3.3 / 5
Trust Score
1.9
Reviews
3
Social
5
Featured
4.5
Technical
Is wine.com legit?
- Many trusted websites are linking to this site
- The SSL certificate is valid
- This website has existed for more than 3 years
- Instagram account found with large audience
- Business is mentioned on Wikipedia
- Linkedin account found with large audience
- The company has an ANDROID app
- The company has an IOS app
- We found several negative reviews about this site
- Facebook account found but audience is small
- Pinterest account not found
- Twitter account not found
- Youtube account not found
Reviews Analysis
30
reviews
vs
0
AI declined reviews
0%
NON VALIDATED REVIEWS
Usually stable businesses have more than 5 authority websites mentions, this one has 12 authority websites mentions and 0 mentions in other websites
Based on 615 reviews
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Wine.com Review
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Last update: Wed, Mar 9, 2022 12:24 AM
During the intervening three and a half weeks I was deluged with emails inviting me to place further orders -- including offers for free 'rush shipping'. When the wine failed to arrive I logged onto the website and found that my order had been changed from six to five bottles and delivery had been rescheduled for December 27th. None of the many emails I received hinted that they were having trouble fulfilling the order, no one reached out to me to ask if I wanted to substitute another wine.
I am appalled by wine.com's customer service. After spending quite a while on the site, first chatting with an adept representative while choosing wines, and then (frustratingly) trying to figure out why their promos weren't working, I was connected with a supervisor. From here, please note that I assume pseudonyms are used for chat... if not, I recommend that wine.com employees adopt that practice.
While trying to solve the promo-rejection issue, "Sebastien" suggested that I add a few more bottles to my order just to see if there was a glitch on the site. When I did so I lost the chat and was unable to retrieve it, so I called their number, but they were closed for the night.
Luckily, I was able to get back to Sebastien in regular email, and he offered the $20 promo discount that had been rejected by the website. This was an admirable attempt at resolution, but I told him I had changed my order to reflect his suggestion of adding bottles -- they were a bit more expensive. I asked him if it would be acceptable to change my discount to $28 instead of $20, and told him if he would do so, I would continue to purchase from wine.com and recommend the site to others. I noted that if he refused, I would not buy from wine.com ever again, and recommend that others avoid the site. Admittedly, by that time I had spent about 2 hours with this company, and my mild bargaining request was due to patience that had worn thin, but my tone nevertheless remained respectful.
Sebastien would not make that $8 concession. That kind of miserly business attitude must result, sooner than later, in the collapse of the business. Consumers have the power to close sub-par companies; all it takes is posting our discontented reviews until they recognize the importance of setting a praiseworthy precedent of providing exemplary customer service. Seriously. This customer was willing to accept a $4/hr discount for her hours spent working with the vendor, and was refused. Foul!
As a wine lover, it breaks my heart to build delicious expectations after carefully choosing 12 bottles, and then lose the product due to awful customer service. Sebastien, if your hands are tied by your employer, I'm sorry that you choose to continue working for wine.com. "Nikki"--the associate who chatted with me during the first part of my visit--you're too capable to stay with a company that may cause your name to arise in a review titled: "I should have checked these ratings before shopping."
Now I will continue to post on vendor-rating sites until wine.com corrects their poor business practices. If as an accomplished academician (and some years ago, a business owner) I can stomach the idea of offering $4/hr to wine.com as compensation for my efforts to purchase a product from them--and receive null results--I can freely endeavor to make sure the time of fellow wine lovers, from oenophiles to connoisseurs, is not wasted on astoundingly poor customer service.
Let's work together to inspire better business. On to the next rating site, yes?
My main comment about the site is that its wine prices are not just not competitive -- they are consistently too high. There is much competition out there now for on-line wine (WTSO, Last Bottle Wines, Wine Access, many others) and consistently better prices sometimes substantially so can be found for the same bottle elsewhere. If you do buy from the site NEVER paid the listed price -- there is always a coupon or code to be found that will give you a discount of some kind. Search the web first for the discount code before buying. However, even with the discount the price is too high. Look elsewhere (through Wine Searcher) for other sellers. I will give kudos for the great selection offered.
3 orders placed on 11/20 2017. Pd for at time of order! To be delivered on 12/19/2017 ( one month for delivery)! Called and changed one delivery to 12/12 ( recipient out 12/19) Customer Service extremely professional and nice! Delivered as scheduled! Other 2 orders not even processed by 12/17. Chatted everyday with support personnel. Most very nice and helpful tone! 2 very short and very rude tone. Site advertising quaranteed delivery if order placed by MN 12/20. No tracking # applied to my orders til Friday 12/22! On Thurs 12/21 again Promised delivery before Christmas ! Told my order was being processed and would ship from within that state Friday Morning! Finally got Tracking # noon Friday (today) Fed ex shows delivery Tuesday 12/26 2017! So frustrated!
In summary, I strongly recommend against using wine.com, on the following grounds:
1. The company failed to send the product on time (order date 11/30, expected delivery date 12/6)
2. The company failed to give the customer new tracking information after the original shipping date was missed (customer had to call customer service to receive shipping information, 29 minute hold)
3. The company failed to send the correct product to the customer, after 2 shipping dates were missed (Zenato Valpolicella Superior 2014 ($14) was substituted for Zenato Amarone 2013 ($60)
4. The company failed to correct the mistake by sending the customer the right product (Zenato Amarone 2013 was out of stock on 12/20)
5. The manager of customer service failed to call the customer back to handle a customer complaint (customer requested to speak to manager Pierre on 2 occasions. The manager did not call)
6. The company failed to handle the situation with one single customer service agent who knew the specific situation (customer was shuffled between JP, Charles, and Crystal) over 2 hours
7. The customer service representative Crystal did not agree to a reasonable solution (refund + new bottle and shipping waived), even though another agent (J.P.) agreed to honor the request.
8. The customer service representative failed to handle the complaint in an appropriate manner when she abruptly ending the conversation (hanging up the online chat), with no agreed upon resolution
Again, the agents who I spoke to were DOUG, J.P., and CRYSTAL. The manager who did not call me back was PIERRE.
First: the website. It has an >average selection of wine. It doesn't have in stock some of the smaller boutique Napa vineyards that I like, but I wasn't expecting that. You can find just about all the major French, Italian and Californian wines that you want. Other sites have larger selections; others have smaller selections. The search engine is great. I like how all the ratings are immediately visible and when you dig deeper into a selection, you can read the actual professional reviews. I agree with some that the way the website handles cookies and the shopping cart is annoying. You definitely have to be sure that what's in your cart needs to be refreshed. I also agree that adding the coupon codes sometimes doesn't work; you just have to try a few times, refresh your browser, etc. Yes, annoying, but the coupons work for the most part -- other than for things they specifically say are ineligible (like futures).
Second: the Android app. It's terrible. It's not a big deal. What I think is a bigger deal is that the website is not terribly mobile responsive. It's functional, but not on a great level. I make all my purchases when I'm sitting down at an actual computer.
Third: the prices. They're not very competitive. They're more average. However, for my needs, with the Stewardship, discount codes (I never order until I see the 10% off code), I can get a case of wine for less than what I would pay for that case of wine locally. That's a win for me.
Fourth: the choice of FedEx. Yes, they do require an adult signature, otherwise, every teen in the US would be ordering wine. Doesn't that make sense? I agree it's inconvenient, but I made an account with FedEx and have all my wine.com purchases shipped to Walgreens (the FedEx local drop-off site). I stop by Walgreens on my way home when I get notified that it has been delivered. I learned to do this after I had multiple delivery attempts with my very first purchase from wine.com when no one was at home to sign. Yes, it was annoying, but I was more annoyed with FedEx than with wine.com.
Fifth: the shipping. I have had one incident with shipping. I ordered a mixed case of Napa cabs and whoever did the packaging forgot to put the top guard in the case, so when I opened the box, the bottles were strewn about and some of the labels scraped up. As many of you know, Napa cab bottles are THICK, and there was no damage to the glass. I didn't lose anything, so I had no real claim; it was just to notify them. The next case I received (ordered at the same time) was well protected, so I think it may have been an isolated incident.
Sixth: customer service. I really haven't needed to reach them except on two occasions. I contacted CS once for the shipping/packing issue I stated above, and I also contacted them about what I thought was two missing bottles from an order. I ordered two Barolos as part of a mixed case (12), and I received only 10 bottles. As it turns out, by the time they processed my order, the 2 Barolos were out of stock. They charged my card for the 10 bottles and eventually emailed me (after reaching out to them) that the wines were not in stock. I would have preferred to have received an email proactively that the wines were out of stock and that my credit card was being adjusted. Instead, I had to comb through emails and my CC statement to make sure I wasn't crazy and to make sure that I wasn't overcharged. They should have informed me when they shipped that what I was receiving wasn't precisely what I ordered.
Summary-----
With respect to the other reviews here and elsewhere, I think many of them are pretty ridiculous -- people complaining that they ordered too late for the coupon, didn't refresh their browsers after leaving/logging out or couldn't get an $8 discount for ordering more expensive wine. Some of them sound pretty serious -- switching expensive wine for cheaper wine or taking weeks to over a month to deliver. Honestly, if I read the reviews before I ever ordered, I probably never would have touched wine.com!!! However, I can say that what has been stated in these other reviews really hasn't been my personal experience -- the vast majority of orders and shipments has been very good.
I plan to keep buying from them for the foreseeable future.
I called them to find out how I could arrange a new delivery. Get this: they told me that because the wine I bought was so in demand (and they were out of stock), they gave it to someone else and would I like to substitute a different wine? You can imagine me trying to explore this with a customer service agent with no ability to do anything but follow a simple script - i.e., "sorry, that's all I can do" - so ultimately I requested a refund. No problem, they said, except I would of course have to pay for the shipping attempt!
What a rip-off. I paid for that wine, they gave it to someone else, and then charged me for the failed shipping attempt. Never again, Wine.com!
Usually stable businesses have more than 5 authority websites mentions, this one has 12 authority websites mentions and 0 mentions in other websites
Wine.com Review
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3 years ago
review by MargaretGraham