Tasting Room by Lot 18 – Wine Subscription Review

Simply put, this company is a fraud. They just billed me $203 for an order I did not place, three full years after I ordered (but never received) their sampler. They claim to have shipped to a work address I haven’t been at for 2.5 years. They do not answer their phone or respond to email and they outright lied to the credit card company about the charge.

Avoid Tasting Room!

I signed in because they stated they would send me “Free” samples.
The “Free” samples cost $10.77. (they are only 50ml each, not enough to make a decision)
However, they wanted me to sign in to PayPal. 4 weeks later they sent a case of wine that I did NOT WANT! If you try to return the shipment they will charge you for “Restocking and their shipping”
So you’ll be out over half of the cost. Total cost was $184.00. over $15 a bottle.
Some of their wine is just ok, but I do not like white wine!
Most of it is CHEAP WINE!!! With plastic corks.
They must get great deals on wine that won’t sell.
White wine should be consumed within 2 yrs of vintage.
If you buy a bottle of Chardonnay 1956 you are a FOOL!
Do not do business with these people!

Don’t use this service. I received the initial kit and then called to cancel my account. The Tasting Room had already shipped me a case of wine that I did not want and did not order. The person on the phone was extremely rude and claimed there was no documentation of my cancellation, even though you have to phone to cancel, rather than cancel on the web site.

Tasting Room is a HUGE rip off with terrible customer service. Not only was my shipment not delivered, but when I called about it the representative made it sound like they would reprocess and refund my money. They refunded my money from the first shipment and then immediately charged full price for the reprocessed shipment – no discount or break on the shipping charges. I called and asked to cancel the whole thing. She said I could refuse the package but would still have to pay a restocking fee! All the while, she was rude and accused me of being argumentative when all I was doing was asking for a discount or to speak to the manager. In the end, she refused to pass the call to the manager stating I would hear back in 2-3 days!!?? What!? And as if that wasn’t upsetting enough, she hung up on me. DO NOT GO THROUGH THIS COMPANY! There are many more out there with better ratings, prices and service.

I am a member of several high quality wine clubs and Tasting Room is not one of them. I should’ve known it was a scam wine club when it was a requirement to pay for the 6 sample bottles. A wine club with confidence in their wines would’ve provided the sample bottles for free. Not Tasting Room. Well, the wife and I sampled all six bottles and for one of the few times in our lives we completely agreed… They all sucked!

Assuming (I know, my fault) that since we never completed the sign up process (we never informed Tasting Room which bottles we liked because they all sucked! and we never joined a whites, reds, or reds & whites membership) my belief was that we never officially joined the club. Well, that was wrong! Tasting Room put us in a membership program of their choosing (not mine) and sent us a shipment without my knowledge. My first indication was the charge on my credit card! I immediately cancelled my membership that they started for me and did not sign for the package which was sent back.

Thinking that I finally extracted myself from this bogus wine club they later charged me $15 for a restocking fee. For a shipment I didn’t ask for and didn’t know was being sent. Very nice scam you have going here Tasting Room, very nice indeed.

So a call to their customer service was as worthless as the email I sent to them earlier. Their response, you didn’t read the rules and we did what we said we’d do. Sorry you don’t like it, but read the rules! Sure, if you’re a scam wine club you can hide behind your rules. But honest wine clubs want their customers to be satisfied and try to make amends rather than point to their rules. Not Tasting Room. The ‘customer service’ rep hung up on me while I was still talking to her.

Their are plenty of wine clubs out their that are legitimate and provide good value and good service. And then there is Tasting Room with a business plan that apparently just wants to take money from their ‘members’ via their rules and not their product which should be good wine. For a good online wine club I recommend Virgin Wines or Naked Wines as they provide good wine and good customer satisfaction. Tasting Room is in short supply of either of those qualities.

Avoid, avoid, avoid.

I consider their way of doing business to be fraudulent. Sent wines weeks before they said they would and won’t budge on returning them or crediting my account.

Avoid, avoid, avoid.

This company is unethical and will place orders for you that are not authorized. From what I can tell, one person works in their call center. Run from this company!

My response to tastingroom.com after filing a complaint to the BBB. Tasting room responds by blaming me for being charged for wine I did not order.
Your Answer Here]This company is doing the same thing to hundreds of innocent consumers. When you do a search on Tasting Room and Lot18 there are so many people who have been tricked by the fact this wine club “subscription” is hidden in the terms and conditions. Tasting Room gets your credit card info when you sign up for the trail of tiny sample bottles of wine. You are told you will be offered great deals on wine. You are not told they will auto ship it to you. The manager Raven at tasting room who said she would be responding to my complaint is correct in saying Tasting Room sent me lots and LOTS of emails…none however that mention I have a shipment of wine coming..wine I did not order..There are no emails suggesting I have this wine coming and can cancel if I don’t want it. The only email that says anything about this wine is an email on 10/8/2014 saying your wine is on the way! I did indeed call several times trying to get through to someone who could help stop the order by calling the warehouse. The customer service are completely unsympathetic and well trained at how to address this common complaint to Tasting Room / Lot 18. They tell you it can’t be cancelled. Which is ridiculous because the charge went through on my card on 10/09/2014 and then I received another email today 10/10/2014 saying the wine shipped. So to say this wine I did not order can not be cancelled is quite sad. This is truly a pathetic way to scam customers. When you see the many chats people are having about Tasting Room / Lot18 you can see photos of the people. These are real hard working people Tasting Room is clearly taking advantage of. Apparently Tasting Room also sends out 12 bottles of un-ordered wine for $149 to many of its unknowing customers and will not let any one cancel even though many of us are savvy, so as soon as we see an email saying we are receiving something we did not order, we call in time to stop the order, but tastingroom.com Lot18 will not stop the order. I hope someone finds a way to stop them from taking advantage of people. There are six bottles of wine that I do not want going to my home in California and I am not even in California at this time. I am care taking my Grandfather who is dying. So thank you Tasting Room for adding more stress to my week. This is truly an unethical way of doing business. Shame on you for trying to shame your customers by tricking us. I don’t want $60 worth of wine that I did not order going to my house right now, how can I prevent this? Also everyone talking about Tasting Room says the wine is very low quality 🙁

I got suckered in on this one. I’ve been trying to cancel, with no luck.

I’ve sent email. No reply.

I’ve called. The queues are an hour long, and the option to leave a voicemail just disconnects.

I have several subscriptions out there, and Lot18 has topped them all in terms of a bad customer experience. There’s no way to cancel or opt out via their website. You can email, but they won’t respond. You can call, but they won’t return a message…when you can get one through.

We received the cute tasting box and was immediately disappointed. Not a single taste was decent. The credit card I had on order was due to expire and I let it lapse. I received several emails from tasting room stating my card had expired. Move the clock forward 6 months later and all of a sudden an unmarked box shipped from a shipping house near Napa Airport arrived. We were completely perplex on the source of the box which contained 6 bottles of wine. On the wine labels we noticed in fine print lot18. This led me to login to the tasting room account to see that somehow my credit card had been updated. I associated the credit card update with a recent online purchase at ticketfly. We tried 2 of the bottles and found the wine absolutely terrible – just like the cute taster bottles. So – we are in the hole for about $70 and I have tried to cancel via email and phone calls with no response yet.

I strongly advise not subscribing to this club. They are sending junk wine with marked up prices. The wine is not $7 quality, the wine is very much $2 quality.

Thanks for a great post and informative comments! I could not find any information (aside from the initial tasting bottles) regarding costs on the Tasting Room website.

I understand BevMo (in CA) offers a money back guarantee (I don’t know the details, but was told by the clerk I could bring the remaining wine, if I didn’t like it, in the bottle back for a credit). With their 5 cent bottle promotions, I imagine you can probably do better than this club.

Thanks again for a great review.

I signed up for the Club, received the sampler box right away, provided feedback and then…nothing. I checked my account status but it didn’t have any information. I sent an email and nothing. I called. Nothing. I joined because I liked that I could quit anytime. I didn’t realize joining would be the problem.

Disappointed. I was totally excited until I learned the shipments are 2/3 red wine 1/3 white wine. I am a white wine drinker so when I requested a white wine only shipment and white wine only profile I was told they can’t do it. They only offer red wine only shipments. Even though my wine profile says I am a red wine critic and white wine Cool customer/drinker my next shipment had 4 red bottles and 1 white wine bottle. That’s a waste of money for me. No where in their FAQ do they mention this.

I need help on canceling my wine with lot18 from tasting room but no answers and no one is returning my email…. Help what do I do

How long did it take you guys to receive your tasting box? The website says 3-8 days but I’m now on day 12 (business days)…was shipping slow for you all too? I haven’t gotten a response from the email I sent :-(.

I have tried the Tasting Room Lot 18 and received one shipment of their wine. I can only say the quality of their wines is substandard (to say at least) across the board. Trader Joe’s ‘two buck Chuck’ puts Tasting Room Lot 18 wines to shame. After cancelling the membership (and receiving a confirmation) they ‘forced’ me to accept a shipment. This wine club certainly doesn’t deserve a recommendation of any kind for their products or the club itself.

Having a side job in a wine shop, I think this is such a great idea for people that live far from easily accessible wine shops. Otherwise, you never get to taste wines and figure out what you do and don’t like.

Ironically, my Taster’s Box came today. I had to laugh because it was sitting on my doorstep with a few other boxes. The front clearly stated that it needed an in person signature. None of my neighbors signed for it so I guess some drivers find ways around it. The Box is cute and I look forward to trying the wines this weekend!

Thanks for posting. I signed up too since I live in Pennsylvania as well. Did you have to sign in person or were you able to sign a notice on your door? I’m afraid mine will be returned since no one is home during regular deliver hours. Thanks!

I have purchased through Lot 18 before. The wines were just ok. $7 is fair price, and you could go to your wine shop and get the same quality wine you will receive in your Lot 18 box. $14 per bottle is a rip-off, though. Now, I purchase my wine at a shop by the case with a 15% discount and often a mail in rebate of $12-$36. So 12 bottles at $10 each = $120-$18 discount=$102 -$12 rebate=$90 for a case of good wine (better than you’d get in your lot 18 box).