Their wine, beer, and cheese selection is great. And, their tasting events offer opportunities to sample some terrific wines. But, there's just no excuse for their repeatedly poor customer service. Absolutely no excuse.
We've shopped at the store 5 times in the past 4 months, and 3 times we have attended wine tasting events at the store (2 presented by the store and 1 by outside vendors). During our shopping visits, the staff assistance has been hit or miss...really a hit and really a miss. As examples, during an October visit, we were greeted as we walked in the door, and an employee stayed with us the entire visit. For a particular early November visit, we lingered in the store for nearly 20 minutes debating about our wine choice, during which neither of the two employees present said even a word to us.
During tasting visits...the event hosted by a group of outside vendors was great. The vendors were friendly and engaging...knowledgeable about their products, quick to engage every customer, and made everyone feel welcome. Conversely, during the 2 events we attended hosted by the store, we found the service to be lousy. For both events, two of the three store employees pouring wine struggled to provide information beyond what was printed on the bottles. Additionally, at both events, a particular older employee seemed much more focused on pouring wine for and chatting with customers he knew, rather than us. During both visits, when he finally did acknowledge us, he quickly poured wine wordlessly, then moved back to his preferred customers.
The ultimate customer service fail for us was committed by a younger member of the store's staff. During our first visit, he quickly greeted us, answered our questions, and walked us through picking out three bottles of wine that later turned out to be great. As we paid, we asked him about a particular product we didn't see on the store's shelves. He confirmed he could probably find it, wrote our contact info in a spiral notebook, and told us he'd be in contact in about a week. Three weeks later, during a tasting event, we approached him about the special request. Unfortunately, he had no recollection of the previous conversation, and seemed unable to locate the notebook where he wrote our information. However, he apologized and again took down our information, this time on a post-it. As we left that night, we tried to be optimistic, but had a bad feeling the post-it went right in the trash the second we walked out. Several weeks later we saw the employee at a pre-holiday tasting event. Unfortunately, it felt like groundhog day...he again had no recollection of either of the two previous conversations, and seemed unable to locate either the notebook or the post-it. He again apologized. And, again wrote our information down...this time on a blank piece of paper. He then assured us he'd work on our request the next day...that was almost a month ago, and we still haven't heard from him or anyone else at the store.
We're done waiting, done being treated poorly, done spending money at this store. This place may be near our house, but there's no need to go back to a shop that doesn't value us. There are plenty of good wine shops a few minutes further away..
As a side note, during a neighborhood holiday gathering a couple weeks ago, we told this story to our neighbors... read more
