Festive Period & Delivery Disruptions (2023)

With the lead up to Christmas now well on the way and the volume of orders accelerating for us. We wanted to address a few things regarding our service from the point of order. We are a small family business, and are unable to operate like a large company with lots of staff at their disposal so please do keep that in mind. I hope this article shines a light on our side of the ordering process.

First things first, Christmas and New Years!

I hope you have a wonderful festive period this year. This our annual reminder that we are closed from Friday 22nd December until Wednesday 3rd January. So any orders between those dates will be on hold until we are back. The last day we will be dispatching orders will be on Thursday 21st December so if you want your order before Christmas get it in prior to the 21st! Thank you!

Dispatch and stock

As stated in our Postage & Packaging section we aim to dispatch your order in 1-2 business days. This is our target, we won't always be able to fulfil orders in that time period for various reasons. These might be anything from us being out of office for business purposes, a lack of stock which we are waiting to receive to fulfil your order and so on.

Our stock situation is always fluid as it is directly connected to the supply chain for our wholesale (business) customers. Which is why we do kindly request you drop us an email at jamie@robertsonwines.co.uk with a list of what you'd like to order prior to checking out to ensure we have the stock. Otherwise we may have to pause your order until we receive more stock, offer substitutions or refunds. We leave that choice to you as the customer which you'd prefer.

Delivery charges

Our delivery price is on average higher than others, but we're not trying to rip you off. Believe it or not, the actual cost for us to ship your order is quite a bit higher than what you pay, we absorb a lot of this cost. Our negotiated rates with UPS increase by weight, and it only increases beyond 18 kg. A case of 12 is on average 15 kg. So you pay the same to us for a case of 6 as you do for a case of 12. This is sadly unavoidable. 

Breakages, damage and service disruptions from UPS.

This is an unfortunate reality of shipping fragile items such as glass bottles. Our packaging is strong and up to the standards of UPS however that does not mean breakages don't happen. If there is an issue with your order such as damage, we are informed however, are not given the details on exactly what might have happened, we have to press them for this information and launch investigations for them which is frustrating. But if your order has been damaged, lost or whatever else, don't worry. We'll sort it out and offer you different solutions.

We are unable to issue refunds or cancel orders if UPS have not deemed the package damaged, destroyed or lost. We can only officially issue the refund once that has been confirmed. This is due to the possibility of your order actually turning up post-refund. Which as you can understand, would put us in a bad position.

Why we use UPS

We have used UPS since we started back in 2019. With their UPS Standard service being next day delivery, it's always a fast service albeit not always terribly reliable. As a small business we are unable to meet the order volume required commitments asked of by other couriers to open an alcohol business shipping account with them. Because in order to ship alcohol, there's certain additional steps and paperwork needed to open a courier contract.

Improvements for the future

To limit the amount of incidents with our courier we are looking into steps for 2024 where we can even further strengthen our packaging. This would sadly increase our postage and packaging fees further. We are looking into every way possible we can accommodate these improvements with limited negative affects on our loyal customer base.

Thank you

A huge thank you from this little father and son family business. Your interest in our carefully crafted selection of wine, and your willingness to give our little company a go means a lot to us. Have a fantastic Christmas and a Happy New Year. Here's to 2024!