Take my database — please! Inventory idiocy continues.

I'm a Scotch guy, I collect it and I drink it, which means that I look at what the PLCB has to offer and if, by some freak chance, it is something I want, I compare the price to what it would cost me to buy out of state or have it shipped in. (Lots of places will ship to PA and I urge you to search them out.) Needless to say, I've not bought a collectible bottle from the State Store System in a decade. I still keep looking, and the way to look is through the system's website, either the PLCB product search, or the "Fine Wines and Good Spirits Store" (FWAGS). Wait, either? What's the difference? Come along on a search, and learn why the vaunted "convenience" of the monopoly's database of every single bottle of wine and spirits in the state!!! ...is not so convenient after all.

In my crosshairs this time was Highland Park. The online product catalog listed fourteen different Highland Park whiskies, one 'regular,' two 'Luxury,' and eleven SLO-only. Like the last time I looked for something, the "online exclusive" entry is listed as having no stock in the online product catalog. This probably makes sense to somebody at the PLCB but not to anyone with any real business experience. Where else would you be told, "Here is the catalog of everything we list — but don't believe the availability listings, you'd better go over there and check to be sure."

So let's go over to FWAGS and type in Highland Park. Up comes a page that says there are five online, five in-store and 28(!) available by SLO. Sure beats the 14 listed in the catalog. Maybe they haven't cleaned that part of the tens of thousands of bad entries the PLCB admits to having yet. So I look at what is available online. The first one says  Chieftain's Clynelish 14 Year Old, the second one is a Glenmorangie, the third one is another Glenmorangie, the fourth one is a  Mackinlay's...and finally the fifth one actually is a Highland Park. Well, that kinda sucked. 

Let's see what is listed as being in store. The first item listed is a GlenDronach; why, I don't know. The second item listed is the one Highland Park the PLCB actually stocks in some stores and the other three items are the Mackinlay's that were listed as an "Online exclusive!" that also happens to be available elsewhere in a store, and two different sizes of the same McClelland's. Why McClellend's would even show up in a search for Highland Park is another one of those PLCB mysteries that they have somewhat regularly.

I'm beginning to not have any faith that the 28 SLO items listed for Highland Park are really Highland Park. Surprise! I'm right. The entire first page has no Highland Park on it.  Jeez, how bad was this BEFORE they updated the search engine? On to page two where there are eleven Highland Park entries and three more that don't match the search criteria.  But wait, the online catalog says there are 14 and the FWAGS website only lists 13. Which one is missing?  Here it is: "Highland Park and Bowmore Distilleries Double Barrel Blended Scotch Whisky 10 Year Old 92 Proof"  Explain to me why that doesn't show up in a search for Highland Park, will ya? After some digging I did find it; somebody just decided that the name in the catalog wasn't to their liking so they changed it, thus guaranteeing nobody would be able to find it. Or buy it. Wonderful.

The PLCB uses Oracle for their database, which is not a dumb flat file system. Now, the people who program it might not be that swift, or the people above them may not know how or what to ask of the system, but that isn't Oracle's fault. Compare the somewhat worthless search for Highland Park at the FWAGS website with a retailer who has to compete and really provide customer service - Binnys in Chicago (notice they often have better prices too). Binny's doesn't have 24 wrong entries when you search but PA does. The first, last, and all the items are what you are searching for at Binny's, but not in PA — and this is after they claimed to have greatly improved the system. "Modernization" at its finest; a preview of what to expect if  they don't privatize. More lipstick on the PLCB pig.

I guess I was lucky that it wasn't on sale. The FWAGS website spits out a list by type and item number. Who the hell knows PLCB item numbers? How about a list by the alphabet that is actually easy to use instead of this item number idiocy? Just more proof that there isn't a warm body in the entire organization who knows squat about retail. Of course, that is what we have come to expect for the past 80 years so I don't know why I'm surprised.

Oh, and that bottle I was looking for? The PLCB does list it, but I was able to buy it overseas; even after paying international shipping it came to 23% less than the state store price*, and only took 10 days to get here, delivered to my door. Shorter than the 2-4 weeks for SLO, so as long as I had to wait anyway, I might as well save some money. Thanks for nothing, PLCB.

Like all other retail goods it pays to shop around....unless you visit the state stores that are all the same. You don't have to put up with this.  Write your legislators and tell them to support HB 466 so we can finally have what most of the country has - freedom of choice based on what we want and not what the unqualified in Harrisburg allow us to have.

Privatization is REAL modernization.








(* I know it is only a 700ml bottle instead of the 750ml here so the effective price is only 17.5% less but still....)

Liquor & Guns

The people's right to trade freely with their neighbors and those in neighboring states shall not be infringed. 

One line like that in the Constitution would have rendered the PLCB largely impotent, but it didn't work out that way. The right to bear arms is guaranteed by the Constitution. The right to buy alcohol is not. Both have laws governing their sale and use, but only one has the state trying to make sure you can get it: Liquor. 

Proponents of the State Store System are always pushing for and bragging about having more sales. They want to make sure that all the citizens can buy booze, but they don't want to make sure you can buy a Constitutionally guaranteed item, or have freedom of choice or be allowed to participate in interstate commerce. That, of course, would puncture their precious monopoly, and show how non-competitive they really are.

But this is -- supposedly -- all about control. Let's look at that whole concept from a different angle. If you are like me or most people I know, you probably think guns are more dangerous than a bottle of Captain Morgan. But according to State Store-style thinking, you would be wrong. I drink, and I also shoot. I probably drink more often than I shoot, but it's close, since my range is only a mile away. Let me tell you: I worry more about the guy next to me at the range than I do about the guy next to me at the bar. Just think about these comparisons.

• What takes longer to buy: a special order bottle of liquor or a special order gun (even with the federally-mandated wait time on gun sales)?

• As a private citizen, you can sell guns, but you can't sell alcohol beverages.

• Sell a bottle and you can get fined $4 an ounce and go to jail.  Sell a gun...and you get cash.

• If you're 18, you can buy a gun; if you're 14, you can get a hunting license. Buy a beer when you're 18, and you can LOSE your license.

• Most places you are allowed to open carry a gun on the street in PA ; most places you are not allowed to carry an open bottle.

• If you are a resident with the proper permit, you can have a loaded gun on the front seat of your car. If you have an open bottle, there is no permit you can get.

• If you are visiting from out of state and have a gun in your trunk and want to stop and take in any of Pennsylvania's scenic attractions as you pass through the state -- it is perfectly legal.  Have a bottle of wine from New Jersey in your trunk and make that same stop? You can be fined, and your wine will be seized and destroyed. 

• You can bring a number of guns into Pennsylvania without any special licenses or forms and shoot.  You can't bring any bottles of wine, beer, or spirits into the state -- legally! -- without special licenses or forms which the PLCB does not even make available to you.*

People who use guns professionally in their job have to be licensed, but people who sell alcohol professionally (like bartenders) don't. They don't have to be certified by the state in any way, unless and until they make an illegal sale, which seems to me like closing the barn door after the horse ran away. Our State Store alcohol sellers don't even have to be certified in any way at all, nor are they ever checked for illegal sales (they rely on 'self-reporting'). Does anybody find this strange based on all of the above?

Most states have figured out how to regulate the sale of alcohol and not treat their citizens like children. If the liquor laws in the state were even close to being like the gun laws, there wouldn't be a privatization effort (or a modernization one either) because the dead hand of leftover Prohibitionism wouldn't be on the backs of the residents. Since that isn't going to happen, we have to take control away from the state through our legislature. Give retail back to private industry where it belongs, because when the state decides what you will get, it also decides what you want and does it without any input from you.

We are not safer, we are not better served, and we are not satisfied. Privatize.


* I challenge any reader to try to find the form or forms needed to pay the taxes on 6 bottles of liquor you want to bring into the state. Good luck.