Refunds for 2015 Regular BCBS and 2015 Prop

Or "up to $15" could mean $15 for Prop and less for regular. The wording is sort of ambiguous.

 

I saved the one bottle I opened fully expecting something like this. Did you think they'd just let anyone send a note saying they want a refund? Isn't this similar to what they did with the initial BCBCS and BCBBW refunds?

 

Agree it's a bit ambiguous but it could also mean less for Prop as you point out for regular. I suspect it will be $15 each. I'm just happy they are offering refunds for regular as I have some 10/22 bottles.

 

No, with those they basically "just let anyone send a note saying they want a refund," so I can understand why some people are surprised. On the other hand, I can understand why the first round may not have worked out well either.

There was probably no way that this was going to be resolved such that everyone was happy. Personally, I am just happy that they are doing something since for a long time it looked like they may not, although I suppose that's easy for me to say since I kept my bottles.

 

I live in a small apartment in NYC, so me saving bottles of something that was bad? Yeah, no. I do save my receipts however. So why not offer customers the option of the bottle labels OR the receipts? Wouldn't that be "above and beyond?"

If Binny's, who they have a partnership with and happen to be the store of choice that receives the largest allotment of Prop gouges, shouldn't GI rethink that relationship? Seems they support gouging then. Should the customer be the one left holding the bag when things go wrong? Why should they get screwed? It's not that $10 makes or breaks anything, it's the principle involved. And I'm fine with a cap on the refund for Prop, but no store was charging anywhere close to $15. Stop with the nonsense as well. No reasonable person is asking to be refunded their gas money.

And I don't know if your last paragraph was directed at me, but I said they did very well with their first round. But this round? Terrible.

 

Prop refund up to $25 now per GI. Consistent internet pressure along with involving retailers that we're getting the black eye was just the right cocktail to get everyone an extra $10 and right that wrong.

 

Customers shouldn't be the ones to suffer in this. It's GI's product, plain and simple and they ultimately bear responsibility. They should refund full amount paid by consumer (those which purchased it from any store that got the product from a distributor) with proof of a receipt. The store and distributor can refund their share of the cost. Why is the consumer taking the big hit and not the distributor who pushed more GI products onto stores in order to get more BCBS allocations and the stores that gouged people?

GI is as complicit as anyone in the whole over charging thing, they know the MSRP is completely a joke, their brewpub was charging $60 a bottle for an infected beer. How has GI not worked with their distributors to get infected product out of vendor's hands? I know of stores still offering coffee and barleywine despite the recall being 6 months old, but luckily their inflated pricing has kept consumers at bay.

Edit: Just saw PHBoiler's post, at least this is moving in the right direction. Now they just have to get it to double msrp (which is what it was going for by me) with tax included and then it is right in my book.

 

Wow...I didn't get any of the variants, so I didn't know. I'm shocked that they didn't require a label or something for those. I'm betting they had more requests than bottles sold.

I just assumed they'd require some proof of purchase and almost nobody would have the receipt, so a label was the obvious answer to me. I had 5 bottles of regular (a 4 pack and one from a vertical). I drank one bottle about 6 weeks ago and saved it due to the talk here.

 

Of course, the problem with receipts is that they don't typically designate bottling dates and times. If they accepted both, then how, exactly would they prevent a refund from being offered multiple times on a single bottle? They have to choose one way to do it, and I have a feeling they chose the way that they expected most people would actually be able to take advantage of--I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that you are in the extreme minority of people who save receipts from months-old beer purchases.

My point is that what stores actually charged *doesn't matter*. I'm not going to argue about what stores charged because I don't know. I will point out that at least one comment in this thread mentioned Binny's charging $15 for Prop. Again, I don't know first hand--so I'm just pointing it out. It's different than gas money on some level, but on another it's not--no matter what extra costs any individual consumer accepted to obtain the beer, it doesn't change what amount GI was actually paid by their distributors when selling it.

My last paragraph was more of a general observation, but I do find that the categorization of this round of refunds as "terrible" is completely unreasonable.

 

Damn... My whole stash is affected... Oh well, at least they have figured it out and are giving a solid refund!

 

So if we are in possession of ones that dont have the bad bottling dates, are we to assume those are COMPLETELY fine?

Have they said anything about what caused those certain batches to be bad? And why they are sure the others arent bad?

 

It appears GI has changed the refund amount on Prop '15 to $25. So, I'll withdrawal my qualms on that front.

However, I stand pat on the labels vs. receipts argument. And if you read the comments on GI's Facebook page and other beer sites, I appear to not be alone and perhaps not in the minority either. If GI wanted us to save our bad bottles, they should have communicated that the moment that people started posting about tart beers. Instead, they denied it for an unreasonable period of time, then said they were investigating it for a while, and then told us they needed bottle labels for refunds. So yeah, "terrible" is definitely an appropriate description for the way they have handled things this round.

 

Going forward I'd suggest everybody hang on to their neck tags and photograph corresponding time stamps regardless of the affected batches.

 

Well this sucks. I have one bottle left I was saving to share with a friend whenever he came back home. And I wish I had saved the bottle of the one I drank during the Super Bowl lol.

 

Should I write on the envelope that I wear a large shirt? Or a hat to go with it would be nice.

I'll check my bottles when I get home. I only had a few.

 

I missed out on the first round of refunds because I didn't know anything about the problems with the coffee and barleywine (at the time I didn't really frequent message boards or news sites - in fact, that issue is what finally made me start coming to this site).

Now I'm gonna miss out on this round because I didn't think to keep the bottles (based on the last refund cycle, bottles/neck labels weren't needed).

Sorta bummed at the whole thing.

Weirdly enough, I DO still have my receipt and I would be more than fine with vouchers for future bottles instead of a check.

 

Does anyone else have a bottle of Prop where the date/time stamp area is just blank? Just looked at my last bottle.

 

I've got 4 bad bottles (all I have). Wonderful.

Kind of wish they'd replace the product instead of offering a refund. I want the beer, it isn't about the money for me. It's irritating.

 

Don't worry, if karma exists then 2016 should be the year of Bourbon County Zika