Just Whisky Reviews 

Reply from Just Whisky

Nov 11, 2019

Hi Lydia,

Thanks for taking the time to leave a review and for placing your order! I appreciate sometimes when buying at auction the 'extra' bits and bobs can look like a lot, especially on a cheaper bottle. We are not a shop and don't have any profit margin on the product price. Usually, a shop buys for X and sells for Y, so can subsidise shipping costs. An auction has no profit margin on the hammer price, so any money we make appears as an extra cost. For what it's worth I still think you got a great deal on this bottle.

The whisky you bought is available at retail, where there are no 'extra' costs, but the price is £120.00 (you paid £94.57 so saved over £25 versus buying at retail.

Regarding your bill, if you don't mind me sharing for the interests of clarity, here is a breakdown:

Winning Bid: £73.50
Buyers Commission £8.82, of which we pay £1.47 to the HMRC for VAT
Shipping £9.60 (Approximately £1.50 for packing costs, around £6 for shipping and £1.60 VAT)
Order Insurance, which is optional: £2.65 which could have been deselected but protects the shipment against loss or the bottle from being broken.
Total cost £94.57.

From your £73.50 bottle we made around £8.00. From that £8.00, we have rent to pay, staff costs, bills, rates, website hosting, IT, advertising costs etc.

I hope this goes some way to explain any 'extra' costs at an auction versus buying at retail. From this example, you saved £25 versus retail despite your complaint.

If you had any gripes over the service you received I'm happy to look at this, but to leave a 3-star review based on information that is clear on the website I feel is a *wee* bit harsh to me, but you are entitled to your opinion and the platform is open for all feedback!

Thanks again for taking the time to leave your feedback.

Reply from Just Whisky

Oct 21, 2019

Hi Will. I'm sorry to hear you think we ignored you. I just double-checked and we actually sent 5 emails about this but couldn't come to an agreement on how to proceed. For a bit of perspective about what this review is about - we sent a set of 8 bottles from the UK to USA and they were described as 70cl bottles. It turns out that we made a listing error (our fault completely) and one of the bottles was actually a larger 75cl version. You wanted a refund for the entire order. As the bottle was low value, and return shipping would cost more we offered you a 20% discount for the 'inconvenience' of having a larger bottle. I think we were being very reasonable but sorry to hear you think we were not accommodating to your request.