My Drizly Experience

When it comes to apps, there’s one for everything you could possibly imagine. Maybe I’m behind on the times (or just not cool anymore), but the fact that apps that delivered alcohol to your location was new to me. So when Drizly reached out to me to try out their service, I was excited. Free alcohol to mix some cocktails with my coworkers? Sounds good to me.

So what is Drizly? Drizly is an on-demand alcohol delivery platform. By partnering with local liquor retailers, Drizly makes alcohol delivery fast and convenient by bringing your favorite beer, wine or spirits directly to your doorstop in less than 60 minutes. The great thing is, Drizly prices are never marked up. They  partner with some of the best retailers in each of their cities so that they are not only providing fast, convenient delivery, but at the best prices too. The only expenses are a $5 delivery fee and a tip for the driver.

I placed my order and let my coworkers know that on Friday at 4 pm we would make some cocktails to celebrate the end of the week. Unfortunately, that’s when things went wrong. I placed my order after having some difficulty with my coupon code. Turns out I had to hit a certain monetary amount prior to tax, which also resulted in me having to pay the tax and tip (for a service I was told would be 100% free for me to try out as a blogger). I was a little turned off — sure the tax and tip only amounted to around $15, but I wasn’t expecting it. Especially since I had never heard of those rules before and have received free alcohol plenty of times (probably around 4 to be exact) from partnering with similar liquor brands and retailers.

An hour before my order was set to arrive that Friday, I logged in to my account just to doublecheck what I had ordered. I’m anal. Sue me. And good thing I did, because it was then when I realized there was an “error processing my order” and the liquor I ordered was out of stock and could not be shipped. Shit. I read the Drizly FAQ which said to contact the store and not them. I did so, only to find that the store had absolutely no record of the order and they couldn’t help me (not to mention they said Drizly was a “nightmare to work with”). I messaged the customer service team and my representative at Drizly and got a response within 20 minutes saying “Yes, we realized this was an error but decided not to inform you and to just deal with it on our own”. Cool. So you thought that you could hide your own error (the second error, may I add) from the customer and just “cover it up” yourself by not informing me? That’s shitty customer service.

I finally received my alcohol, 20 minutes after the stated delivery time of 4 pm (when I placed my order, I specifically chose 4 pm. After receiving my confirmation, the email said it would arrive “between 4 and 5 pm”. They need to get their story straight). I lugged the heavy bag back to my desk and we started making our cocktails.

The one part that was good? The order came exactly as I had ordered it. We got Hendrick’s Gin, lemon-lime seltzer, fresh lime juice, ice, and mint to make Gin Rickeys, a yummy summer cocktail. My coworker Alexa runs an awesome NYC cocktail website Dipsology, so I appointed her as our bartender for the day. Our drinks turned out great, and they were a nice relief to all the customer service issues I had getting my order delivered.

A few days after my order, I saw a charge of $41.00 to my bank account. Yup, you guessed it, Drizly charged me for about half of my “free” product. After speaking to customer service again, I was finally refunded.

Would I order from Drizly again? No, probably not. I think the concept is cool, their General Manager of North America did some good damage control after I complained to him, and the drinks were yummy. But it’s not worth the hassle, IMO.