And, when the person who runs the National Futures program gave you some BS answer – and you said – so, I’m just going to write a letter documenting what has happened to the President of Total Wine. And, failing progress there, I’m just going to make sure that every online wine community knows that you backed out of my futures. Then I’m going to take you to small claims court and make you waste your time showing up to make your case or lose and pay me anyway.
Are you sure this is how you want to handle this Mr. Total Wine Futures Manager?
And how annoying is it that I just got off the phone with one of their stores in DE that has mags? Too bad they don’t ship.
Im not sure who runs the whole program. Most of my recent interaction has been with Paul at the concierge program who I understand to be a key figure.
I have not yet informed my local store manager, they had been quite involved until recently when they advised me to interface with the concierge program directly. All the expected delivery dates came locally after checking with national program (usually a 24-48hr process)
I’m not the type of person that makes threats to get my way. But I can assure you my disappointment and displeasure was clear, and that this interaction would affect future purchases.
WS shows 2015 VCC availability at multiple merchants. TW could honor your purchase if they wanted to. But if they dropped the ball on hundreds of cases, they would have good reason to prefer just refunding your money.
Not criticizing or suggesting you do more Josh, but I agree with others that the outcome could have been different if it had been worth expending the energy to do as Jim Dove suggests. The problem is, the time required to do that is often worth more than the difference in price between the futures purchase and current retail. TW knows that and is counting on it. What they don’t know (and may not care about) is how much it might affect their future futures business.
I rarely use TW. You’ve given me another reason to make that never.
So would their cost to litigate with the OP. To him though that cost could be onerous.
I think huge companies like these have an equation hidden deep in head office that keeps them warm at night balancing legal exposure, customer service and profits. They are never going to say “go ahead and sue us” but they are confident you won’t.
I’d like to think a good lawyer could recoup both legal expenses plus current market of the VCC for him. As a last resort, I’d certainly consider spending the 30-60 minutes of billables exploring this with my own very good lawyer depending on how ticked off I was at TW about this (were I the OP).
And let’s be honest, were the OP completely satisfied with TW’s resolution, he wouldn’t be posting here to begin with.
We see these or similar stories here with some regularity. Have any consumers successfully sued for nondelivery of futures? With success defined as:
having won and
the consumer felt it was worth the time and money to sue
Seems it’s easier to just take the refund and forego the purchase or spend the extra money at current market price. Winning and getting legal costs covered is never a certainty. That uncertainty, plus the time and hassle of a suit even if you win, makes it a non-starter for most unless a large amount of money is involved or winning for winning’s sake is a huge priority.
This has been going back and forth since Feb. I’ve already put too much time into it. David, I think you are also a physician so you know finding 20-30mins during the workday to deal with optional personal issues is difficult. I got my ‘14 VCC first and this was last so I knew something was up . The recent change was instead of getting an expected delivery date I suddenly got a refund and the option to purchase other ‘15s
David, great question, all very good points and to be clear, I’m not advocating the OP pursue legal recourse, my response was made after David Cooper brought that element into the equation.
I stand my original post that a company of TW’s scale should have been able to make this situation right for the OP, certainly enough so where he would feel completely satisfied by the outcome (which could easily extend to losing a small amount of money by simply sourcing the wine in question for him). Choosing to pursue such an unsatisfactory course of resolution speaks loudly of how TW views their customers, especially considering OP sounds like a very good customer – I hope he takes his business elsewhere.
A big company like Total Wine should have ZERO problem sourcing wines they “pre-sold”. They may not like the fact that the wines have raised in price, but they took the money long before the wines were released. I’d stop buying ALL futures through this company and am grateful for the original poster’s willingness to share this.
If they did have a random problem like an over-turned deliver truck, or heat damaged wines that they refused…they could go a long way in making this right in other ways.
Or did they just refund the nominal value of the purchase?
PS: What happens to positive balances on credit cards? Is there an easy way to move money from your credit card back to your checking account? Or will The System swallow another four or five points if you try to pull off that maneuver?