Bid for Wine Reviews 6

I’ve found most of the sellers to be trustworthy and good communicators. Unfortunately those running the site itself are not helpful at all. It has been over a week without any meaningful reply about a refund for an item that didn’t arrive, and the executive chairman supposedly handling the matter has been slow and scatty in his email replies. No sense of urgency at all with £200 at stake.

Scam website. The company probably doesn't exist.

Tried ringing the company/customer service no one answers the phone.

Tried emailing the company no one replies (I emailed them months ago!)

Hopeless trying to contact them for weeks now

Website is an utter mess. Impossible to properly navigate. Only allowed to select one region and then 'Bam!', you're handed the list. Not possible, for example, to select Burgundy AND Bordeaux for one search. It keeps taking you out of an incomplete search and dumping you back to the start. Just awful.

Easy to use platform for both selling and buying. You just need to be careful, some sellers disappear or make excuses if their items sell at a price they are not happy with (item now missing or bottle broken). Also sellers take a lot longer to dispatch items after sale for some reason. Bidforwine Customer service will help, but there is not much they can do. I think there should be a three strikes and you’re out policy when the sale committed to is not completed.

I like to sell odd bottles from my cellar to free up space for new arrivals and find that single bottles sell best. The platform overall is a good experience. Final selling fees of 10% are reasonable.

It is a platform with no responsibility for delivery etc. and non- payment. It Allows sellers to invoice, confirm shipment and delivery

Like ebay , buyers pay promptly and they can track their wine from invoice, payment to delivery to their front doors. You need to understand that wine is perishable and there is no comeback if wine is not drinkable.

Beware, as sellers you need to ship, some couriers accept wine shipments and take insurance premium but will not pay for loss or damage e.g. Dhl . I ship via parcelforce and there are premium costs to Northern Ireland.

Having paid an invoice for wine AND shipping costs to my home address, Bid for Wine informed me it would be an extra £52.50 for delivery (because I live in Belfast, NI). Explaining that I'd lived there quite a while and that a shipment bought a couple of weeks earlier (still in 2021) was not subject to this charge, and that contractually I had paid for shipping, and that it was their mistake, they refused to ship to me (oh - but they could ship to mainland GB - where I don't actually live - yeah, useful...)
I have had several shipments of wine from other companies (since purchasing from Bid for Wine) and none of them imposed such a ridiculous "admin" cost on top of normal shipping costs.
The fact that clear shipping costs were not stated originally before purchase is not the customer's mistake - it is Bid for Wine's. And the fact they were not prepared to admit this, tells me a lot about their integrity, and readiness to honour contracts.
Finally refunded 5 weeks later.