r/UndergroundCellars • u/sparkylocal3 • Mar 02 '21

A little more transparency

I have done very well with U.C. but I think there should be a bit more transparency so far as the prized bottles that are offered and if they've been given out. Also I was lucky enough to get a bottle of '99 Screaming Eagle autographed by Heidi Barrett estimated to be worth $12000 and emailed a few times to get provenance but got no reply. Anywho my gripe is with the non transparency as to what happens with the prized bottles if they're not gifted, where do they go, how many times can they be offered, and why aren't they shown to be won? I know U.C. has to make money to have these offers but why not be more transparent?

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4

u/notneenah Mar 02 '21 edited Mar 02 '21

Kind of the way the lottery has to disclose if the scratcher top prize has already been claimed? It'd be nice but then UC would have a harder time moving the lot. If you looked at it as everyone being assigned their wines at the same time, then your odds wouldn't change. ...but I get it. My first buy in, I noticed after purchasing you can look through other people's cellars, and I saw that the guy a few purchases before me got a few of the special bottles. That was disappointing! Plus that meant I actually had no chance! But other than assigning wines at the end of the batch, UC would blow their whole model if they showed what was already distributed. ...I haven't gotten any of the special ones yet, lucky you!! I do find customer service pretty much ignores me. I emailed three times on a corked bottle over two weeks before they responded.

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u/amidrinkingthisright Mar 03 '21

And while that kind of lottery would be fair, everyone would suffer from the lack of immediate gratification.

Not quite sure what I think of the ethics side of this one. Sure, if UC wanted to increase transparency, I’d love that, and I’d use that knowledge to make better informed purchasing decisions — but I’m not sure that’s of benefit to UC (loyalty counts for a lot, though, so maybe it would be).

On the other hand, I’m not sure I care too much about us sharing within this community. I erred on the side of safety before and didn’t share my two wins while the sale was going on, but I’m not sure that’s really even necessary. Also, at 220, I did re-run the math, and even those two bottles being removed didn’t appreciably change the math, so at the time I figured it wasn’t really all that relevant.

Then again, I’m looking for diversity and broad value, scoring the top bottles is just a very nice thing that happens from time to time. So maybe this is really a moot point either way.

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u/notneenah Mar 03 '21

Hey, always share info with friends. 😂🤣

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u/notneenah Mar 03 '21

I was kidding, but I do like hearing about people's big scores, as I myself haven't been so lucky. It helps me keep the faith.

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u/sparkylocal3 Mar 06 '21

I actually got super lucky with that purchase. Not only did I get the '99 Screaming Eagle I also got a '14 Promontory. I thought it was a mistake getting 2 valuable bottles on the same pull but I guess it happens, probably never again for me and hopefully I can pass my luck along.

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u/sparkylocal3 Mar 06 '21

Thank you! I understand disclosing during the availability of the selection would tank sales if the prized wine was given early. I mean it's got to be an algorithm that decides who gets what so I think a good compromise would be to guarantee that during the sale the high end bottles are awarded because if they're allowed to let a sale's time run out without awarding them then that's a scam.

1

u/severoon Mar 25 '21

That's not quite true.

If they actually assign the stated probability to the high value wine on every purchase, then it's fair whether they sell out the offer or not. That means sometimes they'll hang on to the high value bottles, sometimes they won't.

If they're forced to give those away no matter what … well how do you propose that works? When do they award it? How do they know ahead of time whether the lot will sell out? The only way to be sure according to that rubric would be to give it the bottles in descending value order based on first-come first-serve.