Buy Wine Online - Free Membership!

Registering

In order to use our platform to buy wine, you need to create a member account and register as a Licensed buyer.

Wine Societies, Inc. is a CA licensed wine broker. Hence, all buyers in our Marketplace need to hold a valid CA ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Control) license to re-sell alcohol.

Bidding on / buying wine

Once you are logged in to your Wine Societies account, you will be taken to the Sales / Auctions page of the marketplace, where you can see all active sales and auctions in progress.

The difference between a Sale and an Auction is that in a Sale, the seller is offering the wine at a fixed price, called the BuyItNow price, while in an Auction, the seller is offering the wine through a bidding process, by specifying a starting price and a time-frame within which he/she will accept bids at or greater than the starting price.

Click on the title of the posting to see more details of the wine and the username of the seller.

The system will not allow you to place an offer or bid without your license information. Wine Societies, Inc. is legally required by the CA ABC to only allow CA licensed buyers and re-sellers of alcohol to buy from our marketplace.

For a fixed price sale, click on the Buy It Now link. Once you confirm your choice, you will be declared the winning buyer.

For an auction, please enter your bid price in the Bid Amount box, and click on Place Bid.

Once a bid is placed, you will not be able to retract it for the duration of the auction.

Messaging

Although buyers and sellers are known to each other only through their usernames till the successful completion of a sale, they can still communicate with each other anonymously using the Messages box, available in each posting, during the process. Buyers may have specific questions for sellers before making an offer. Sellers can respond to buyers through the Messages box.

In order to post a message, simply enter it in the Messages box, and click on Send Message. The message will appear in the posting, and the seller will be notified.

Winning a bid / sale

For a fixed price sale, a buyer is immediately declared the winner if he/she meets the BuyItNow price.

For an auction, a buyer is declared the winner, if at the end of the auction period his/her bid is the highest.

Once the system has declared a buyer the winner based on the criteria above, an email is sent to the buyer, with a request to pay Wine Societies a commission for the transaction.

Commission payment

Wine Societies charges the buyer a commission fee for the transaction. Please see the Latest News box in the Home page for the current rate.

The email sent from the system will contain a link to PayPal, our payment processing provider. You do not need a PayPal account to complete the payment process. You can use any PayPal approved credit card, such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, etc. to pay the commission fee. If you do have a PayPal account, you can use it to pay Wine Societies the commission fee as well. In either case, simply click on the link in the email, and follow the instructions from PayPal.

Paying the seller

Once the buyer has paid Wine Societies the commission fee, the system will send emails to both the buyer and seller, informing each of the others' name and contact information. The buyer and seller can now contact each other directly, to arrange for the exchange of monies and wine.

Receiving the wine

Wine is shipped directly from the seller to the buyer. Typically, the licensed buyer will provide the seller with a shipping label. The seller can use this label to ship the wine using a carrier such as FedEx or UPS.

Member Satisfaction Survey

Upon the successful completion of a sale, you will have the opportunity to rate the process. You will find the link to do so in an email sent to you by the system.