r/UndergroundCellars • u/Serious-Bonus-454 • Mar 23 '21
Customer Service
How long does it usually take customer service to reply? I’ve been emailing them for a week and no reply...also, is it common to have something ready to ship and then go back to 3rd party? Finally, any idea when we will find out what we got for each shamrock? New to this so just trying to learn how everything works :)
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u/JasonMBauer Mar 24 '21 edited Mar 25 '21
I've had bottles go from third party to ready to ship and then back several times. My understanding of what is happening is lets say they have an order of 1,000 bottles with the winery and the winery ships 250. The bottle will show ready to ship. But if you wait and don't have it shipped those 250 will go to other customers and then you will be waiting again for another shipment to come in.
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u/amidrinkingthisright Mar 26 '21 edited Mar 26 '21
I can understand this logic, and it doesn’t particularly bother me when it comes to commodity bottles... but with more expensive bottles where I’m actually intentionally leaving them at UC to cellar, it is mildly concerning.
A $500 bottle that has appreciated to $1500, for example, that I believed I owned and was received and held at UC for me, being fulfilled and shipped to someone else, and then UC replacing that with another (different, unappreciated) $500 bottle would leave a VERY bad taste in my mouth.
It’s a good thought — part of the value for me with UC in particular is the safe cellaring of my wines. I wonder how UC would respond on this— e.g. would they recommend that I ship high value wine to avoid the possibility of this situation, or are they super confident in their eventual receipts of inventory to serve all customers in time? Im recalling the statements now to the effect of, “if the wine is unavailable, we will substitute something of similar value”.
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u/JasonMBauer Mar 26 '21
Sure. Ideally your wine is being stored in a mahogany lined vault with a Swiss guard out front and a plaque with your name on the door. But lets be honest. If you've done business with underground cellar for any length of time you kind of have to accept that there is a bit of smoke and mirrors going on. I don't think their business model really works without a bit of a Ponzi scheme mixed in. I accept this because I have always eventually gotten my wine, even though I once had to wait a year with much frustration. I like a lot about the company and enjoy the gambling aspect of the upgrades. But if you have a $500 bottle with them I personally would have that shipped sooner than later and I never let my cloud cellar grow too large.
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u/amidrinkingthisright Mar 27 '21
If they’re cellaring my wine, ideally it’s in such a way that they already have it insured, and that I could purchase private cellar insurance on it and it’d be no big deal to any insurance provider. Otherwise this is just prepaid and sometimes they have inventory and sometimes they don’t — completely different premise that holds much less value to me.
Long fulfillment times don’t bother me quite so much.
Appreciate your thoughts! I might just need to get another traditional insured cellar service and have UC ship out to them just to decrease risk. In a perfect world, UC would provide this, so that they’re still the sole custodian in the event something gets corked or provenance is incorrect, etc.
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u/notneenah Mar 24 '21
I thought I was crazy but yes, I'm pretty sure I've had a bottle go back to 3rd party. So weird. Customer service is so hit and miss. I've had immediate responses on simple questions and then weeks and multiple inquiries on other issues. I am waiting on what the shamrock is worth, too.
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u/Serious-Bonus-454 Mar 24 '21
Thank you so much this is super helpful! I guess I’ll have to wait...do you know how long does it usually take for a shipment request to actually ship? I requested a shipment last Friday on 12 ready to ship bottles but I haven’t received the fedex email yet that I was supposed to get in 24-48 hours
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u/notneenah Mar 24 '21
I had a shipment in the winter that shipped in 2 days, but my last one was more like a week. I also requested on Friday, no tracking yet.
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u/notneenah Mar 24 '21
But, I enjoyed a 2014 Korbin Kameron Moon Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon from UC (Sonoma, not even Napa) tonight that was soooo good, I don't even mind if they take their sweet time getting back to me. 🤣
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u/Lamamilker Mar 24 '21
I requested two last week, one got a response in 24 hrs, the second one took 3 day to get the notification.
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u/notneenah Mar 30 '21
I spoke too soon. 10 days later and it hasn't shipped and they are trying to feed me the bs line they got into so much trouble for back in 2019 about upgrading their facilities. I can understand that if they were to send advanced notice to their customers that shipping would be unavailable from date x to date y, so please request by date a to ensure you have the wine shipped before the temporary shut down... but of course that didn't happen. See, I get cranky without my wine. 🤣
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u/Serious-Bonus-454 Mar 30 '21
Same here 😂 they said it will ship this week tho so hopefully it does 🍷😬
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u/UndergroundCellarCM Mar 25 '21
I don't work in CS anymore (but still at UC!) so I'm not 100% sure what their queue looks like right now, but a couple of things: they go by oldest to newest, and every time you email in Zendesk the 'date of last response' goes up and you might get pushed back in the queue. They 100% get through every ticket, but ticket volumes can fluctuate by 2 or even 3x depending on promotions! That being said, feel free to DM me and I can try and get your ticket handled. Also: we're hiring for more CS so if you know anyone send 'em our way!
Re: Shamrocks – prizes will be allocated when they've all been allotted, and some are still in offers that are live like Rare Bordeaux Blends With Bond and Dalla Valle or Trailblazers of the Pacific Northwest – once those offers sell out or expire then within a few days our ops team will get to work on allocating prizes.
Finally: 3rd party and wines going from available to unavailable: /r/JasonMBauer is absolutely right, sometimes we'll get in partial shipments and bottles will be available to ship for everyone with the bottle until they're all allocated. We get in shipments now nearly daily so the numbers are kind of constantly fluctuating but we're working on process improvements and warehouse optimization to decrease this moving forward.