There’s a few times when I’ve had vintage substitutions and in many cases I preferred the substituted wine (15 Lambrays instead of 16) and he told me about in advance.
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Friend of mine in the Biz let me know I was getting somewhat bashed on the WB board for a single bottle of wine. Thank you to all the customers that have been loyal supporters for the last 19 years. As much as I try and stay on top of everything sometimes the little things fall through the cracks.
Just to be clear on the substitution. The customer ordered 2 single bottles of 2015 Pavelot Guettes and Dominode 375ml. I figured anyone that was a burgundy drinker would be happy to have received 2 bottles of Dominode (the more expensive bottle and top cuvee from the Domaine @ $29.99) instead of the $24.99 he paid for the Guettes. I’m sorry to have been a little slow in getting the return label to the customer.
As of this posting a label has been sent to the customer and upon receipt of the bottle will be happy to refund the $24.99.
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Bryan I would have certainly taken you up on that but would have wanted to be asked first, you never know when someone may have a reason for a certain vintage or vineyard.
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I havent read the entire thread, just OP. I have ordered a bunch from Vinsrare in the past. Service has been good, and especially good for a lean operation. Pricing has been great (especially on their 20% off sales!).
Story 1: There was a snafu where I did receive a wrong bottle (Faiveley Mazi instead of Beze), but I trust the retailer and we agreed to swap it out in person. COVID has happened, and a year later I still have the bottle. I have no doubt I could return the bottle for a refund if I absolutely needed to. I am fine to wait till when Bryan comes East to do a personal hand off. Although I may email him now and see if we can do a mail swap as the weather is good! This is not the only retailer this happened to, another Board darling and I are doing a swap now where I received wrong wines and I had to catch the error myself (and I believe OP orders a lot from this darling) and we are only now swapping the wines via mail.
Story 2: A few months later Vinsrare asked if I accidentally received a Faively Rodin by accident (worth 2-3x the price). Vinsrare took my verbal word that I did not, but I nevertheless happily shared Vinsrare my wine storage facility’s label notes which showed that I did not. Unfortunately for Vinsrare, it seems that a customer somewhere kept that higher priced Robin bottle. So I think they do their best to be accurate, but sometimes the mistakes swing in the customer’s favor and they eat that cost.
Story 3: On a large order, I swapped out many bottles and made many changes and Bryan allowed them. Like neurotic changes on a multiple case order. And Vinsrare shipped it all 100%. And this is despite board darlings like Flatiron (who I don’t buy from anymore) raising a stink when I try to modify an order a mere 2 minutes after having placed it (I recall not even being allowed to modify it once!).
All-in-all, I would order from Vinsrare again without hesitation. But I do know that its not a retailer I can call up for an immediate response etc., and its more of a personal conversation than a big box experience.
Been a while since I’ve posted, but feel the need to chime in here. Bryan is an upstanding guy and I’ve never had anything but easy transactions and full transparency in the 4 or 5 years I’ve been buying from him. He runs the whole operation by himself and things can sometimes take a while longer than dealing with bigger operations, but he is not out to stiff anyone and always takes care of mistakes. I don’t think airing out grievances on this forum is a good way to resolve this issue and really just ends up hurting a small business in what are already tough times…
If you’ve been hesitant to buy from Bryan because of reviews like this, don’t be!
I’ve gotta say, I’m surprised at the responses to what would otherwise be an unsatisfactory transaction. I have never bought from this shop and I’m sure there have been many satisfied customers and good relationships, but there is no person or life so busy that he or she could not take two minutes tops out of a day to send an e-mail to a customer needing assistance, especially one that was a clear if not particularly egregious mistake on his or her end and get it resolved as quickly as possible. It is an incredibly hectic time of year and environment to be running a business in, but, well, this is a crucial part of running a business.
“I don’t think this is a good way to resolve this issue…” - well, apparently it was, because it’s the only way his e-mail actually got responded to!
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Bryan runs his business on a small scale with quality wines. And he is a good guy with a fine palate. I have bought from him and would buy again without hesitation.
Well done Bryan.
Yong, you should have accepted Bryan’s initial substitute. Bryan sounds like the kind of chap I’d like to deal with.
Been a customer for years, though in retirement I’m not buying as much as I used to. Everything I have ever ordered was delivered. I’m sure there was a time or two where I had to ping Bryan again on something, that’s pretty normal for a lot of one man operations, but overall I’ve always received very good service and timely responses.
Abstracting to a broader point, so often in our lives these days it’s about communication. When I get an email at work asking me to help with something, and a week passes and I don’t reply and get a follow up email, and then another week passes, the other person doesn’t have any basis to know what to think. Did I not see it? Am I not the right person to ask for that assistance? Am I going to get back to them or do they need to keep following up? Am I still with the company, or on some vacation?
If I take 30 seconds to send a reply saying “I’d love to help you with that, but because of work/travel/vacation/whatever, I probably can’t get back to you until the end of next week,” most of the time, they’re totally fine with that. But when I simply don’t reply, they have no idea what that means, what to think, what to expect, what they need to do.
Same thing here. If the owner writes back and says “I’ll take care of that for you, but because of the holiday crunch and my being a one-man small shop, it’ll probably not be until early January if that’s okay,” then it’s all good. But otherwise, OP doesn’t know what to do, and that’s when things like this WB thread happen.
And believe me, I make that mistake sometimes, all of us have made it before, and this instance is not a big deal in the scheme of things. So I’m not piling on, but just kind of explaining the takeaway that I have from this instance, and something that might be a useful reminder to someone else reading this thread.
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Bryan will work with you to make something right. As people pointed out, he’s working under sweatshop conditions as a one-man operation, so sometimes you’ll get a response right away, sometimes not, but there is never any mean intent from him. I had a couple of issues in the shipping arena but he came through and fixed it. Never a problem that couldn’t be solved.
If he marked “no substitutions” why should he have taken it? As a previous person mentioned, there might be a specific reason he wanted that bottle and/or vintage.
I haven’t purchased from this place before and OP’s review wouldn’t deter me from doing so but his one bad experience shouldn’t be overlooked just because everyone else had a good experience. Essentially minimizing his frustration because you (as in everyone else) had a positive interaction with the retailer.
Spot on. Even if it’s a “I will get to this as soon as I can, just wanted to reach out and let you know I’m working on it” is enough, good business, AND just general courtesy to boot.
Wilbur,
I’ll tell you why, because sometimes you should just suck it up. The retailer was trying to do the right thing. Yong is sweating the small stuff and came in here and gave the retailer a spray. I don’t like what Yong did to Bryan. Too pedantic for my liking, but that may be just me.
Regards
Jeremy
I hardly think a one guy operation is the same as a “sweat shop”. Especially considering he deals in upper echelon wines.
Someone might be happy to get a substitution but it is up to the purchaser to make that decision. Not the retailer. I don’t really see how one is getting even somewhat “bashed” when pointing this out. As also has been pointed out all of this could have been solved with a simple “sorry about that” email.
I’ve often criticized people for running to forums to solve their issues with purchasing things. People very often do that too quickly. It doesn’t appear to be the case with Yong. Yong waited an appropriate time and made honest attempts to find out what was going on. While it’s nice to see people circling wagons around a retailer the questioning of Yong in this case seemed a bit out of line. And the IT guy going on about relationships and when the wine shipped was way out of line. Irrelevant details in an attempt to make the customer look bad.
I hope Yong got satisfaction but I don’t want this thread to stand as some testament to him being out of line. While his grievance was small in dollars it wasn’t without merit. It took him posting here to get an answer after all.
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He’s being pedantic for the retailer swapping a bottle without his approval then taking 3+ weeks to respond about it? I’m sure $25 won’t break the bank for him or pretty much anyone on this forum but that doesn’t take away from the fact he had a poor experience. As someone else mentioned, it took him posting this for him to get a resolution.
Pretty interesting responses here, including from Bryan, who basically did everything in his power to belittle the OP in his response.
As for the substitution, maybe the OP already has a few cases of that wine.
Just because the shop owner, and Jeremy (calling in from Australia ?!?), thinks all is good, or is going way beyond what is called for, that decision is in the hands of the OP who paid for something that he did not receive.
I like to think that I’m a conscientious person. I respond promptly to my clients when I get an email from them.
But the simple truth is that I sometimes forget to answer the email I DO want to respond to. I can understand that’s frustrating to the sender/client — having to hound me or track an answer down.
Does that make me a bad business person? No, it makes me human.
Who among us has a 100% track record of responding fully and promptly to every customer email?
Life is filled with irritations, breakdowns and slip ups. I do my best to let the little things go. But of course everyone has a different threshold of what constitutes the little things.
Bryan is a decent, thoughtful man and has a portfolio of compelling wines at very competitive pricing.
Stuff happens.
It is a lovely day down here in South Australia.
Are we allowed to call in from these parts?
OP said he sent multiple emails and made multiple phone calls. That’s a bit different than how you characterize it.