Last month I purchased some champagne from K&L. Small grower bubbly with good reviews. I like to try bubbly from lots of different producers.

The champagnes arrived in good shape. After a couple of weeks we opened one of each, a 1990 René Collard Champagne Brut Cuvée Réservée and a N.V. René Collard Champagne Cuvee Ultime Ultra Brut. These champagnes were not damaged but they were just plain bad. There was no resemblance to the reviews. Mr. Winetex made me pour both of them out.

I contacted K&L and the champagne buyer, Gary Westby, told me that the wines had been recently disgorged due to a situation with Mr. Collard and that they should improve dramatically with some time. He then offered to take back all of the bottles and credit me for the bad bottles.

Kudos to K&L for superb customer service. And FYI I did not send back the bottles because with that degree of assurance I'm going to give them a chance.

More kudos to K&L for the apparent resolution of Davidn's 2001 d'Yquem problem.

*No affiliation just a satisfied customer.

I love K&L, never anything but excellent experiences with them. They also have (by far) the best real-time e-commerce wine site out there, showing precise real-time inventory of all wines. The on-line order history and order status is also second to none, and has proven invaluable for me.

I agree that K&L has an excellent e-commerce system. I do not find it second to none however.

JW, what system would you consider better?

In many aspects, Vinfolio's model is a substantial improvement over K&Ls. As I said K&L's is quite good but it is fairly limited compared to Vinfolio. In short state of the art is Vinfolio not K&L.

The business model may be better at vinfolio but the website at K&L is second to none. The web site is part of the POS system so the web site is hooked in to the real time inventory. This is a real key. Plus the purchasing sequence is well thought out and easy to use.

Have you used the vinfolio system? That's the way their system works too except they give you some huge other benefits such as tracking costs, prearrivals, etc from third parties. Its not a closed system like K&L.

I've looked at vinfolio and they are different than K&L. K&L is just a seller if wines. Their website is made to help K&L facilitate this and does a very good job. Vinofolio wants to manage your collection and sell you services along with selling you wine (and possibly acting as a seller of your wine). They are in two slightly different markets although they do overlap. From a website perspective I like K&L's site better as it is cleaner and simpler (which IMHO is always a good thing). The Vinfolio website has more bells and whistles which I may or may not make use of.

I haven't checked out Vinfolio yet, so I cannot make a comparison (yet), I'm looking forward to giving it a spin.

Let me know what you think of it. I certainly have no problem with K&L's system and it is far better than other retailers.

Jones - to help us understand the benefits of Vinfolio can you please do a quick report on them in a separate thread? I've only quickly gone through their services and they didn't really grab me. Note that this was when VF was in its infancy.

I just checke dout vinfolio (did not see a new thread started...). So it's a free website as long as you buy $500 in 2 months or $1000 in 6 months or some other options...

Is this really for someone who is going to use all the other services and not for a more 'casual' buyer (like me)?

I gotta say... I am now a K&L convert. They indeed satisfy me in a surprising manner.

I will do all I can to direct some of my business to K&L in 2006.

The thing I like about the website is their "keyword" notification system (or whatever they call it). I have registered some "key words" with them and everytime they receive something with my "key word" in it I am notified instantly by email.

I think K&L is 1st class with great service and personnel.

Their website is one of the better ones I've used. My criticisms of the website are as follows:

The "sort" feature is very limited.

Also, I find their system for tracking pre-arrivals confusing. If I remember, it shows the order as being fulfilled even though it hasn't been delivered (instead of pending).

My only other complaint is that their tastings are mediocre. The Wine Club has a better selection of wines to taste.

I've had pretty good success with this store. Their online inventory (as skwid pointed out) is quite valuable.

My only (very slight) issue with them is their 'on again and off again' shipping procedures to the east coast. I realize this is a very sticky issue, but most other stores never have had problems shipping to NJ or NY.

This being said, my last purchase (of '01 Peby Faugeres) was quite painless.

I've been shopping at their Redwood City store since the early 1980's, I dropped by weekly until I moved 40 miles away. At the time, they were my favorite wine shop, great prices and pretty broad selection (although Liquor Barn gave them some healthy competition before they went bust). The internet has expanded the number of places I shop, but they are still one of my favorite stores. The in-store tastings aren't very interesting unless they have a producer visiting from abroad. They used to run (maybe still run) more formal evening tastings that were interesting and good bargains. They also have a nice liquor selection. As Short mentioned, they have become fairly risk-averse as far as shipping policies.

-Al

I can reply that K&L is without doubt better than VinFolio. I ordered two bottles of Scholium from VinFolio via their web site. First, they sent me an email that the order was received, stating they will contact me within one business day to "confirm available quantities and payment details".

Later that day I received an email that the order was confirmed.

Still later that day I received an email with my invoice. Surprisingly, the invoice included the cost of shipping materials ($2), but not the cost of shipping. I still don't know what they charged for shipping.

It took more emails and phone calls to get it shipped out. The person handling my transaction was out on vacation, so there was some confusion involved.

All in all, Vinfolio gets a C+ for this experience.

If you are a member, apparently you get first crack at wines for sale, and you also get "Free Local Saver delivery service".. whatever that means.

K&L's website and inventory tracking is as good as it gets in the business. As Randy notes to have a great web and inventory system is very expensive. Most wine businesses don't have the kind of margins to implement something quite that good so they improve in small increments.

Randy,

It really isn't fair to judge the service of a retailer based on one transaction.

We deliver about 300 appliances every day. They all go perfectly except for one. And that's the one that shows up in Action Line or on some complaint board somewhere.

This is why I think WineTex has a good idea with this series of postings. If a particular retailer is screwing up more than usual it could show up here.

I wish these posting had their only little folder somewhere so they will be easier to find six months from now. Easier for people to update also.

It is also very important that if one experiences good service they put that here too. We all like to complane but if things go right there isn't much to talk about. We shouldn't let that happen.