Casey C.

I've been ordering regularly from WSJ Wine for going on 4 years, and I can attest it is definitely not a scam. I began as a wine club member, getting a shipment of 12 bottles each quarter but canceled after 2 quarters because I just wasn't drinking enough of it to keep up with the shipments (we're members of 3 other local wine clubs, as well). I was frustrated that I couldn't cancel online and had to actually call and deal with the sales pitch, but they did cancel my membership when asked. Since then, I've been ordering new vintages of wines I liked from my 2 club shipments, as well as others on the site that seem like good buys, and I usually get a mystery case at year-end. I think a lot of people don't realize that you can buy from WSJ Wine without being a club member and having a recurring payment that you have to proactively cancel or skip. I haven't been a club member since 2016, and I still get to order exactly the wines I want, when I want. I only pay when I submit an order. And I've genuinely liked most of the wines they've shipped (hint: if you use the thumbs up & thumbs down feature on the site to rate the wines they've sent, it mightily improves your future recommendations).

The one problem I've had with them started late in 2019, when I ordered a presale of Chateau Sixtine's newest vintage of their Chateaneuf du Pape, which required an upfront deposit. WSJ Wine said the shipment would be delivered in early November, but it wasn't. I was patient, as I know they don't have a ton of control over allocations from vineyards abroad. Suspecting I wouldn't get the shipment in time for Thanksgiving, I ordered some other wines from them instead, which were to be delivered more than a week ahead of the holiday. Those didn't arrive on time either. When I reached out via email, I was promised a response within 2 business days and didn't get one. After a few days, they replied, apologized for the delay, and offered me a generous credit on my account toward a future purchase. A month later, when my presale CDP still hadn't arrived, I reached out again and got the same response about shipment delays. Finally, they called and said the presale allocation had arrived from the producer and was due to be shipped soon. Because there had been such a lengthy delay, they wanted to make sure my shipping address and payment info hadn't changed. My major issue with all of this isn't the delays; I understand that WSJ Wine doesn't produce the wine and that sometimes the fault for the delay is on the producer. But they should've contacted me as soon as they knew there were delays in shipment. They should never miss a delivery date without notifying the customer in advance. Because they have to receive the wine from the producer before they can ship it to me, they absolutely know when something is going to be late, and they could easily set up an automated system to email customers about delays when the wines ordered aren't in inventory within, say, 5 days before the estimated delivery date. That's truly all I ask. I don't ask that they develop magic powers and have the wine teleported from France on a moment's notice. I just ask that when I've paid for something that isn't going to arrive when they said it would, they notify me instead of forcing me to chase down an answer.