(Don’t worry, it’s a safe for work rant, no bleep-worthy swearies here, no sir.)
I must declare my fondness for absinthe from the get-go. It’s a strange and mysterious drink, ideal for lazy afternoons watching the world drift by, evening fireside chats and late-night heavy-duty rumination. It’s a perfect drink for people like me with odd brain-wiring.
I was first introduced to absinthe around 3 years ago by Jen of regularjen.com (latterly also of absinthehour.com), my first purchase being a 70cl bottle of Verte de Fougerolles 72abv from Liqueurs de France, a joy to behold and – more importantly – drink.
Another 3 bottles of different brands and types followed after that, and following a recent spate of sociable activities involving introducing more people to absinthe, I was running a bit low on stock. I had about two measures of Clandestine blue left in the bottle. Fast forward to last weekend, and it was time to place an order for reinforcements.
My usual absinthe supplier, eabsinthe, had all the stuff I wanted, all apparently in stock:
Clandestine Capricieuse Absinthe 72abv 70cl
Eichelberger 68 Limitée 68%abv 50cl
La Fee Parisienne 68abv 50cl Gift Boxed
An order for 106GBP was placed (including duty and 9.95GBP for shipping), email confirmation was received. The weekend was a Bank Holiday, meaning that the whole country has a day off on Monday, little or no order processing takes place. I was expecting the order to be processed on Tuesday, despatched same day or next day, and arrive next day or the day after.
My order status was updated on the Tuesday from ‘Processing’ to ‘Despatched’. Lovely, absinthe on the way! I received an automated despatch from eabsinthe saying that my order had been despatched by Parcel Force and had a tracking number of PBJC1028416001.
Some alarm bells immediately rang in my head: Parcel Force are a frankly god-awful courier firm. Rarely do any Parcel Force transactions go well for me. Maybe I’m just jinxed, but they just don’t hit the spot for me. I won’t go into it here, suffice to say if something’s being delivered by PF, I’m not exactly over-confident. Most sensible couriers deliver here during the morning, when we’re in. Mr City Link is usually between 8am and 9am, the others arrive mid to late morning. Parcel Force leave us to the last drop of the day, usually. The time varies wildly. I digress.
Another alarm bell: the tracking number didn’t check out on the Parcel Force site. To be frank, my slightly OCD brain didn’t immediately think the reference number looked like a legit tracking number – I thought Royal Mail and Parcel Force tracking IDs ended in GB. After a day of waiting for a package to arrive on Wednesday, I re-checked the Parcel Force website to see if the tracking number was playing ball. It wasn’t.
No delivery on Thursday, either. Late Thursday afternoon, I used the eabsinthe contact form to get a valid tracking number and to see what was happening to my package. By mid-afternoon today (we’re on Friday), no packages had arrived, no reply to my contact form submission and a sense of humour failure was imminent. I tried (and failed) to find a phone number for eabsinthe. Nothing listed on the website. Hmm, more alarm bells.
Some more digging gave me a direct email, to which I sent an enquiry email, an email which – by my admittedly verbose standards – was quite terse and to-the-point, requesting a refund. An apologetic email came back an hour or so later from a chap at the customer service dept at eabsinthe explaining that one of the items was out-of-stock for duty paid customers and was holding up my order and a refund will be following shortly. Without reproducing his email here (I don’t do that without prior permission), he was genuinely apologetic that I hadn’t been kept updated on order progress etc. I’m assuming there were export bottles of the Eichelberger 68 in stock for despatch to America, but none for me, the dude just down the road. Nice.
I don’t know why I got a tracking number for a package that didn’t exist. This isn’t cheap tat off eBay (‘yes mate, i’ve posted it yesterday, honest. here’s the badly-Photoshopped tracking receipt’). I don’t know why people still use Parcel Force as a courier. There are cheaper and better alternatives readily available (City Link is my personal fave right now).
Before I ordered from eabsinthe, I was greeted by a shouty banner proclaiming 25% off selected absinthes for non-EU destinations. Lovely, I thought. A great way to make Limey purchasers feel instantly ripped-off. Note to anyone running an ecommerce outlet: by all means have these offers for certain geographical areas, just have something in place to not advertise them to ineligible parties (like me). IP filtering, geographical whizziness, I don’t care – just don’t bark about great deals that are irrelevant to me.
Bad experience of purchasing, duff tracking number, sketchy info on the website, no phone number listed…confidence in eabsinthe as a supplier is now zero. This whole bad experience has certainly put me off buying any La Feé in future – I certainly won’t be returning to eabsinthe or buying anything that supports the eabsinthe empire. I’ll take my expensive absinthe habit elsewhere, thanks.
Hopefully it’s a horrible one-off experience, somehow I think I won’t be the last person to fall foul of George Rowley’s eabsinthe.
Commenting is closed for this article.
Yuck. It’s been awhile since I last ordered from them but the tracking number thing sounds really awful. Shame too, as I’ve had a decent customer relationship with them in the past.
For the record, I know Alan Moss and he’s no longer with eAb or LF. And he’s a pretty good guy. I’m sure he was just doing his job. He’s with La Clandestine now.
As you pick a new outlet for your absinthe, you can come have a glass with me! I have enough to share with you! :)
Hey Jen – good to know about Alan Moss, thanks for the info there. I’ll hold onto my money for a while, I’ve been a little knocked-back by the whole experience to go splashing the cash around elsewhere right now.
I know what you mean about the past experiences, I’d been getting on fine with them until now :(
Hi Pete & Jen.
I have just come home (a little too well oiled from a few shandies…) to a note from UPS saying my parcel has been delivered to a neighbour! This scares the life out of me as it is £400 worth of kit delivered to what can only be described as mentalists, will wait until tomorrow morning until I go round with 999 already keyed into the phone! Will no doubt be answered with ‘what parcel’ tomorrow. I wish someone would tell me why couriers only run 9-5 mon – fri? Rant over, Jen’s photos have had me fancying absinthe for a while now, mmmm – I know where not to order!
Pete,
Very sorry to hear about your problems here. If you email me directly, I may be able to give you direct contact details for eAbsinthe.
I wonder if you can help me. Some people may read just the article you have written here, and may not notice the comments. They might therefore think that I am in some way responsible for your problem.
If possible, I would therefore be grateful if you could remove the references to me in the article.
Cheers,
Alan
Hey Alan – yes, of course, I’ll change the article and make it clear you’re not involved. If I don’t hear back from eAb today, I’ll drop you a line :)