Demise of eBay beer sales: Russian River complaint led to meeting between eBay and regulators
"It was not just our beer but a lot of our friends’," she said. "And I really felt like I needed to be an advocate for everybody." She went to state regulators, who set up a meeting with eBay. She said eBay was unaware of the practice but committed to ending it.
There was a rumor out there that something like this had led to the end of eBay beer sales but interesting to see it in print for the first time.
More >> ABC News.
Breweries: Russian River Brewing
Gee thanks! I was really afraid I was gonna get to try some of those beers I can’t get in my area. Always good to be saved from more options.
I love how these breweries love to “look out for us” by taking away our choices as consumers. If I purchase a bottle of Pliny on eBay, I realize I am paying a high markup, but that might be the only way I get to experience that beer. I’m a big boy, let me decide if it’s worth it or not. As far as underage drinking is concerned, how many 17-year-olds have any idea what craft beer is? Surely there are easier ways to acquired beer illegally.
This isn’t some anti-free market exercise. Whether a brewery is working within the three-tier system or selling direct to retailers, on-premise, or consumers, there are controls in place to assure quality. A consumer taking a growler fill and putting it on EBay to sell to another consumer removes those controls, and compromises the quality of the beer, which was the biggest issue Russian River had with the whole thing. I’m glad that breweries have gotten more hip to that stuff, because it protects the choice of people who want to enjoy a special release or hard-to-get beer and takes away the douche-bags who would buy up a ridiculous amount of beer, shutting others out in the process, and then sell it on EBay for insane amounts of money. Don’t cry over all the beer you can’t get, enjoy the one you have.
I am actually not the type of guy who seeks out the rarest beer, as I find that 9 out of 10 times, the beer is a victim of overhype, with Pliny being the perfect example. As far as hoarding beer to sell at higher markup, the brewery should limit sales of these items when released (most of them do) and work with retailers to do the same (also done by most retailers for extremely limited beers). Make no mistake, nothing about this is protecting CHOICE, this is about ensuring that people don’t make more money off a product than the actual brewery does. What is the difference between this and online trading? Are they going to come after the traders next?
Aside from that, if this were about quality control, someone might have made mention of that in the article. Instead, we get thrown the red herring of underage drinking, which we can all agree is a bad thing, so it makes for a great argument to stop the selling of beer. Underage drinking in this instance is a made up problem, somewhat akin to illegal immigration. Underage drinkers are looking for a $20 case of beer, not a $50 750ml.
This is a terrible position for the brewers and consumers to be in. Allowing direct sales of product outside of a 3 teir system would help. Also repealing tons of other legislation would help. And that brewers accepting that they are a supplier and that there are whole salers retailers and secondary markets; this doesn’t make brewers unique.
This is politics 101: Concentrated interest almost always beats diffuse interests.
Big Beer has a concentrated interest in protecting the status quo, we as small consumers have a diffuse interest in more commerce. Until we demand and small producers demand an access to the marketplace through less regulation we’re never going to get what we want.
This was a bad move by RR though as the blackmarket was one avenue to spreading their brand. Without it I would never have tried their beers, and certainly never have visited them in California as a destination stop on a beer-cation.