So for the past two days I have been thinking about an recent experience that I had with an online wine retailer. Here is a short article on the experience that I had with the online site named Wine.com (http://www.wine.com/). The idea had never actually crossed my mind to sit down and write an article on them until I had a recent experience, a bad experience at that. Let me go on and explain what happened. Wine.com sent me an e-mail to purchase the 2013 Twenty Rows Napa Cabernet Sauvignon. I had never heard of the wine so I Googled it and actually came across the Winery itself (https://www.twentyrows.com/wine.html) . I very quickly noticed that the Winery had the wine for CHEAPER than Wine.com. I went back to Wine.com and I was going to e-mail them to complain when a small window popped up in the lower right hand corner of the screen with an employee named "Chris" asking if he could be of assistance to me. Here is how the Chat went down:
Chat has been opened from website: http://www.wine.com/customercare/submit.aspx?fromLogin=true
Chris Mon, 02/02/15 02:57:52 pm America/Los_Angeles
Hello, can I help you find a great wine?
Customer 02:57:54 pm
You say that we get great deals using your company so why are you more expensive that the winery itself on the Twenty Rows Napa Cabernet Sauvignon 2013?
https://www.twentyrows.com/store/index.cfm?fuseaction=view&category_id=27
Chris 02:59:32 pm
that's not fair, how can we be cheaper than the producer? by law we have to buy it from a distributor
Customer 03:00:46 pm
The winery sells EVERYTHING at a higher price. I have never seen a wine at a Winery that is cheaper than a store.
Chris 03:01:01 pm
ok, i am sorry
Customer 03:01:52 pm
That's it? No offer for a better price or anything?
Chris 03:01:54 pm
what do you want from me? Why yell at me?
i am not the buyer, we are doing the best we can, if you find the wine at a cheaper price, than buy it there
We do our best, but we don't always have the best prices, I am sorry :-(
not to mention, you are wrong! our price is 3 dollars cheaper for the cab
we have 21.99 they have it for 25!
Customer 03:10:53 pm
I am sending this chat to your corporate right now. Thank you
Duration: 13m 9s
Well as you can see I was not "yelling" or being rude in anyway to "Chris". Please keep in mind through all this that the very next day I was expecting around 10 bottles of wine totaling around $120 the next day and had also paid for a year of unlimited shipping for another $49. I was pissed to say the least and picked up my phone and contacted customer service and sent them a copy of the chat. The Costumer Service person who's e-mail starts off as "tblack" (I forgot her name) on the phone was very nice and told me that Chris's supervisor was looking at the chat with Chris as we spoke and was not at all pleased. The service rep on the phone was again very apologetic and placed a $25 credit on my account in order to assist me in getting over the insulting behavior of Chris. As I have said, this incident ate at me for the past couple of days and today I decided to use the same chat service to get the person in charge of media relations. Once again the person on their end of the chat was very nice and gave me the information I requested. So that is my story. Is Chris's behavior a fluke, I don't know but I can tell you that I have gained some connections in the wine industry in the process of developing The Desert Wine Guy and have almost 2,000 fans on my Desert Wine Guy Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/DesertWineGuy) as well as this wine blog which gets a few thousand hits a month and a Twitter account (https://twitter.com/desertwineguylv). I will reserve judgement for the time being since I am sure that I will have some more interactions with them and hopefully they will all be pleasant.
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