The following thread titled “
Heritage Wine Co. – cover your ears. Retailer flames out of control” from
Mark Squire’s Wine Bulletin Board on
eRobertParker.com has to be read to be believed.
At the time of this post, it has attracted over 100 comments in less than a day.
The retailer’s overreaction to a customer complaint is inappropriate but what bothers me more is his failure to take responsibility for his own pricing mistake. In this case, it was a small dollar amount too but even if it weren’t, one way to learn from mistakes is to have to bear the cost of them (financially or otherwise).
Everyone makes mistakes. For example, we mispriced a cult cabernet last week at $295 when it was supposed to be priced at $350. We didn’t realize the error until a customer had already bought 6 of our 12 bottles online. Of course, we honored the transaction. The only discussion we had was to determine how the error was introduced so we can avoid repeating it.
Do you have a story to share of wine retailer behavior that provoked a negative reaction from you? Please add it as a comment (no need to post retailer names if you’d rather not).
P.S. For another post on retailer practices, read “Returning faulty wine to retailers.”
