This place deserves to go out of business.
I was looking for liquor stores to frequent as I spend a fair amount of time in Northern Colorado. I found this store and saw they had their own online system not a third part. I saw a bottle I had been looking for so I went ahead and placed an order through their online system and received a confirmation email which also let me know if there was a problem with the order they would contact me. In the meantime my card was charged. I set a pickup time for the next day. I received no call or contact that the order could not be filled, my card was charged and no reversal was made, so I went ahead to pick up my order during the time I selected. When I got there I was told they saw the order and it was not filled because they made a mistake putting something on their online system they didn't want to sell online. When I asked how it happens that they could knowingly not fill the order, not contact me and not cancel it, wasting my time driving over and back. Not being able to fill an order happens, not following through and wasting customers time is a choice. I was told to take it up with the owner Ken.
I asked for Ken's card so I could follow up with him, the female indicated she was getting it for me. At this point a male clerk came over, not sure of the name but I'm sure the business knows who it would be. He proceeded to verbally assault me, utilizing curse words and threatening me if I didn't leave. Note: Not once did I raise my voice or verbally attack the staff. After the profanity from his mouth, I did tell him I would like to record how he talks to customers. I let him know I was waiting for Ken's contact info and I would be on my way. He continued to verbally berate me, then told me I would not be getting Ken's contact and I should leave. I confirmed that the order had finally been cancelled and left.
I wasted my time trying to spend money with this store, I should have known better, both up front and once I arrived. I did learn two things about this business:
1. Don't be fooled be the location or size of the building, the shelves are very empty, with bottles spaced around in a losing battle to make the shelves look full. A rough estimate is this store could fit in 30% of the space. The look of a big higher volume store is a mirage. It looks like a dying liquor store that distributors have but on a leash because they can't pay for the inventory. Usually this can be solved by selling to customers, but that assumes you can grow a customer base, not sure that is happening here (see point 2)
2. Pay attention to reviews. This store gets 3.5 stars on yelp, not because they are average, but because they have a lot of 1 star reviews, many of which mention words like rude staff as the problem. It's hard for a retail business to do get that many bad reviews and surprising when most of the bad ones mention a common fixable thing, how staff interact with customers.
3. There is nothing for sale in this store that you can't buy across the street or at any other liquor store in town both in terms of selection and price. There are better liquor stores in Loveland read the reviews and frequent them. Most of them would welcome a new customer and will work to make you a repeat customer.
I will not be surprised to see this business shuttered. My experience could have been different. Following through with a notification the order was cancelled would have been fine, it happens, at some point I would have stopped by to check them out anyway. But after the mistake was made and I wasn't notified, when I arrived, basic customer service skills would have turned the interaction into one where I would have been disappointed the order wasn't filled but would have believed World Beverage is a decent business. As it stands they blew the first and second impression chance, I will not give them another chance. I will also discourage others from shopping here. They don't deserve the business.
Normally I would hope they figure it out, but I can't, it's clearly a choice let staff treat customers rudely and with profanity. Retail is a customer business first and only, if you can't handle that part of it, then you shouldn't be in business. read more