Good Customer Care Tales

I had an off bottle of apis V from elevation brewing, they sent me a box of swag and a replacement bottle. Those dudes rule. I had a similar issue with a bottle of red poppy from lost Abby, they didn't even respond to my email.

 

Sixpoint customer service is absolutely world class for breweries and for that matter any business.

 

Shane of Sixpoint went way over and above.

I made a comment about Bengali Tiger not being so great back when it was a 16x4.

Shane contacted me and said he would send me fresh tiger.

A box showed up with 4 different fresh 4 packs and a few homebrews.

I have continued to buy and try all of the sixpoint beers I find since then.

Other great service

DFH
Victory
Philadelphia brewing
Sierra Nevada
Guinness
Saranac
Prism


Not good at all

Bruery ......put all blame on Whole Foods. A sub $10 bottle of Uncarbonated non dated beer cost them any future purchase for over 6 years already.

Founders....would not even answer why my mix case was packed on x date but the beer inside was much older and the pale ale and IPA were not fresh at all. I only buy the occasional 15 pack when it's on sale for $12-15.

Enjoy

 

I’m gonna go ahead and third Shane from Sixpoint. I sent an email about my undying love for jammer, and he showed all the love right back at me. Great guy, great company, and it only heightened my respect for them; that they truly appreciate and acknowledge their customers’ feedback. They are always a go-to for me now.

Also great service/responsiveness from:
Knee Deep Brewing
The White Hag (Ireland)
Stone

 

Clown Shoes. I has a BBA stout that tasted thin and sour. I mentioned it on the forum here and they hand delivered me a box of brewery swag and replacement beer. Great guys.

Also sixpoint. I emailed just to give them can info on a batch of beer I had bought that had a buttery peppery twang to it. I wanted nothing more than to just inform them. They sent me a ridiculously generous box even after I told them it wasn't needed.

 

Almost three years ago, I had just gotten into craft. I had no glassware so had my first few craft at home out of coffee mugs or *shudder* the bottle. I went into a local craft shop and found a bomber of Kasteel Barista Chocolate Quad Belgian Ale. Upon checkout, I mentioned to the owner that I needed to find some decent glassware. She had me follow her back to the office, rummaged around, and came up with a sample glass which she gave me. It was the coolest Kasteel glass. This has been my favorite shop since.

 

I went to the first or second Boss Tweed release release at Old Nation about a year ago. The guy in front of me snagged the last four pack.

The bartender offered me one of the 4 packs that she had purchased for herself earlier in the day.

 

Oskar Blues for sure, I commented on old stock and they contacted me and it hold them what was around. They sent a 4 pk of GKnight which in never ever available here for whatever reason.

Old Mecklenburg. Same thing with old stock on the shelf, they are meticulous about the care of their product, and they sent a rep out who pulled the old stock and replaced it. Offered up some beers at the brewery by the sales rep, but Charlotte is 2 hours away. Sadly then retracted to Charlotte only distro because of the NC distro laws.

Thers some really top notch breweries out there that really care about the product and their customers.the only brewery that I've contacted that came to nothing was NoDa in Charlotte. Hop,Drop and Roll used to be a tremendous beer, I traded it can for can for Heady back in the day Heady was dominating the Ipa world. Then they upped production and went to a centrifuge, and the beer just collapsed, not just off but truly terrible. I sent them an e mail and nothing but crickets. It's been years and thst beer still isn't worth a damn, surely you would think in 3-4 years the Brewer would be able to dial it back in, but that's not the case.

 

Sam Adams and Victory brewing have given me great customer service and attention that was commensurate with my concern. I got flat beer once form sam adams who promptly refunded my money and victory sent me a t shirt, if I rememberfor, a beer that was off. My local beer store and I tried to do an "email me if this comes in" but that did not work for me. No fault of theirs. I find the stories about free beer and schwag for complaining about beer do not apply to me. I decided that bad beer was part of the shelf experience and have since tasted infected beer. In fact that is how I learned what infection is. Boos to hitachino nest for not even responding to my concerns over expired beer that was infected.

 

Permit me to provide another 'shout out' for Sixpoint brewing.

A number of years ago I had an 'issue' with a 4-pack of Crisp that was contract brewed at the Lion Brewery (Wilkes-Barre, PA). I sent an generic e-mail to Sixpoint and Shane himself responded. We exchanged a number of e-mails and the wold became 'right'.

I have recently interacted with the Sixpoint team on some sensory evaluations of beer exercise. Everybody I have dealt with has been polite and professional.

Cheers to the Sixpoint Brewing team!!!!!

@Sixpoint

 

Ditto here, pretty much exactly the same thing.

 

Mostly it's the Cali IPAs that are taking a major hit here, great beers like FW, Knee Deep are getting crushed, behind that most Victory are 4-6 months old too. Have to say Mickkeller SD is just killing it on the ipas, but their special releases that move pretty well. Still you have to watch there's still some full price, but I saw some Drinko De Mayo out there too, and the last one I had weeks ago was already a malty mess. Total wine cut the price in half weeks ago and it wasn't worth drinking then. Not so sure I understand the tolerance for 3 month old IPAs on the shelf, for the most part this style isn't really compatible with a lot of age on it, it's intended to be consumed fresh. I like drinking NEIPAS at Resident Culture right out of their bright tanks.

 

Sometimes the bad beer experience is painful, but I did learn not to buy German Imports from Total Wine after a dreadful experience with a St Pauli Girl that was evidently brewed using cabbage instead of malt. My house stunk for hours after popping the cap on hat one.

 

Read and love all the positive stories about our favorite breweries! I have no story to share, but wanted to convey how nice it is to hear about positive experiences rather than the opposite. Good folks out there. Thank you for caring about the consumer!

 

Yes, it's all too easy to get hung up on the negative. The OP asked for positive, but some negative/bad experiences crept in.

 

I went into Total Wine, their website said they had some Logsdon Seizone Bretta available. I go there specifically for this beer and there is none on the shelf. I call a manager over and tell him that despite what the website says, I didn’t see any of the beer on the shelf. He looked up and down the aisle even looked in the back for the stuff to no avail. He proceeded to give me a $25 gift card as an apology for their website being inaccurate, which I thought was polite as I was not looking for any sort of compensation for the situation.

 

Good customer care to me is listening to a problem or concern, addressing the concern, issuing a refund if applicable, staying in touch about what was done, inviting the customer back, that sort of thing. I don't consider 'customer service' to be overloading a complainant with 4x the beer that they had an issue with and then throwing in loads of swag and t-shirts on top of that. That, to me, is 1) a payoff not to damage a reputation on social media, and 2) a great source of free advertising (your car now carries our bumper sticker and you're wearing our shirt!).
Why do some people want something for nothing?

 

Forgot this one

I was sent a check for the cost of a six pack of Rebel IPA along with a hand written note from Jim Koch. He signed the check as well.

I still try their beers when I see them.

Enjoy