Worst excuse for returning a bottle of wine?

[Dave Erickson]

Customer comes in with a bottle, says "This doesn't have a cork! I want my money back!" I look at the bottle, it has a screwcap. Customer had put a corkscrew through it.

Less funny: Customer who works at a local restaurant, considers himself a connoisseur, buys three bottles of Lopez de Heredia Viña Bosconia. Takes them to a party, opens all three at once, and decides they're no good. He comes into the store with his girlfriend and demands his money back. We ask to taste the wines. They're fabulous. We confer among ourselves, regret that he's brought the girlfriend along because it means he can't back off, and then we refund the money on one bottle. Dark oaths are spoken. Legal remedies are threatened. We agree that he should do whatever he thinks he needs to do. He leaves. We never see him again. Thankfully, his restaurant closes.

[Brian Gilp]

Less funny: Customer who works at a local restaurant, considers himself a connoisseur, buys three bottles of Lopez de Heredia Viña Bosconia. Takes them to a party, opens all three at once, and decides they're no good. He comes into the store with his girlfriend and demands his money back. We ask to taste the wines. They're fabulous. We confer among ourselves, regret that he's brought the girlfriend along because it means he can't back off, and then we refund the money on one bottle. Dark oaths are spoken. Legal remedies are threatened. We agree that he should do whatever he thinks he needs to do. He leaves. We never see him again. Thankfully, his restaurant closes.

I don't understand refunding one bottle. What was the logic? Seems like the only options are all or none.

[Steve Slatcher]

I don't understand refunding one bottle. What was the logic? Seems like the only options are all or none.

To me it implies a "refund-if-not-entirely-satisfied policy". But in the case of multiple bottles, you would normally expect only one to be returned opened, so the others could be resold.

[Redwinger]

When I was schlepping wines, I had a personal policy of NEVER tasting a returned bottle. That said, I'm not sure how I/we would have handled the return of 3 opened bottles, but I suspect we would have refunded all three, especially if the customer claimed they were afflicted with TCA. It is quite possible 3 bottles from the same "batch" could have been corked.

[Oliver McCrum]

The big wholesalers take back anything, defective or not, and give it back to their supplier, which means that my customers have got into the habit. Pisses me off extremely.

[Jenise]

especially if the customer claimed they were afflicted with TCA. It is quite possible 3 bottles from the same "batch" could have been corked.

I once had three out of three bottles of one wine purchased for a wine tasting be corked. Discussed it here, and someone calculated the odds of that happening to be something like six million to one.

Bonus background story: before I returned the bottles to the local store I'd purchased them at, however, I decided to give the winemaker (a Washington wine, this was) a heads up about it in case there was something systemic in his winery causing the problem, as the good folks on this board urged me to do. Boy was I sorry. My tone was friendly and concerned, his tone was was belligerently self-defensive. He angrily let me know I could not possibly be right about it being TCA. When he calmed down he did ask me to send the bottles direct to him so he could see for himself stating he'd replace them. Not exactly a favor to me as 1) I would have been refunded no problem at the point of purchase, 2) it was too late for the tasting and his wines are not the style I'd purchase for my own cellar and 3) the time and cost of shipping turned out to be on my tab. The cost was about $30, same price as each bottle of wine in question, and he didn't send any extra bottles by way of compensation or apology for his crappy attitude. I have never purchased Isenhower wines again. OOPS, did I say the name?

Anyway, sorry about the rant, but it still bugs me.

[ChaimShraga]

And rightfully bugged.

[Dale Williams]

I don't understand refunding one bottle. What was the logic? Seems like the only options are all or none.

Like Steve, I see the logic to this. "I don't like this" is (at a service-oriented store) grounds for a refund of price of a recommended bottle (and refunds on unopened bottles). But if customer is too stupid to taste first one before opening second, that shouldn't be on merchant.

[Carl Eppig]

We've belonged to the Tobin James wine club for a long time, as most of you know. A few years ago we opened a bottle of their reserve syrah and found it corked. We simply notified them without returning anything. They sent a current vintage of the syrah plus two bottles of their then current reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. We are enjoying all three of them this year.

[Dave Erickson]

Less funny: Customer who works at a local restaurant, considers himself a connoisseur, buys three bottles of Lopez de Heredia Viña Bosconia. Takes them to a party, opens all three at once, and decides they're no good. He comes into the store with his girlfriend and demands his money back. We ask to taste the wines. They're fabulous. We confer among ourselves, regret that he's brought the girlfriend along because it means he can't back off, and then we refund the money on one bottle. Dark oaths are spoken. Legal remedies are threatened. We agree that he should do whatever he thinks he needs to do. He leaves. We never see him again. Thankfully, his restaurant closes.

I don't understand refunding one bottle. What was the logic? Seems like the only options are all or none.

Who said anything about logic? We're humans. The guy was an arrogant idiot, but even so we didn't want to completely humiliate him in front of his girlfriend.

[Oliver McCrum]

especially if the customer claimed they were afflicted with TCA. It is quite possible 3 bottles from the same "batch" could have been corked.

I once had three out of three bottles of one wine purchased for a wine tasting be corked. Discussed it here, and someone calculated the odds of that happening to be something like six million to one.

Jenise,

I don't think it's that unlikely, unfortunately. If the current TCA incidence is 2% then I think it would be odds of 125,000 to 1 against having three bottles in a row corked, but to have 3 bad out of say 8 bottles the odds wouldn't be as steep.

The fact that we're still struggling with this is weird.

[Jenise]

We've belonged to the Tobin James wine club for a long time, as most of you know. A few years ago we opened a bottle of their reserve syrah and found it corked. We simply notified them without returning anything. They sent a current vintage of the syrah plus two bottles of their then current reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. We are enjoying all three of them this year.

Big kudos to Tobin James--that's very generous. All one really hopes is that any winery complained to will simply replace the bottle in kind. Especially when you're a long-standing mailing list customer.

[Mark Lipton]

I don't think it's that unlikely, unfortunately. If the current TCA incidence is 2% then I think it would be odds of 125,000 to 1 against having three bottles in a row corked, but to have 3 bad out of say 8 bottles the odds wouldn't be as steep.

To be pedantic, Oliver, the odds of the former occurrence are 124,999:1 (but the probability is 1 out of 125,000). The odds of 3 out of 8 bottles turning up corked if the incidence is 2% are 2405:1.

Mark Lipton

[Oliver McCrum]

I knew someone would know.

[Steve Slatcher]

I don't think it's that unlikely, unfortunately. If the current TCA incidence is 2% then I think it would be odds of 125,000 to 1 against having three bottles in a row corked, but to have 3 bad out of say 8 bottles the odds wouldn't be as steep.

To be pedantic, Oliver, the odds of the former occurrence are 124,999:1 (but the probability is 1 out of 125,000).

To be even more pedantic, those calculations assume that the probabilities are not just 2%, but that they are uncorrelated. If the 3 bottles are unrelated to each other that is a fair assumption. But if they are the same wine and vintage, bought from the same shop, the batch of corks was probably the same, and as there are good and bad batches there will be a correlation. The net result is that if you have one bad bottle, the chances of finding the next one from the same batch to be bad are raised.