QB Wine Club

Today marks the end of an era in our household. For almost a year now, we have been members of the BV wine club. I loooooove BV wine, and we visited the winery on our trip to Napa last fall. Being a wine club member gets you 20% off their wine and merchandise and also 2 bottles of wine per month. In February, I called to cancel it because it was kind of ridiculous to be spending $55/month for 2 bottles of wine when the hubby was not working. It was one of those expenses that had to go. But... the nice salesperson talked me into going to quarterly shipments rather than monthly. This seemed like a good compromise... we'd be saving money, but I'd still be getting my BV.

When we got our first quarterly shipment in June, the price had gone up like $20/shipment, which I was not expecting. There was some email that went out to all members that talked about a small price increase, but 40%? come on! 

For the past week, UPS has been trying to deliver our September shipment. Already being irritated at the price increase, I grew more irritated when I came home 3 days in a row to UPS notes on the door saying they had come by, signature was required, and they would come back tomorrow "sometime." Well... I can't really take a whole day off work to wait for wine, right?! Now... if they'd said that it would be between 8 and 10 or whatever, I could work something out. So today I had to drive down to the UPS customer care center to pick it up. Mind you... I only knew where to go after calling the 1-800 number on the final notice slip. There was no indication of where my poor package was, just that they had come by for the final time with it. Joy. So, I left for the customer care center around 3:20, trying to avoid rush hour.

There are 2 UPS centers serving the north Dallas area that I am aware of - one in Denton, one in Mesquite. Both are between 35-60 minute drives from my house, depending on traffic. I arrived at the customer care center at around 4:05 (42 min drive time). I went up to the door and gave it a push. It didn't budge. I gave it a pull. No budge. Then I noticed the Closed sign. Oh, right... their hours are 4:30-6:30pm. This customer is not feeling so cared about!!! So, I waited in my car for 25 minutes, calling JennAnn's office to leave her a voicemail and Facebook status updating. The round trip time for getting my wine was 2 hours. 

On the drive home, I called BV to cancel my membership. My irritation had increased when I saw the info sheet on the 2 bottles of wine. One was valued at $30, one at $18. My shipment was $78. I called the husband, told him I cancelled it, and proposed that once a quarter we go to one of the wine shops and pick out a few nice bottles. We should be able to get 3 decent bottles, and I won't have to spend 2 hours in the car!