Lake Chelan Winery — Attraction in Washington

Have been a wine club member here for a few years and while I love the wine I am over the staff. Part winery/part commission based retail store (wine included).

Anyone here gets 30% off a case of 12 and 25% off half case. This is always our first winery stop because it’s the only one I have to do math at to make sure I’m not getting worked.

We take wine club bottles (20% off), exchange out for cheaper wine we like and buy our cases with more expensive choices with the greater discount and apply the savings to our case. They don’t offer to do this but will honor it reluctantly.

This confuses staff but let’s be honest. They make it confusing to get the sale.

Perhaps it’s my loss because I like their wine, I don’t enjoy haggling.

My final straw was attempting to purchase from the store. They had a confusing sale. Some items not clearly marked were half off. The lady doing our tasting encouraged us to go look. We came back with items that she was unsure of if they applied to the sale. She didn’t ask a manager she said “oh heck I’ll just do it”. I later found out that only applied to our friend who was just joining the wine club. A nice gesture to close the sale. When I (already a member) when to purchase the same item the half off was not applied. I attempted to speak with the manager who said it would not be applied. His words, “I was not there to hear what she told you” as the sales woman said, “I’m sorry I misspoke”. She then comforted me with you do get your member 20% off”. I said that wasn’t what you told me and while I like it I will take my business elsewhere. She then started trying to sell me on the items... “look at this strap, it’s such a nice bag, you don’t see these everywhere.” I was by myself. Our group was in the car waiting with my kids and at that point I was getting no where.

I left with my wine purchase $230 already rang up and an additional $150 in store items on the counter.

In the future I will buy wine for more money and less savings over dealing with what felt like a used car salesman bate and switch. There are too many good wineries in the valley to deal with the drama and confusion of Lake Chelan Winery.

Love the bbq, and their cheese.

Important note, I don’t leave negative reviews without speaking to management giving them an opportunity to rectify my experience first. Anyone can have a negative experience...

I am updating my review:

I had originally gave them a 1 star because of the situation that occurred yesterday but after Laura (I apologize if I misspelled it) called me this morning, I have decided to change it to a 5 star.

In today’s conversation, I explained to her what had occurred. She listened to my concern and she corrected the situation. I truly do appreciate her taking the time to call me.

Thank you Lake Chalen Winery. Because of the most recent conversation, we will be there again.

Original post:

I went to Lake Chelan Winery to celebrate my husband’s birthday back in June. While there, we had an incredible time; the person helping us was very knowledgeable about their selections, how the wines are made, and talked about the wine club. We decided to sign up for the wine club because of the service we received, but I explicitly mentioned that I did not enjoy reds but my husband did. The wine club has an option to send a variety of wine; me telling the server that we wanted a white and red should have been enough. That has not been the case. I called to speak to their admin/customer service and in my conversation, she mentioned that I was receiving emails only for her to discover that the email they put for me was incorrect.

I had asked for them to send me a bottle of white and I’d send in the red and she refused. She made no effort to rectify the relationship with a member of their wine club and in fact was condescending in her conversation with me.

I told her that I wanted to completely cancel my membership because of the lack of customer service. Even when she realized that they had my information incorrect, she took 0 responsibility.

If this is how they treat their members then I’d think twice about...

This was probably our fourth visit to the BBQ and likely our last. We love the environment— lots of room for kids to run around and we love the live music on Friday nights and the food is great. Unfortunately almost every time we have come the wait for food is extremely long and many food options are unavailable. The majority of the staff appears to be high school and college age who are standing around, and there seems a large lack of systems. One person at the grill that is only partially filled with meat when there are a dozen tables waiting for food.

Last night we arrived around 7:30, and by 9:45 we still had not received our food. The menu was almost completely sold out, the only meat options were chicken and sausage. We had three young kids with us. We went up to the staff and asked if at the least we could get the kids mac n cheese first, only to be told that they were out of it. At this point the kids were over tired and very hungry. We asked how much longer for our food and were told there were still 15 tickets in front of ours. We chose to leave at this point and fortunately were offered a refund. After 10pm there were no more restaurants open in town to go to. Quite a frustrating experience. The BBQ has tons of potential but definitely needs an overhaul of their systems, and would be worth keeping more back stock of food on hand on...