Bourbon County Coffee 2015 - Gusher?

Exactly.

 

Looks like if they suck, you can at least get your money back!

 

That is a bit piss poor. 3 key pieces of information are missing:
- How widespread is the problem
- What to do if you haven't opened any bottles yet
- What limits on time-frame / number of bottles are there for the refund

 

So here is the big question. I have 4 Coffee and 4 BW's that i would rather drink (if they are good) than return....so is this refund only for a limited time or can i wait a few months and if they turn out to be turds, get a refund then?

 

I wonder if they would require a receipt. I've got 1 BW and 1 Coffee that I plan on drinking this weekend but never saved the receipt.

 

I'd rather have a non-infected beer than some cash.

 

So would I - but at least there is a backup plan...

 

I drank a bottle last night and then had it on tap today. There is a big difference for sure with on tap being much more coffee and chocolate forward. The bottle I had certainly had a sour characteristic to it that was not there at all in the pour I had on tap today.

 

Someone needs to call 1-800-Goose-Me and post details here.

 

doing it now

edit: got straight through - very nice lady is looking into it - i'm on hold

 

With respect to your first point, I'm not sure why it matters whether they address how widespread it is because they are offering a refund for anyone who wants it. That being said, they didn't qualify the issue by saying there are issues with "some of" the Coffee and Barleywines - they just said there was an issue with those two variants, straight up. That makes me think they believe the infection might hit all of them. Or maybe they don't know yet how widespread it is.

As for your second point, it's pretty clear. You can drink it, and if you don't like it you can get a refund. Not sure what else they needed to say?

The third point is key and they really need to address that one. If we want to age these beers (which they encourage doing on the bottle!), can we still get a refund in 5 years if we open it and it sucks?

 

My guess is that an attorney or two urged them away from providing much concrete information on this, even if they have it. Because, broadcasting the extent of the problem only results in negative outcomes for GI. From their perspective, all attempting to put a number on the size of the problem does is 1) give people a reason to get more angry (if it is indeed pretty widespread), 2) potentially encourages people to seek a refund when they had a good bottle--people are probably a little more emboldened to do this if there is a general understanding of the problem being widespread, and 3) opens them up to risk of being painted as lying or downplaying the problem if it turns out to be even larger than they estimate.

Not saying they are right to withhold the information, just that I think I understand the reason. On the other hand, they may not really know for sure. If there is no pattern to the reports they are getting, it would make it harder to nail down a root cause and therefore know the extent of the problem. And here is where false positives might potentially have an impact, tying this back to the earlier discussion...

Time to do a little amateur lawyering of my own: the release doesn't specifically say that you can only get a refund of an unopened bottle, and in fact, it directly implies that you can get a refund on an opened bottle with the bit about "leading us to provide refunds for anyone who is unsatisfied with them". Hard to be unsatisfied with something you haven't opened.

These are both excellent questions. Perhaps a continuation of wanting to minimize the people seeking refunds to those who actually received bad bottles? By being coy with the detailed logistics of the refunds, you make it a little harder to scam the system, and they are likely presuming that anyone who was actually harmed will call the hotline and have those questions answered there.

If they are planning on refunding for all bottles without a time-frame and without bottle limits, they'd understandably want to keep that quiet. As long as they are telling people who call, that seems reasonable to me.

I would call the hotline, personally. Your reason for waiting is entirely reasonable, although GI may want to put a timeframe on the refunds since some bottles that are good now may/will get worse with time.

 

As long as I get the timeframe thing cleared up, I'm happy with this solution. If it's just for a limited time, then I'll drink up my other BCBCS sooner than planned. Of course, given the possible infected status, that probably makes sense to do anyway.

 

My distain for AB/InBev is no secret. Saying that, I don't know what else you could ask for.

 

I'm curious about the burden of proof they will require?

I'm sure many have already drank and discarded their bottles. Are they SOL?

And you know many will try and get money out of them even if they never had any BCBCS or BCBW.

What a shit show this could be....

 

I would very much like to know if they are sure the coffee and barleywine are the only variants that have an infection. A few people have said they thought regular was infected. It would be nice to know if I should start crushing regular bottles.

The potential refund is a start, but they should have provided more information on what is needed for a refund.

 

I don't understand why anyone's posting their questions here. You have a # to call to get any question answered. I guess that would be harder than complaining here.

 

I'm pretty sure they could've offered up bottles of Prop or Rare to replace it with, and people still would complain about it.

 

They posted a phone number for you to call. You can call that number and they'll walk you through the process I'm sure.

 

OK, so got some answers.

Obviously this is all pretty new to them so this is just what I was told as one of the first people to call:

• So far no reports of any issues on Prop / Rare / Regular, so this is apparently isolated to coffee and Barleywine. They said they would let everyone know if it was a wider issue.
  • I didn't ask if they are testing the crap out of batches of those, but I can only assume so - they seemed very diligent.
• They don't want you to return unopened bottles (can't accept them back apparently it is a beer / alcohol thing)
• They took down the information I had on EVERY bottle (opened or not) and apparently will look at it and send a refund for them all (was a bit stunned at this). I have 9 Barleywine and 2 Coffee and they didn't even blink.
• They asked me for the store I bought it at, and what I paid, and then gave me a reference number and email address and asked that I email them as many of the receipts I could find (digging through the pile now... sigh).
  • Didn't say I had to have a receipt - was just a 'whatever you can find, we know people don't keep all these things'
    
  • Presumably if you are out of state or did a trade, you just say you bought it while on vacation over thanksgiving in a city where they sell the stuff - if you only have 1 or 2 bottles I doubt they are going to bother with the receipts

• Total time it took was about 15 minutes, and frankly the nice person had to go ask 3 or 4 questions because I am one of the first to call in.

• I was told to expect a check in the mail for the full amount I paid, + taxes and everything - but I did pay recommended retail ($12.99) for almost all of mine so I just went with that as the price for all of them.

Hope this clarifies for everyone. I was a bit stunned they were going to refund all of them, and I asked straight up if I should call in each bottle one by one as I opened it and report it as bad, and was told not to bother, they will process them all in one go now. No idea if that will turn out to be true, as the person on the phone was just taking my info and passing it all on down the line to someone else, and this is all about 30 minutes old, so they are probably figuring out the kinks.

Was a super painless and extremely helpful experience that I couldn't really ask any more of - so far so good!