lost when someone steals it, but by wishing them well (and tacitly hoping that they continue) you are essentially asking the thief to steal more, so that he can pay his earlier victims back. That is an insane position to take, in my view.
As for the employees, who now appear to number in the single digits and are turning over more quickly than the holdings of a bad mutual fund, they will be fine but for the depositions that theyâll have to endure thanks to their employer.
As for what constitutes non-delivery, you arenât making sense. How long does one have to wait, and how many lies must one endure, before he can constructively deem his wine to be non-delivered? 3 years after release? 5 years? 10 years? At some point, multi-year âdelayâ is non-delivery. I think you are in an ever decreasing minority of folks who believe otherwise.
But Jeff, you seem like a relentlessly optimistic guy. If I ever fâd up this bad, Iâd want you on my side, defending me to the end.
Big +1 here.
This has been discussed in this thread. Read previous posts.
After reading this thread and getting thoroughly freaked out, I called PC on thursday of last week. Someone picked up on the first try. I arranged for the 2 cases I had in stock to be shipped out (120 / bottle Boillot white burg), and was told they would be shipped out Monday (today). It appears as though they went out as scheduled and I have a tracking #.
Almost like business as usual. . .that said based on what Iâm reading here Iâm not holding out much hope on the $8k or so I have in pre-arrivals that have not come in. .
A PC refund check to me for the rather small sum of $200 just bounced - I didnât note the bank, unfortunately. Sent to me about five days ago, for an order PC itself cancelled, and which staff had told me three weeks running was going in the mail that day. Humorous almost, because so classic âThe check is in the mail.â Just put to rest any lingering doubts.
They didnât have time to worry about $200.00,
Their obviously gearing up to make sure my $12,000.00 check clears,duh
Whitney, who was so friendly and responsive to me, kept telling me to wait till Dec 1 and heâd get me wine or money. I have been repeatedly calling and emailing since Dec 1 and no answer or response. Time to go the credit card route.
Hope your charge was less than 60 days ago, I keep getting A big no way jose from amex platinum