Led, managed and staffed by incompetents

Pretty rough title isn't it? Sure, I'll admit it is...unless you can prove it.

Let's keep looking at the "improved product search feature of the Fine Wine & Good Spirits online store," as Chairman Holden called it 2 years ago!. To me, it is still so bad I can't think of anything they actually improved. Just reference the last blog post, where I talked about the PLCB not being able to get the product totals matching across the inventories available to the public; they couldn't even get them to agree on the same page.

The reason for that may be the thousands of dead listings for products no longer carried that the PLCB doesn't clean out of the system. I'm guessing it's because that would be THOUSANDS of products that they could no longer claim when they make their boasts to the public about how many thousands of products they carry. Do you really think that the 2011 Jack Daniel's Holiday Select is coming back?  It's been five fricking years since it was in stock, but it's still listed in the system. Maybe they're still waiting to get that picture before they delete it.

Am I cherry picking? Yep, and here is the 2012 cherry...

And the 2013 cherry too!

You do see the "Out of Stock" on each one, right?

How incompetent to you have to be to keep something on inventory for five years when it is NEVER EVER going to return? Maybe it's because they're using a search system that was probably designed during the punch card era. You want to see how bad the search engine is? Let's look for some Old Forester.

It's going to be hard for the PLCB to admit it, but there aren't 1074 matches to Old Forester, and I guarantee none are Ardbeg, Aberfeldy, or Glenfarclas single malt Scotch whisky. Pretty worthless, isn't it? To add even more intelligence-insulting idiocy, if you look at the "Brand" listing on the left you won't even find Old Forester listed. Should I be more specific in my search?  Go ahead and put in Old Forester Bourbon and see what that gets you. Narrowing it down takes the number of hits from 1074 to 1355, now that's an improvement. No, that isn't a typo: being more specific increases the number of wrong choices to pick from.

Think that's bad? How about the 5,044 choices — of which 5,036 are wrong — for Four Roses:

How do real businesses handle this? You know, the ones that depend on customer satisfaction (because they don't have a police-enforced monopoly)? Let's have a look. Of course none of these are as big as the PLCB or have as many employees, or a $66 million computer system.

Binny's IL

Hi Time Wine CA

France 44 MN

State Line Liquor MD  (you'll have to enter "Old Forester")

This isn't rocket science...unless you work in Harrisburg. Free states have liquor stores with a real inventory of real products you can actually search for and find, and go to the shelf and touch. Not every store, of course, but Wawa ain't Wegmans, either. The PLCB claims to be "world class," so their online inventory system should be world class. It isn't.

The PLCB doesn't really give a damn about you, the consumer. It is easier to put plants in the stores and aprons on the clerks than it is to fix the systemic and inherent flaws in the leadership, management, and operational systems.

Went to see the chairman, strangest I could find,
Laid my proposition down, laid it on the line.
I won't slave for beggar's pay, likewise gold and jewels,
But I would slave to learn the way to sink your ship of fools.

We deserve better - PRIVATIZE!