During a trade, if you know that your box was delivered safely and received by a person not left on the porch should you wait to hear from the trader before drinking the beer? My box arrived to my trader Friday night. I have not heard anything from the trader. I even sent a BM to said trader to make sure all was well with my box. I have a tasting tomorrow night and I would really like to take what I received.
The general consensus seems to be that if the box got delivered to the address he gave you, it is no longer your responsibility, but his. EDIT: The only exception, I suppose, would be if a bottle broke inside the box but it got delivered anyway.
I think that if your tracking information states delivered, especially if received, it's kosher to drink the beer. If there is any issue, the end result of rectifying it is sending more beer to replace, not sending back the trade. I'd just avoid drinking the WHOLE trades contents
Drink the Parabola. If something happened, there are plenty more bottles out there, and you will be able to find a new one to replace it.
The only time you really need to wait is if you sent something you couldn't replace without great effort. The odds of something happening are quite low, and at some level it is your recipient's responsibility to respond to you in a timely manner after your box has arrived.
Not to threadjack, but I'd like to ask a question also since I've had this happen a few times (but with nothing exceptionally rare). What does or should happen when a bottle gets broken? This week I lost one bottle in a package with many, and I still had 5 of the same beer remaining, so it wasn't a huge deal, but is there any normal follow up for this? And what about when something super rare or expensive gets broken?
Everyone does things differently, but if it was part of the trade, I'd replace it. If it was an extra, maybe not. If I couldn't replace it, I'd talk with the other person and figure out what I could replace it with or which trade beers I need to send back.
I had this happen in a BIF, and I had to trade for a replacement for a bottle that had been broken (IST), and tossed in a few more extras to help smooth it over. The beer wasn't expected on my target's part, and I could've just replaced the bottles with anything, but that's not the point, right?
If fedex/UPS says delivered then you've done your part. I treat all trades as "FOB destination" That said if something went wrong I'd probably try and fix anything I could but wouldn't feel obliged to
I just let the guy know something had broken and he said he would try to take care of me in the future (we have traded before and will likely trade again).
I'll generally wait until the person on the other end of the trade gives me the "all clear" and I know everything arrived safely. In most cases that takes a day at the most. I can (usually) wait a day to drink whatever they sent me. Unless it's Pliny or Heady. Waiting that day will obviously destroy those two.
