Pre-arrivals, In stock x Pre arrival Options

[Losnet]

Hello,

I am a customer from Brazil.
I have been looking for places to buy wines in a easy and organized way then i found Vinfolio.
Have been buying from VF for the last 6 month in quantities and values that made me become a "Golden member".
But sometimes i experience problems. One of them is about the pre-arrival x in-stock wines. Many times i
bought "in stock" wines but they remain in pre-arrival forever. Couldnt get any explanation from VF why this hapens.
Another thing is that sometimes my emails are not answered and many times i get no advise that my wines have been shipped or what is happening to them.
I really think the idea of the site is great, congratulations for that, and very useful too but i feel VF is not organized for what they are meant to be.

Thanks
Carlos Hakim

[Anthony A170]

Hello,

I am a customer from Brazil.
I have been looking for places to buy wines in a easy and organized way then i found Vinfolio.
Have been buying from VF for the last 6 month in quantities and values that made me become a "Golden member".
But sometimes i experience problems. One of them is about the pre-arrival x in-stock wines. Many times i
bought "in stock" wines but they remain in pre-arrival forever. Couldnt get any explanation from VF why this hapens.
Another thing is that sometimes my emails are not answered and many times i get no advise that my wines have been shipped or what is happening to them.
I really think the idea of the site is great, congratulations for that, and very useful too but i feel VF is not organized for what they are meant to be.

Thanks
Carlos Hakim

I have been a customer for about a year. I only have experienced suberb customer service with frequent emails. I am surprised. Carlton provides great service, the Vinfolio crew is top notch. Believe me, I have dealt with other companies, this one knows there stuff.

[Losnet]

I have been a customer for about a year. I only have experienced suberb customer service with frequent emails. I am surprised. Carlton provides great service, the Vinfolio crew is top notch. Believe me, I have dealt with other companies, this one knows there stuff.

In the beggining it was really like this. But now it isnt.
They promise me to reply and never do. Maybe because i am from outside USA.

[Steve Bachmann]

In the beggining it was really like this. But now it isnt.
They promise me to reply and never do. Maybe because i am from outside USA.

Carlos, I apologize that you did not get a response to your question in this forum. You can always email service@vinfolio.com for a faster response as there is a team of dedicated customer service people responding to inquiries Monday-Friday from 9 am PST - 5 pm PST. This forum is relatively new for us and there are moderators assigned to each but it appears we dropped the ball in responding to you.

In terms of answering your question, every item in inventory lists whether it is "in stock" or on "pre-arrival". If you move your mouse over the pre-arrival icon in the results listing of the wine store, it actually gives you the estimated delivery timing of the wine. This is always an estimate for a variety of reasons (most sites which sell pre-arrivals do not provide any indication of timing by the way). For general background on how pre-arrivals work, read my post Shedding light on delivery timing of European Pre-arrivals. At the end of this post, there are also two further links to other blog posts explaining pre-arrivals.

In your specific case, one thing which could have happened is that you purchased a wine which had some wine in stock and additional wine on pre-arrival. E.g., we may have almost sold out of a wine and decided to restock it. If there was 1 bottle in stock and 24 on pre-arrival and you ordered 6, this would show as "in stock" on the site but the wine would not fully "arrive" until the last 5 bottles came in. You can see these details when you click the ADD button on a wine in the wine store.

 AddWineBox.png ( 12.3k ) Number of downloads: 4


In any case, I just checked your VinCellar account and you have no wines on pre-arrival and 9 bottles in Vinfolio Storage (3 of which just arrived yesterday).

[Jeffrey M989]

I have been having very much the same problem. All the wines I order show up as pre-arrival (despite showing in-stock when I ordered) and don't seem to move. I love the amount of information Vinfolio provides (and I am finding the amount I am willing to spend on a bottle of wine going up as my knowledge and comfort level increase), but I would like to see a little better turnaround on my orders. I sent an e-mail to customer service yesterday, so we'll see if it improves.

Thanks.

[Andrew S651]

I had a similar issue -- I was confused by the prearrival status of many of my wines -- so I emailed Customer Service. I quickly received a response (<2 hours, over lunch), which I'll copy here

Thank you for writing, and I apologize for the confusion. All wines on order are originally placed into the Prearrivals tab of your VinCellar until they are physically pulled from stock. In other words, even if the entire order was in stock and shipping was arranged during checkout, we would list the wines in your Prearrivals until the wine is actually pulled and shipped.

In your case, your order had a couple of in-stock wines and yes, the <wine you ordered> is a true prearrival not due until May 2008. If an order contains any prearrivals, all the wines on the order are first fulfilled to storage. They can remain in storage for free for up to 6 months, so that you may wait until more wine is in and consolidate your shipping. At this time, your in stock wines are certainly in the building, but in the queue to be pulled from stock and placed into your storage. We appreciate your patience as our warehouse team works through this busy season. As soon as the wine is added to storage, you will receive an email confirmation. For future reference, if you prefer shipping any in stock wines right away, we recommend that you place your in stock orders separate from your orders with any prearrivals.

To me, this makes sense; might be good to include it in a FAQ, or somewhere prominent on the site or in the purchase-confirmation email?

Either way, thanks to Rachael for responding so quick and clearing things up. Hope this helps you guys too.