Check out "consumer rights" at Amazon
or check out "corruption"Updated Feb. 1, 2009: Ultimately, I had to submit complaints to my credit card company to receive partial credit associated with undelivered wine from two out of three orders to Cellarbrokers. Today the cellarbrokers.com website is non-functional.
WineZap has removed Cellarbrokers as vendor. Promotional emails are no longer being distributed. New havoc for customers has ceased. I imagine it will still be many months before all past transactions are cleared, if indeed, some ever are. Also, the damage to reputation of other online wine vendors will likely be lasting. Few of us will forget the hassles, frustrations and anger associated with this Cellarbrokers experience, and concerned about not repeating it in the future. Admittedly, this was a particularly bad example in an otherwise generally reputable area of online retailing.
------------------
Updated posting, January 2, 2009: The drama continues. Looks like the business may be folding, or at least collapsing under its own processes. The following message appears on the www.cellarbrokers.com home page today:
--------------
Original posting, 11/22/08: CUSTOMER WARNING: Anyone contemplating a transaction with Cellarbrokers of Southampton, NY (also doing business as Cellarbrokers.com, Cellar Wine Merchants, cellarwinemerchants.net and Elmar Corporation) should first consider the correspondence below. In three years of wine reviewing and over 600 wines reviewed, I have never had to post a complaint concerning a wine retailer. Alas, that good fortune has been reversed.
Note that Cellarbrokers is also a vendor with
WineZap, which incorporates them as a premier vendor, which means they appear among the first in the listings. In addition, I continue to get almost daily promotional emails from Cellarbrokers, despite having had no response to three purchases in as much as a full month.
I have seen
other postings which
confirm that there is a definite process problem with Cellarbrokers as a retailer.
-----------------------
Below is my email of Nov. 18, 2008 (I have received no response in the intervening four days, as you might expect).
-----------------------
To:
debbie@cellarwinemerchants.net,inquiries@elmar-corporation.com,
inquiries@cellarbrokers.com
Please allow me to recap my unfortunate situation as a customer of Cellarbrokers... I have placed the following orders, with valid credit card number:
11/14/2008 #8487 [ORDER PARTICULARS REMOVED FROM THIS POSTING]
10/24/2008 #6865 [ORDER PARTICULARS REMOVED FROM THIS POSTING]
10/19/2008 #6469 [ORDER PARTICULARS REMOVED FROM THIS POSTING]
The oldest is now nearly one month old. Everytime I placed an order I received a notice on my screen which said:--------
Thank You for your Order Submission!
One of our Brokers will confirm your order within 24hrs!
You can check your Order Status by logging into your account at any time.
Thank You for shopping @ Cellar Brokers!
--------
That was followed by an automatic email confirming price and quantity of items ordered.
Then waited to hear from a broker... And waited... And waited.
After a week or so with no word (and having placed a second order, also with no word), I began to reach out. I spoke with someone at your 866-number, who was very pleasant and said a broker would call or email me that same day. That did not happen.
I called the next day and got only voice mail, but left my number and email. Days later, I emailed your contact line and heard back from a pleasant woman named Debbie, who told me a broker would get back to me to confirm my order within 24 hours. That did not happen.
I prodded with occasional emails over the next 3 weeks, some unresponded to, some responded to with assurances that a broker would get to me on a priority basis to confirm my order within 24 hours. Still no broker.
Last week, I contacted your LiveChat line. A pleasant woman whose name I do not recall (but began with an "A") checked on my orders and assured me a broker would get back to me to confirm my two outstanding orders within 24 hours. That did not happen.
I have been looking forward to some of these wines for review in my Spirit of Wine publication (spiritofwine.blogspot.com), read by nearly 20,000 retail wine buyers a month. Tomorrow, Nov. 19, it will be one month since my first order; I will have received over a dozen promises by email, phone and live chat, that "a Cellarbrokers.com broker will be back to you to confirm your order within 24 hours." Every one of those promises was broken.
Sometime after Nov. 19, my readers will become aware of my experiences with Cellarbrokers.com. Rather than reviewing the wines which should have arrived, I will instead review the experience of attempting to secure them. (At this stage, I wouldn't count on a five star rating.)
By the way, just to see if a complex order made a difference, I placed an order on Nov. 14 which contained six bottles of only one label - figured that should make it easy for your broker "to confirm my order within 24 hours". Alas, here I still wait...
Yours sincerely (though frustratedly),[SIGNED]
----------------------------
Update November 25, 2008: I don't know if this is good news or bad news yet - but I just received an email indicating that my order status for the oldest order, now one month and six days old, has been changed to "Charged", with an explanation that (sic) "THIS WILL BE SHIP NEXT WEEK!!!" I'm cautiously optimistic, but I'm also keeping the credit card customer service number handy.
----------------------------
Update December 28, 2008: My delivery experiences remain poor, and consistent with others described in the comments seciton. I have notw been charged for all three orders. Have received full shipment on only the lowest-priced order (all one variety of wine), and only sporadic and minimal partial shipments against the other two orders. I spoke with a senior executive I know at one of the three largest US credit card companies, who did acknowledge that an approach may be used by some companies to pre-fund their inventory based on advance credit card charges to customers for whom merchandise has not yet been acquired. It was not seen as a sign of a healthy business. My own credit card carrier advised me that, in the case of a non-shipment or incomplete shipment, I would not face a time-limitation in placing a claim. In addition, I was assured that the company going out of business would not eliminate my ability to recover my charges. However, that is little consolation to those who have prepaid by check or money order. Also, you MUST check provisions with your own credit carrier - in some cases your ability to file a claim may be limited. And note that a number of comments below suggest that later credit charges may be refiled by this same - or a different but possibly related - vendor.
Oddly, I noted today an email this past week advertising availability of one of the wines that I have been awaiting shipment for, for over two full months, prompting me to provide this email:
To:inquiries@elmar-corporation.com,
inquiries@cellarbrokers.com
Hi, I see you're advertising the 2006 Glaetzer as available. I'm still waiting for my order of three of these (that has already been charged to my credit card) from October 19, order number 6469. Do you think you can send those along soon (perhaps with other wines still outstanding from that order?). Thank you.---------------------
Additional December 28, 2008, caveat: I hope readers will not take from this experience that the web should be avoided for all wine purchases. Most comments - and my own experiences - confirm that this is an exceptional, indeed unparalleled, example of distracted service or worse by an online wine retailer.
----------------------
