and to be clear - the company did deliver 8 bottles of wine i ordered. the final 4 were what were replaced with 3 total randoms. Those bottles are marked up SIGNIFICANTLY on their site and thus, they claim equal or greater value. Champagne Barons de Rothchild does not cost $100 a bottle - unless you order it from Grapeswine.
After speaking with chase, i think im going to send back the 3 random bottles. I confirmed the 8 bottles of bruno paillard as legit (called importer) so im glad to keep those at $40 per.
What they did was deliver 8 bottles under market rate and then try to make their margin on the replacements. Creative - but major scam.
I can’t believe these people have been running a scam operation for 20 years with all the reports on them. Really makes you think what the f*ck law authorities are there for…
Hope to hear some good updates soon! These guys should be forced to should shop
I’m guessing that if needed, sending Chase a copy of a written complaint to the liquor board could be helpful with a refund.
I try to buy with AmEx generally because of the great service over the last 30+ years, including always going to bat for me when there is an issue with a charge. I don’t know if Chase is also good for this.
Wow, this is frustrating! How can the credit card company still keep the dispute open? What’s the ‘retailer’s’ excuse that keeps Chase from settling it once and for all??
possibly not so complicated. Last time i had a dispute that went through a bank card (rather than amex) i had the same frustration but it turns out that they give they retailer 90 days to respond before closing the file.
That is true, usually they’ll give the retailer certain amount of time. However depending upon the amount and of course your relationship with your card issuer, they just give you the money back and go after the retailer on their own terms.
This might be a bit over the let’s just let it go threshold…
I’ve definitely disputed things in the 30-50 dollar ballpark before — obviously not going to invest too much time in something like that, but it’s a principle thing of not wanting to reward a company for cheating a customer. Every single time, Amex has immediately (like as in as soon as I click submit) said congrats it was successful. Whether they actually pursued the merchant on those matters or just decided it’s not worth their time, I have no idea.
I had used Grapeswine several years ago and was very pleased with their service. About 2 months ago, I wanted to use them again, so I call Tim and placed an order for $325. I was told it would be 2-3 weeks. After 6 weeks, I called, emailed, and left phone messages. I finally called Sales instead of Customer Service, and spoke to a person. I did receive a case of wine. Of the 3 types, 2 were the wrong vintage, and 1 was different altogether.
I was going to try and return them, but after reading this thread, and looking at the BBB reviews, I guess I am glad I received a case of anything. I can’t believe this place is still in business.
You should still do a chargeback. If you don’t have a real high rate of doing that, it will cause effort/expense for the merchant to deal with. The more chargebacks they are hit with, the higher their holdback percentages will be, and in extreme cases, they will be forced to stop taking cards, which would be a good way to get this scammer out of the system, or at least displace them for a while.
Resurrecting this thread. I finally won (unsurprisingly) my chargeback/dispute. It took a lot more time and BS than it should have, but its glad to know Chase had my back in a clear scam scenario.
I’m going to do my best to bump this thread on a semi regular basis. This whole situation was horrible. If I save one person the headache I just wen though I will call it a success.