More and more wine is being bought online, by phone and by mail. The traditional wine merchants have been joined by an army of newer retailers, from tiny one-person wine specialists to massive supermarkets, anxious for our pound, euro or dollar. But which of them, old and new, offers the best service?
As for many of us this is peak time for Burgundy 2005 offers (on which I will be reporting in great depth in a couple of weeks), it seems to me that we would all benefit from sharing our experiences and that specialist websites such as this provide an ideal forum for this useful expression of consumer power. You are therefore respectfully invited to contribute your views on who are particularly good and particularly bad ‘distance sellers’ of wine, as they are known. What are your chief gripes? How could things be improved?
Just send your experiences and views via the soon-to-be-enlarged Add a comment box below. All I’d ask you to do is state clearly who you are and where you are based. If you are logged in as a purple pages member, the system willl do this automatically.
I recognise that there are vast differences between commercial environments in different countries. Shipping wine within the US is a quite different business from sending wine from one UK address to another, and from moving wine around within Europe or Australia for example. Many countries, especially in Asia, have almost prohibitive import taxes.
It may be that the most useful feedback will come from the UK and be specific to that country but let’s see. There’s no ban on contributing if you are in the trade, but please make this clear and tell us exactly who you work for.