The Bar Towel

100% unusable now. Thank god drinkvine exists!

I am impressed at how much worse they have managed to make the site, considering it was already mediocre and a pain in the ass to use to begin with.

Oh, and also how they've managed to maintain the new site's lack of functionality for basically a month now. That's impressive, too, and must take a real dedication to uselessness. Bravo, LCBO.

darmokandjalad wrote:I am impressed at how much worse they have managed to make the site, considering it was already mediocre and a pain in the ass to use to begin with.

Oh, and also how they've managed to maintain the new site's lack of functionality for basically a month now. That's impressive, too, and must take a real dedication to uselessness. Bravo, LCBO.

Agreeable sarcasm aside, holy shit yes. I'd hate to be a supplier or importer losing sales to these guys.

This is just like the warehouse problem, which is the larger the metaphorical ship, the slower it turns from its course of error (or in some cases the crew imagines it unsinkable and presses on at full steam.) The LCBO is titanic in size.

they should have used the same people that did the SAQ.com site. Real time inventory is a huge bonus too.

Maybe it was intentional? LCBO workers got sick of customers telling them what they had in stock.

Ceecee wrote:Maybe it was intentional? LCBO workers got sick of customers telling them what they had in stock.

Been there. More than once I've shown them the inventory on my phone. Sometimes they look it up. Rarely do they take my word as gospel.

It's amazing to me that the new site still doesn't even show all the listed beers yet. Other places have real-time stock counts, for crying out loud!

I also like that they put up a "similar products" section that totally doesn't work. For example, these are the products listed as similar to St. Louis Gueuze:

Buxton Imperial Stout
Trafalgar Oatmeal Stout
Mill Street Belgian Wit
Highlander Gift Pack

As an added bonus, only one of those beers is even in stock!

squeaky wrote:I also like that they put up a "similar products" section that totally doesn't work. For example, these are the products listed as similar to St. Louis Gueuze:

...
Trafalgar Oatmeal Stout
...!

haha, am I the only one who sees the awesomeness in citing trafalgar beers as similar to a gueuze?

grub wrote:haha, am I the only one who sees the awesomeness in citing trafalgar beers as similar to a gueuze?

No you're not. I thought it was amusing.

Maybe someone at the LCBO has a sense of humour...

Ceecee wrote:Maybe it was intentional? LCBO workers got sick of customers telling them what they had in stock.

Y'know, that was a joke but in the last 2 days I have encountered 2 CSRs that were absolutely shocked I knew about a beer they had in the back.

I sent them an email last week, and just received this...

"Hello Jeff Hall,

Thank you for contacting helloLCBO about our new website.

We have received many inquiries regarding the removal of the search all stores functionality. The new online experience is designed using a 'responsive framework'. In other words, the site works on any device that the customer decides to access the site from (desktop, tablet and mobile) and provides parity in the experience. A great majority of our customers are searching for products whilst they are on the move and are for the most part looking for product availability within a short driving distance. Initial prototypes that included the 'search all' functionality impacted the experience for the customer using a tablet or mobile device. The data load times combined with having to scroll a long list of products across all stores on these devices was not ideal. This informed our decision to provide a more geo-locational focus to the product inventory.

Due to the volume of inquiries similar to yours we are looking into a solution that would accommodate this functionality without impacting the experience (described above) for our mobile customers.

In the meantime, if you wish to continue to use this functionality, you can search all LCBO products at Vintages.com, or on the "old" LCBO site via this link: http://foodanddrink.ca/products/productsearch.shtml"

^ oh, so this geo-locational thing is LCBO getting hip with Mobile Devices, great because that should dumb everything down. Anybody else find that with the iPad?

JeffPorter wrote:In other words, the site works on any device that the customer decides to access the site from (desktop, tablet and mobile) and provides parity in the experience. Initial prototypes that included the 'search all' functionality impacted the experience for the customer using a tablet or mobile device. The data load times combined with having to scroll a long list of products across all stores on these devices was not ideal.

I have accessed the site from my iPhone in a store many times and sometimes the 'data load time' has been an issue. As I think about it, my recollection is that I may have waited just to access the site, not to get a result once I was there, which may have more to do with my service or signal strength.

Regardless, there is not issue scrolling through a "long" list of stores.

JeffPorter wrote:A great majority of our customers are searching for products whilst they are on the move and are for the most part looking for product availability within a short driving distance.

How could they possibly know this? Even if there is a way for them to measure what type of device is being used to access the website (I don't know the answer to this), how can they know the context? I'm suspicious that "a great majority of our customers" is fictional code for "we need to justify what we did".

JeffPorter wrote:This informed our decision to provide a more geo-locational focus to the product inventory. Due to the volume of inquiries similar to yours we are looking into a solution that would accommodate this functionality without impacting the experience (described above) for our mobile customers.

Keeping the old site as a model, how hard would it be to add in a feature to search only for "x number of stores within x number of km" instead of getting a list of all the stores with the product? It seems to me that they decided to totally re-design the site to address one particular issue and have completely messed it up.


Thanks for sharing this Jeff. I initially heard from them after I complained, but I going to contact them again with your information and my response.

S. St. Jeb wrote:

JeffPorter wrote:A great majority of our customers are searching for products whilst they are on the move and are for the most part looking for product availability within a short driving distance.

How could they possibly know this? Even if there is a way for them to measure what type of device is being used to access the website (I don't know the answer to this), how can they know the context? I'm suspicious that "a great majority of our customers" is fictional code for "we need to justify what we did"

I hear you. And why don't they just sell Rochefort 10 in a few hundred of their 860 stores if they're so damn worried about 'short driving distance' (oh yes, they make it so easy to buy everything!)

Personally I like to check product locations before I leave the home or office, then focus on the driving.

Belgian wrote:

S. St. Jeb wrote:

JeffPorter wrote:A great majority of our customers are searching for products whilst they are on the move and are for the most part looking for product availability within a short driving distance.

How could they possibly know this? Even if there is a way for them to measure what type of device is being used to access the website (I don't know the answer to this), how can they know the context? I'm suspicious that "a great majority of our customers" is fictional code for "we need to justify what we did"

I hear you. And why don't they just sell Rochefort 10 in a few hundred of their 860 stores if they're so damn worried about 'short driving distance' (oh yes, they make it so easy to buy everything!)

Personally I like to check product locations before I leave the home or office, then focus on the driving.

I'd like to see the LCBO convert some locations to beer specific in high density areas. There are over 50 LCBO locations withing 35 kilometers of my house. Why are they mostly all the same?!? They should convert some stores to spirits specific and others to beer specific. The 'beer store' LCBO locations could sell 80% beer, 10% liquor, and 10% wine. They would focus on providing the best selection of beer in the world.

These beer specific locations would get a large portion of their stock from the current LCBO distribution channel, however, they would also have a separate channel where they would source product themselves for these beer specific stores only. Sure, it may be costly to bring in some of these products for only a few beer specific stores, however, that cost can be passed along to the consumer.