Workers At A Total Wine Store Treated Customers Rudely That They Placed A Huge Order They Never Intended To Pay For

Matthew Gilligan

9 months ago

Source: Reddit/AITA/Pexels

Well, this a weird one…

And you’re gonna see exactly what I’m talking about in just a minute!

Check out how this person got petty revenge after workers at a Total Wine store decided to give them a hard for for no apparent reason.

Total wine would not sell me the specific wine I drove 60 miles to that location for.

“There’s a specific wine I use to pair with food the closest total wine that had it was a 60 mile drive and it was storming out and I wanted it for the holidays because most likely was going to be cooped up inside.

So I drive over, this used to be my typical total wine until I moved 2 counties away.

Anyways I go in and pickup the wine and get some other stuff for holiday parties was in there maybe an hour and it comes time to check out and the cashier asks me for my iD so I give it to her and then she tells me she needs to see the iD of the other person I was with so now I’m confused and say I’m alone? And she says well I have to go get my manager. Ok fine?

They weren’t budging.

So he comes out to tell me that she told him I was with someone and they need to come back and bring their iD or they won’t sell it to me.

I told him I wasn’t with anyone. He asks to see my iD looks at it and says “well unfortunately you look young”

At this point I’m like are you serious??? And he’s like “you can come back tomorrow ALONE”

What the…?

I find it extremely disrespectful to tell someone they look young while you’re holding their iD in your hand and not to mention I’ve been shopping at that exact location for about 4 years and have never had a problem

So I told him about how I drove there and have been shopping there for years and that I even have a second form of iD and he was just kind of giggling and saying no.

So I left very angry and it was late around 9 pm and then I had the about hour and a half drive back home in the rain storm.

So I was home upset about it all night and the next day I went in to the one close to my house to get the other stuff I was getting unfortunately that one was out of the wine that’s why I didn’t originally go there.

They were pleasant as usual actually beyond nice and didn’t even iD me which just goes to show the other location was on some kind of power trip or something.

Then I got an email from them to review my experience. Which they send every time I go there and I never do it but I decided to select the location I had the bad experience at and give feed back on it.

Honesty is the best policy.

So I wrote exactly what happened and then the next day I got a call from the store manager. Turns out the guy that night was an assistant manager or something. However he was much more pleasant than the woman that called me.

She was extremely rude and condescending and told me that she reviewed the cameras and that someone walked in with me at the same time and that made us a party. I told her I didn’t know them. She said it didn’t matter. So apparently people can’t walk in to total wine at the same time as you???

Then she said that the employees were watching me and that the person left 30 minutes before I went to check out and they saw it.

This whole thing was ridiculous.

Ok so? Also if that is the case and that is your policy, why didn’t you say something when you saw the person leave and we could have cleared up the whole situation right then and there. Instead of continuing to allow me to shop for another 30 minutes and waste my time to know that when I came to check out you were going to deny it?

So I told her even if that is the case someone can’t leave a store??? And she said “no. To complete the transaction they would have to drive back with their iD”.

This made me extremely angry because even if that is the case and that is your policy at least you can offer an apology for the inconvenience or something like that. Not just call me to argue and stir the pot. I was already kind of over it because it had been like 2 days but just her whole attitude and nastiness about the whole thing was really insult to injury.

So I decided to look up their policy and their policy clearly states that this only applies to parties at checkout so the rule is who is with you at checkout which that makes sense or is at least more understandable.

Another policy I read which was interesting was that any online order not picked up within a week they will issue a full refund to your original payment method.

So my friends and I were sitting home drinking the stuff I had got at the other location later that day and telling them what happened and they were all shocked.

I used to work retail for a long time specifically during covid and I know what an inconvenience it is to setup big curbside pickup orders because they take up a lot of space on the order shelf.

It was time to get back at them.

So intoxicated and mad, I decided to enforce their own policy on them and make a $10,000 order for the soonest possible pickup time which they promise orders ready in 3 hours.

So I made sure to order the cheapest heaviest bottles I could think of so it can take up the most amount of space in their curbside are and made sure to only order like 1 or 2 of each so they couldn’t just give me a case they had to get individual ones and I ordered their whole supply of Tito’s since it’s popular and it’s the holidays and I know people are going to be looking for it and this total wine has its curbside order section in the front behind a counter where you can see it

And I know when customers saw it they would ask for it and then they would have to explain how someone ordered all 238 bottles and they’re back there on reserve. Then they’d probably get grouchy and ask for a manager.

But the manager would be busy because I also made sure to order a lot of bottles behind glass so they would have to run around with their keys scrambling to get this order ready. I worked retail and I know how much stuff like this throws off a schedule and annoys the managers.

Time to place the order!

So I loaded up the cart and stopped when I got bored and placed the order. I got the email confirmation which specified that you have to wait for the pickup confirmation email and that pickup times aren’t guaranteed so I thought for sure they were either going to cancel the order or call me or something.

And something interesting that is sent with the email is a pickup policy that states specifically “the recipient of the order needs to be 21” so you can have other people in your car not 21???

Well 5 hours later I got the pickup email. It took them longer but I was still surprised.

Then later I got a pickup reminder email. Then 3 days later a second reminder. Then 7 days I got my “final notice” email.

Good to hear your voice!

And then day 10 I got a phone call. It was the manager acting like a completely different person this time asking when I was coming for the order. At this point I think she knew I was messing with them because it had been 10 days and she knew my name from the previous feedback thing because when she called she asked for me by name and my name was on the order

So I told her “yeah I went to pick it up and was told I look too young, so I just went to the other total wine and picked it up the same stuff there”

So then she was mad and said “are you seriously not coming to pick this up?” Lollll restockkkkkkk

I just said “nahhh”

She hung up.

When your higher up asked you why your store had to refund someone $10,000 explain to them what you did.

They were supposed to automatically cancel the order at the 7 day mark but didn’t she called me at the 10 day.

So I called their customer service line to cancel it and she told me some stores wait to the end of the month to do it.

I’m assuming the manger was trying to hold out on refunding to end the year on a better number. Retail does that.

I made them cancel it right then.”

Here’s what Reddit users had to say about this.

One person isn’t a fan of Total Wine…