Berry Bros. & Rudd Avis 82

Atrocious customer service. Cant they pick up the phone? Why have a contact number??

UPDATE 14th March.

Following publication of this review and several apologetic phone calls and an email from Berry Bros & Rudd’s customer services department, the matter was addressed with an emergency delivery of my wines from Andover (which would be a considerable expense). I am genuinely appreciative of that effort, which I acknowledge here and I urge the company to make every effort to address the website failings which will remain a massive irritation and concern for customers until it is functioning properly. In that way, they will reduce considerably, the strain on their phone helpline which has had to take the strain.

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From 13th March 2026.

ORDER 5XXXX45

Sirs,

Absolutely TERRIBLE service from BBR this week, a very definite degeneration and my worst experience in over 20 years as a customer. The website is not functioning properly and IT is cursorily blamed by the glib individuals who eventually answer frustrated callers. which does not bode well.

I tried to call in stocks of my wines on Tuesday 10th March. The functionality on your website prevented me from registering a credit card and gave me no options for simply inputing a number to pay. I am perfectly computer literate and tried multiple times but kept going around in circles and eventually gave up. I had to wait on the phone for an inordinate amount of time to speak to someone who then walked through the screens with me which clearly did not correspond with what I was seeing on the final page. She couldn’t explain the anomaly but took my order and payment and said everything was successfully processed and that my wines would be delivered today Friday 13th in time for a dinner I am hosting this evening. She also asked that I take a screenshot of the page where I was prevented from entering cc details, which I did and sent it as requested with a brief explanation, to which I haven’t received an acknowledgment or response.

I have stayed home today awaiting the delivery, but by 11am had not received any notifications, so went onto the website and saw that the order remained ‘pending' without any delivery scheduled. I phoned to speak to customer services and once again had to wait more than 12 minutes to speak to someone who could see very quickly that the order was not out for delivery and gave some fatuous response about a new IT system and reaching out (does anyone respond well to crappy, meaningless jargon?) to his line manager about me being annoyed and inconvenienced by the really poor service.

This is wholly unacceptable for an organisation which relies on reputation for quality of product and service. In fact I would go as far as to call it contemptuous and inept. Perhaps your business model has altered? As a long standing customer, I feel completely let down and disrespected by BBR. There doesn’t seem to be any genuine customer service any longer and I have no idea when my property will be delivered to me or indeed the reason why (what used to be) such a simple transaction has become so tiresome and laborious for the customer and incompetently handled by your business.

Perhaps someone could inform me in writing (I have no appetite to speak with another platitude waffling flunky) what has gone wrong and how you intend to rectify the situation.

Yours &etc.

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In the meantime I feel obligated to share my experience and opinion on any and all public platforms available to me until the matter is satisfactorily resolved.

Dear Berry Bros. & Rudd,
I must express my disbelief at the rudeness and incompetence shown throughout this process. After bombarding me with endless emails due to your new system failing, you now casually ask how I’d like to receive my cellar wine.
This level of poor service is unacceptable. Please resolve delivery promptly without further hassle.
Regards,

Website, whether you are purchasing wine, or trying to administer your trading account, is now almost unusable. Every major change they make to the website, makes the software harder and harder to use.

Obviously user experience will always be subjective, but the ridiculous number of steps speak for themselves. From the link sent in the email advising that I need to amend a listing price, I am taken to a page, with the wine listed, but no ability to change anything. I need to click a down arrow(not obvious), then click on selling options. Then click on edit listing details. At last I can amend my list price. But if I want to see how much everyone else is selling this wine for, or indeed bid for more, I have to go back to start.

If you ask a committee to design a horse, you will end up with a camel. Well whoever designed this software has given us a three legged camel that is half dead.

As I said. Virtually unusable.

Requested a withdrawal from my account with BBR almost 2 weeks ago. I was told I need to wait 10 days for a ‘cooling off’ period. Then confirmed my withdrawal would be included in a payment run on 22nd (today as I key this) but told another 2-3 days. Very disappointing to hear additional delay however the payment landed in my account just after midnight day 1.

BBR cut my Sadie Family wines allocation drastically in 2024, with no credible explanation, despite having bought these wines from them for many years. When I complained, they promised to do better next year... Reader, Im afraid that it was no great surprise when i was offered literally nothing in 2025, apart from yet more feeble excuses when I complained, again. Terrible company - now completely untrustworthy it seems...

*** Update - contrary to the reply from BBR, this situtation has not been resolved. A misleading message, which should be disregarded

I've been a customer of BBR for around 5 years, and have purchased a significant amount of wine through their en primeur service over the years. However, my experience with the 2021 and 2023 vintages has been nothing short of disastrous.

The wines recommended by our account manager were bought at prices now sitting 26–28% above current LiveEx market value. This isn’t a minor dip—it's a serious loss, and the BBR team hasn’t offered any real justification for these overpriced recommendations or prices at launch. It feels like mis-selling in what is essentially an unregulated market. They are making their cut off of a section of their customers by over-charging on the wine's release.

To add insult to injury, selling the wines incurs a further 10% commission back to BBR, and you'll be charged £300–£400 per year in storage fees on top for around 20 cases which has also just gone up in price. The costs stack up quickly, and the value simply isn’t there unless you’re a large-scale buyer with preferential pricing.

The best deals are clearly reserved for insiders or top-tier clients—it’s a system that feels nepotistic and stacked against the average collector.

Frankly, you'd be better off putting your money in the stock market rather than choosing to invest in wine. At least then, you’d have transparency, liquidity, and a fighting chance at a return.

I strongly advise others to steer clear of BBR’s en primeur offerings unless you’re already in the top tier of their client base or negotiate with the prices that they offer which we didn't do, because we believed that we were already receiving a good base price due to being regular paying customers. For everyone else, it’s a costly and frustrating experience.

I was due to receive two cases of Bordeaux red wine on 30th May which I purchased and held in bond with BBR a number of years ago.
Six magnums in total in wooden case’s of three.
DHL arrived earlier than advised and delivered just one of the case’s.
After speaking with customer services and being offered a refund which I refused, I was offered a case of six bottles of the same wine as BBR had no magnums available of this particular wine.

Friday 6th June arrived along with a cardboard box that looked like it had undergone a drone attack in a war zone. I took the case inside which also had the strong odour of wine.
I opened the box expecting to find maybe four or five of the replacement bottles covered in wine stain but what was actually rattling around inside were the original missing three magnums from the week before.
What had become of the original wooden case and the six replacement bottles?

This is not the first time that wine has been damaged or gone missing with DHL but this latest episode is a new low.
In my opinion DHL are not fit for purpose and I am surprised that BBR with three hundred years of history and a Royal warrant continue to use a courier that seems to have no regard for BBRs reputation.

STill the best - excellent shop and online - the changes to BBX are not good though

If you want an outstanding rum experience then look no further than BBR's Classic Jamaican rum. After more than 50years of trying various rums this counts as one of the best in my opinion

I have viseted your shop a couple of times over the last few months. I often find the staff a bit stuffy and aloof but this has not been the case with Jacob. He has been great with me on both occassions, you need more Jacobs!

Incompetent delivery. Been with them 20 yrs. They used to be able to deliver their product (a basic requirement, one would have thought - so no gold stars for that..), but now, no - its beyond them. Multiple attempts, and from customer service the only answer is to get a refund (@ mkt value, which in this case is below cost) for the cases that apparently DHL destroyed. Something has gone wrong with their delivery side, and from the reviews on here I'm not the only one to notice. There's plenty of alternatives. Moving on...

Berry Brothers are such a great company to deal with.
They have a superb web site that is very easy to navigate and their customer service is absolutely excellent, they are always so pleasant to deal with.
Thank you

If you’re considering using Berry Brothers, let me save you the trouble: don’t. Unless, of course, you enjoy having your perfectly planned evening ruined by a van that apparently moonlights as a cruise ship.

I ordered wine—a simple, noble request. But lo and behold, the driver arrived with a vehicle supposedly so enormous I half-expected it to come equipped with a captain, a crew, and its own postcode. The excuse? “The van can’t get up your drive.” Funny, because I’ve seen fire engines, removal lorries, and at least one tractor navigate it just fine. I guess my humble driveway is no match for their gargantuan monster truck of failure.

And here’s the kicker: rather than park literally anywhere else and walk the 10 steps to my door, they simply gave up and left with my wine. That’s right—they abandoned their mission like a teenager in a maths class, leaving me stranded with nothing but the haunting emptiness of an undelivered cremant.

It’s almost impressive, really. Perhaps next time they’ll arrive in a spaceship and blame the lack of a landing pad.

This was the last day of a 72 hour struggle to get some wine delivered, a task that has been completed by Laithwaites, Waitrose, and many more with little fuss. Following five phone calls, and numerous emails, I sit here without my wine watching as an Amazon delivery leaves without any of this stress.

So, congratulations, Berry Brothers - You’ve somehow managed to fail at the one thing that you do. Bravo. I hope you’re as proud of yourselves as I will be sober later this evening.

Have been a customer for over half a decade. Bought a significant amount from them over the years. 2019 and 2020 en primeur was a disaster. BBR recommended a huge amount of wines that were purchased (en primeur) at a price that is something like 30% above LiveEx pricing. The account team doesn't even try and justify this awful mis-selling. An unregulated market. BBR by no means the worst in it but still pretty bad.

I recently transferred my wines from various brokers across London to BBR due to the subpar service that unfortunately saturates the fine wine market here. The experience with BBR has been refreshingly different, thanks in no small part to the exceptional professionalism of Louise H. Her commitment to excellence is truly world-class, with superb response times and an unwavering willingness to help.

Thank you, Louise, for making this transition seamless and elevating the standard.

I have visited the Basingstoke shop a few times but always felt very overwhelmed by the vast variety of choice. However I no longer feel this way thanks to Jacob who made my experience less daunting with his exceptional knowledge and probing questions to select the correct wines to my taste. He nailed it and his customer service was outstanding.
Thank you Jacob.

Excited about the new EP season, already off to a great start.

From a customer services standpoint BB&R are second to none, they are incredibly responsive and come across genuine with their intentions to assist.

Storage facilities are very good but prices can add up so you need to keep on top of your cellar