Earlier this week, I finally got the long-awaited and much-chased email from Collect+ confirming that my Beer Swap package had arrived at the local store for collection. My Beer Swap buddy was Simon B, a loyal crew member on the good ship BeerViking.com and – judging by the selection of beers he chose to send my way – a man who definitely knows his brews.

The package from Simon contained the following:

      

Alligator Ale from Ascot Ales. A single-varietal (US Cascade) hop golden ale made in small batches of 4 barrels at a time.

Imperial Stout from Dark Star, 2008 vintage. A 10.5% ABV uber-stout in the Baltic export tradition. (I owe Simon a pint for sending me this one, definitely.)

Imperial Extra Double Stout from Harveys, 2003 vintage. 9% ABV and sanctioned by A. Le Coa and Tartu Brewery in Estonia. (If the last one earned Simon a pint, then for this one I probably owe him a hogshead…)

Now, anyone involved in the Beer Swap project will have spotted that I’ve only mentioned three bottles there, rather than the four that Beer Swap participants were asked to send. Simon did send a fourth – a bottle of Dark Star Sunburst – but alas, it didn’t survive the journey intact. So, whilst I’m truly impressed with Simon’s generosity and dedication to the Beer Swap cause, I can’t say the same for the efficiency of service or customer care demonstrated by Collect+. They were, frankly, a bit crap. Not only did they take ten days to ship the parcel from Marple (just South of Manchester) to Prestwich (just North of Manchester) – which is a journey of “19.2 mi – about 35 mins” according to Google Maps – but they also managed to break the bottle of Sunburst, despite the copious amount of newspaper packing that Simon had included in the box and the ‘Fragile’ tape he’d used to seal it up with.

So when I picked up the parcel I was greeted with one end of a box reduced to a mass of soggy cardboard and the pungent (yet still oddly enticing) whiff of stale beer, handed to me by an apologetic shopkeeper who assured me that this what it had looked like when he received it:

I mentioned the damaged parcel to Collect+ (pointing out that the broken bottle had been removed, so I couldn’t see whether it had been crushed in transit or had just cracked under its own pressure) and asked them to refund Simon his sending fee. They flatly refused. Instead, they apologised for the damage, but in the same email quoted chunks of their terms & conditions stating that they don’t carry liquids or glass except by prior arrangement.

Which, of course, they’re perfectly entitled to do. Fair’s fair, terms and conditions are agreed to in advance and all that. But to me, that sort of approach (“oh, sorry… not our problem though”) still smacks of an opportunity lost on their part; an opportunity to impress a first-time customer with their dedication to providing an above-and-beyond standard of service. Their loss: I won’t be using them again in future. Terms and conditions aside, Collect+ still managed to break a beer bottle that was perfectly well-packaged in a box clearly marked ‘fragile’, which suggests their drivers or depot staff are nowhere near as careful with other people’s property as they should be.

Anyhow, today is actually the last day for posting a Beer Swap write-up, according to the original schedule. Thanks to Collect+’s amazing ability to turn a 35 minute journey into a 10-day delay, I’m going to be cutting it fine if I’m going to make the deadline… Sunday seems like a much more likely prospect than this evening, but I’ll do my best. Depends on how much recorded TV we end up watching. Or rather, if I’m honest about it, how engrossed I get in Football Manager 2010… :)