The Suggested Price field data is derived from multiple sources:

• Marketplace average transactions for that particular wine, vintage and bottle size for the past year.
• Auction data for that particular wine, vintage, and bottle size for the last 24 months as calculated by the auction algorithm’s on WinePrices.com
• Current Retail Pricing for that particular wine, vintage and bottle size from WinePrices.com

If there’s not enough data from all of those sources, the field will be left blank.

Bidders and sellers who use the Suggested Price will find higher bid acceptance and sell rates.  We also use Suggested Price in our Bid Feedback emails, so that sellers are able to signal to bidders the pricing that they are looking to see in order for them to accept a bid. Sellers can elect to send Bid Feedback from within VinCellar.

Bidders receive the email suggesting a price change and can then modify their bid.

When both bidder and seller come to the same market assessment, we find that both consummate the transaction happily.

Finer service is more than just being responsive, empathetic, and efficient.  It’s how employees view their role in the delivery of that promise.  I asked my team what they thought finer service meant.  Their responses included, “going above and beyond,” “taking the burden off the customer’s shoulders so that doing business with Vinfolio is easy,” and “bending over backwards to ensure the customer’s experience is a positive one, especially when things don’t go as planned.”  I couldn’t agree more.

We provide as many ways as possible for customers to reach us; phone, email, and live chat sessions.  Email, however, outpaces phone calls in terms of the frequency of contact methods.  Phone calls, by their very nature, demand immediate attention.  Unlike many other organizations that rely on automated call handling technology, calls coming into Vinfolio are answered immediately and personally. We have zero hold time before reaching a customer service associate.  Additionally, our response time for email contacts is very impressive given the percent of our total contact volume.  Response time averages 43 minutes for email.  Most companies promise a response within 24 hours.

But, let’s go back to the issue of turning a negative experience into a positive one.  That’s where the rubber meets the road.  Recently, a new customer made a purchase through our online store.  There was a problem with the wine he purchased and when we sent a replacement, it too was unsatisfactory. Complicating things was a misunderstanding regarding a charge.  Things weren’t going so well.  The customer was angry.  It took some time and patient communication, but in the end we resolved the problems and his latest email ended with, “Thanks a ton. You are wonderful.”

I encourage you to share your comments and if there are opportunities for us to improve your experience, don’t hesitate to post them here, contact me personally at beth@vinfolio.com or call us toll free at 800/969-1961.  

If you haven’t marked your wine for sale or accepted bids in the Vinfolio Marketplace, now is the time to start.  Beginning October 1, we’ve lowered seller fees and cut in-bound shipping costs to make it even more profitable to sell your wine, regardless of location*.

Sell your wine now and enjoy these limited-time benefits:

• FREE in-bound shipping for first-time Marketplace sellers on all bids accepted in October

• 15% fees for ALL Sellers, regardless of storage location until December 31, 2009 (reduced from 20% for off site locations).

• $6 minimum per bottle fee for ALL sellers until December 31, 2009 (reduced from $8)

• All sales still go towards the Marketplace cumulative volume discounts

• Shipping subsidies for bottles sold over $100 are still included

   
Get started

• Mark your wine for sale – learn how

• Set asking prices – learn how

• View open bids on your wines

For questions or to provide feedback, please contact service@vinfolio.com or visit the Vinfolio Forum.

*Please note that location refers to Vinfolio, private or home storage. All wine sold in the Marketplace must still be physically located in the U.S. (excludes MA).

As a reminder, we announced the opening of our 20,000 sq. ft. Napa warehouse in November 2008 (see press release).  Until now, the Napa location has housed our retail inventory and retail fulfillment operations.  As the leased space was sized initially to include room for growth, there is currently 7,000 sq. ft. of unused leased space ready to be occupied.  The Napa facility is occupied by other wine-related businesses and is currently climate-controlled to 58 degrees.  We are in the process of determining whether the landlord and other tenants are willing to lower the temperature a few degrees to 55 which is the temperature of our San Francisco warehouse.

From a customer point of view, there will be no other difference in services regardless of whether wine is stored in San Francisco or Napa.  Wine will continue to be able to be picked up or dropped off at either facility; delivery services have always been agnostic as to the source warehouse.

Wine Watcher alerts allow you to track individual wines or all wines in a group selected by search criteria such as your current bids, a saved search, or by keywords and see activity on the resulting wine(s) in the Vinfolio wine store and/or Marketplace. Create as many individual alerts as you like. They will be all combined into a daily or weekly digest and grouped by the alert name within the email. Wine Watcher alerts can be created from wine listing and wine detail pages or within My Account. Click here to learn how to set up an alert.

How to use the Wine Watcher alerts
Wine Watcher alerts offer a powerful tool to track a wine or group of wines. Depending if you are monitoring your bids, looking for new inventory or just watching transactional activity, Wine Watcher alerts can provide you with timely information (see below) to support your decision-making on wines you are following:

•    New Vinfolio Wine store inventory added (with the price)
•    New quantity that is marked for sale has been added to the Vinfolio Marketplace
•    A new low ask price has been set
•    A new high bid has been placed
•    A Marketplace transaction has been completed

Automated bid feedback provided by My Active Bids alert
The only alert created automatically upon placing one or more bids is one called “My active bids.”  This alert defaults to “Immediate” delivery (the only alert with “Immediate” option) based on a new low ask or high bid on a wine which you have already bid upon.  This “push” capability enables you to react quickly to competitive bidders or new asking prices set by sellers.

Managing your alerts
For alerts you create manually, you will receive a consolidated update of all the activity in your alerts on either a daily or weekly basis. To update alerts, simply go to My Account and select Wine Watcher. You may edit, delete or create a new Wine Watcher alert.

Different treatment of bottles failing inspection
When one or more bottles in a transaction fail our Inspection Guidelines, the transaction is processed differently based on what Bid Fulfillment choice was specified:

1. “Single purchase” - In the past, or if the “single purchase” option is selected today,  a single bottle  failing inspection would cause the entire transaction  to be cancelled (including acceptable bottles).  
2. “Multiple purchases” – Today, using the “multiple purchases” option, only the single bottle that fails would be affected.  This is a significant improvement to both bidder and seller, as they will only have individual bottle exceptions to the total transaction.  

Should the seller agree, the following actions are triggered:

1. The bidder receives an email notifying them that their bid was “conditionally” accepted due to a problem when processing their credit card.
2. Vinfolio Customer Service proactively reaches out to the bidder to offer resolution assistance.
3. The seller receives an email confirming their agreement to reserve the bid until the buyer’s card can be successfully charged or other form of payment collected. (Note:  Even though the seller has agreed to give Vinfolio one business day to resolve the problem, the seller has the option to cancel the transaction at any time. If this happens, the buyer will receive an email notifying them of the cancelled transaction.)
4. Vinfolio successfully collects payment by:

 - Resubmitting the same card
 - Processing another credit card
 - Receiving a wire transfer for large purchases

A successful charge or other form of payment generates an email to the bidder summarizing the details of their purchase.  The seller receives an email confirming the sale.  If we are unable to resolve the problem, both the seller and the buyer are notified via email and the hold on the wine is released which enables the seller to accept another bid.  

Vinfolio is committed to ensuring both the seller and the buyer enjoy a positive experience and a successful outcome.

As the above chart shows, the overwhelming majority of successful transactions in the Vinfolio Marketplace occur when there is a low ask price set by the seller.   More importantly, the higher percentage in Total Dollar Volume when ask prices are set indicates that bidders set a bid price more effectively when they see that there is an asking price from a seller.  For many sellers, this has a likely intended effect of raising the final price that they might see from any sale.  It’s also clear that setting an ask price sends a message to bidders and that the data is acted upon.

You can set asking prices after you've clicked on either "Sell wine" or "Sell via Marketplace" where you will arrive at the following screen:

   1. Indicate the quantity you would like to sell in the "Qty to sell" field.

   2. Indicate an "Asking price".

 

   3. If your wine is in Vinfolio storage, indicate a "Minimum price" and click "Auto-accept" to speed up the transaction process. Then click "Finished".

   4. Be sure to read the Auto-accept Terms screen and click "Submit". You can also access Vinfolio's full terms from this screen.

 As Vinfolio deploys new features like Auto Accept, setting low ask prices will have even greater effect upon successful sales.