Frequently Asked Questions

What is Casemates?

A Wine Community Site With Direct Vineyard Deals

Discover great wines at great prices, direct from the winemakers who crafted them. Redouble your savings by splitting a case with other wine enthusiasts in your area. You’ll find likely candidates for order-sharing in our forum, the friendliest wine community online.

What’s the story here?

You know how you like drinking wine? And you know how you like having friends? Casemates lets you buy wine in bulk and split it with your friends or other vinous acquaintances. And if you don’t know anyone in your area who wants to split a case, you can find one in the forum.

How do I find a potential “case mate”?

First, go to the forum. Then snoop around for existing topics in your area. If you don’t find one, post your own by hitting “add topic” in the upper right. Don’t be shy – unlike many online communities, ours isn’t toxic.

When do new wine events launch?

The easiest way to tell when there will be a new wine event is to check the countdown timer in the footer of casemates.com. But generally speaking, there are new events at midnight eastern each Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday (lasting until the next event launches).

Can I just buy the wine for myself?

Sure, don’t let anybody tell you how to live.

Why don’t you ship to my state?

Because of the byzantine labyrinth of state and federal laws regarding online alcohol sales. Don’t blame us, blame winner-take-all political partisanship and incrementalist lawmaking — or something.

Who makes the wine?

Winemakers, mostly. We don’t get our feet dirty with that business.

What’s this “Wine Country Connect” that fulfills the orders?

See "byzantine labyrinth of state and federal laws” above. We can’t fulfill the shipments, so our friends at Wine Country Connect do that for us. Oh, and we can’t technically sell the wine either. The winery does that.

What are you, then?

That’s something we ask ourselves every day. We’re basically an advertising platform for these wines. It’s complicated and boring.

Accounts

Do I need to sign up for an account?

If you want a place an order you need to sign up for an account.

It’s quick and easy. You only need to give us a username, password, and an email address.

Once you sign up you’ll never miss our good deals. We’ll send you email to let you know when new deals launch, to share promotions and coupons, or periodically update you with a newsletter. You can manage your email settings from the Email Subscriptions page.

Can I sign in with Facebook?

Yes, if you’d rather sign in with Facebook instead of creating another username and password you can click the blue “Sign in with Facebook” button on the sign in page.

Note: signing in with Facebook does not connect us to your Facebook page.

I forgot my password, how can I sign in?

Give us your email address or username on the forgot password page and we’ll send you an email with instructions for resetting your password.

If you signed up via Facebook, you can use the blue “Sign in with Facebook” button on the sign in page instead of entering your password.

How can I change my username, password, or email address?

You can change your username, password, or email address from the Your Info page.

How can I change my default payment settings?

Your default payment settings (shipping address, credit card, and billing address) are shown on your Account page.

You can change your default payment settings (shipping address, credit card, and billing address) from the Payment Settings page.

How do I manage a "there's already an account with this email" error?

The same email address can’t be used for multiple accounts. A “there’s already an account with this email” error message will be displayed if you attempt to use the same email address on more than one account.

If the error occurs when trying to create a new account:

  1. Attempt to sign into the account with your password. If you have forgotten your password, you can reset your password.
  2. If you’re still unable to sign in and you’re certain you’ve never created an account using this address, try creating an account using another email address you own or an email alias (check with your email provider if they support creating an email alias with your email account).

Membership

What is Membership?

Our $5.99/month membership program gives you benefits at multiple sites including free shipping at morningsave.com, sidedeal.com, meh.com, and casemates.com.

You can learn more over at the Membership page or read the fine print on the Membership Agreement page.

How do I join your membership program?

There’s two ways to join our membership program.

  1. Go to the Membership page and click the Become a Member button.
  2. While placing an order, select the shipping option that says “$5.99/month: Free standard shipping on all orders. One-click cancel, anytime.”

How can I change which credit card is being charged for the membership program?

We’ll charge the credit card that’s setup as the default payment setting and shown on your Account page.

You can change your default payment settings (shipping address, credit card, and billing address) from the Payment Settings page.

How can I view my previous membership payments?

You can view all your previous membership payments from the Membership Payments page.

How do I cancel from your membership program?

We’ve made it easy to cancel from our membership program anytime without the need to call someone on the phone or contact our Customer Support team.

Simply go to the Cancel Membership page and find the “Cancel Membership” button. Optionally, give us a reason why you’re cancelling. We’re always looking for ways to make our membership program better.

What is VMP?

VMP was the name of a previous membership program we offered. Current VMP members can continue their benefits - as long as they maintain membership. Since we’re closed to new VMP memberships, any cancelations are final, and there is no way to rejoin.

Orders

What's my order number?

We do this a little different.

Instead of an actual number, we generate three random words in adjective-adjective-noun format. Your order number is these three random words. You’ll find it on your orders page.

We find the three random word approach to be easier to remember, easier to communicate with our Customer Support team if you have an issue, and our customers over at meh.com really enjoy it. Here’s an old forum topic discussing our approach.

How do I cancel my order?

You can cancel an order yourself for up to one hour after it was placed. Simply visit your orders page and click the “Cancel” link.

We start processing and shipping your order one hour after it was placed. If you’d like to cancel your order after one hour you can contact our Customer Support team to make a cancellation request. In most cases it’s too late to cancel an order after one hour but we’ll do our best.

Can I change my order?

We cannot make changes to an order once it’s been placed.

Our Customer Support team cannot change your shipping address for you. You’ll need to cancel your order and place another order with an updated shipping address.

If you ordered the wrong item, you’ll need to cancel your order and place a new order for the correct item.

How Do I Use a Coupon?

To use your coupon, simply find the “Got a coupon code?” link at checkout. It’s below your payment info and just above the Order Summary. Click the link, paste or type in your code and hit “apply” to receive your discount.

Why can't I buy more of a specific product?

Because of our low prices, we set a maximum quantity that each customer can purchase.

This helps ensure our customers are the ones taking advantage of our great deals instead of resellers who would buy up products and resell them at higher prices on sites like eBay.

Is my credit card data secure?

Our payment processor, Stripe, has been audited by a PCI-certified auditor and is certified to PCI Service Provider Level 1. This is the most stringent level of certification available in the payments industry.

You can read more about Security at Stripe.

Shipping

How can I get free shipping?

Join our $5.99/month Membership program and you’ll get free shipping on all your orders

When will I get my order?

You can see the estimated delivery date on your orders page.

Delivery estimates are calculated by taking the estimated shipping date and adding the transit time (the time it takes a package to travel from our facilities to your destination address). The transit time is calculated using business days, meaning Saturday and Sunday don’t count toward the transit time. Holidays are also taken into account when calculating the transit time.

How can I track delivery of my order?

Once your order ships, you can find a tracking link on your orders page.

How will my order ship?

We ship orders using a variety of carriers including FedEx, UPS, and USPS.

Do you ship to Puerto Rico, Guam, or APO/FPO/DPO addresses?

Unfortunately we cannot ship to Puerto Rico, Guam, or APO/FPO/DPO addresses.

Do you ship internationally?

Unfortunately we cannot ship outside of the United States.

What do I do if I think my order is lost?

If it’s past the estimated delivery date found on your orders page and you don’t have your order, please reach out to our Customer Support team via the support page.

If your tracking information shows that your package was delivered, and you didn’t receive the package:

  • Wait a bit—often the package will show up by the end of the day
  • See if someone else accepted delivery
  • Look around the delivery location
  • Look for a notice of attempted delivery
  • Contact the carrier

Note: If you live in an area experiencing an unexpected service delay (severe weather, natural disasters, unscheduled events, etc.), please add at least 2 to 3 business days to the estimated delivery date of your order.

Customer Support

How do I contact customer support?

Go to the support page and fill out the short form.

If you’re able to fill in details (like your order number) our team can help you faster.

Can I contact your Customer Support team by phone?

We don’t offer phone support.

We do have a team of customer support agents ready to help you. Please go to our support page and fill out the form. The more details you can provide the faster our team can help you out.

When should I expect to hear back about my Customer Support ticket?

When you created your Customer Support ticket the confirmation page displayed and expected response time based on the current number of support tickets we have open.

Our Customer Support team works Monday - Friday during normal business hours. We do not work Saturday or Sunday.

How do I find your reply to my support case?

If you’ve written our Customer Support team and haven’t seen a response in your email yet, you can go to your support tickets page.

If you’re having trouble with your email you’ll be able to view your support tickets and our responses there. You can even send us a reply from this page if you need to.

Email

What emails are you going to send me?

We’ll send you email at various times, including when:

  • you place an order
  • your order has shipped
  • your order was delivered
  • our team responds to your support ticket

We can also send you email to let you know when new deals launch, to share promotions and coupons, or periodically update you with a newsletter. You can manage your email settings from the Email Subscriptions page.

How can I change my email address?

To make sure you don’t miss emails about your orders, new deal launches, or promotions and coupons you can change your email address from the Your Info page.

I can't find an email reply to my Customer Support ticket. What should I do?

If you missed an email reply to your Customer Support ticket you can always review your Support Tickets page. There you will find a full history of your Customer Support interactions.

Forum

How do I format my post?

Formatting helps add detail and clarity to your posts. The Casemates forums use a variant of Markdown (a plain text format based on conventions for indicating formatting) to format your posts. Our variant, called Mehdown, is an open-source project that adds several features to Markdown including automatic URL detection, automatic image detection, emoji support, and embeds for several popular sites (Twitter, YouTube, etc). Mehdown also supports most BBCode formatting syntax as well.

To format your post you can simply write it using Markdown’s easy-to-read and easy-to-write plain text format or you can use the formatting features of our Markdown editor on your desktop browser.

What are slash commands?

In Mehdown, lines that start with a slash / are commands and will behave differently from regular text. Slash commands act as shortcuts for specific actions.

You can use slash commands to post random images or videos based on keywords. You can use slash commands to roll dice or flip coins in your post. You can even use slash commands to buy things directly from the forum on meh.com. The complete list of slash commands can be found at: https://meh.com/forum/topics/mehdown-slash-commands.

If you have ideas for a new slash command let us know or code it yourself and submit a pull request on GitHub: https://github.com/mediocre/mehdown

Can I change my username in the forum?

Yes. You can change your username from the Your Info page.

What do the icons next to usernames mean?

Some users in the forum have a special icon that appears next to their username and on their user profile page. These forum badges indicate their role in the forum.

Badge Name Description
Breakfast Octopus Reserved for the Breakfast Octopus
Mercatalyst Indicates the user is a Mercatalyst employee
Wine Country Connect Indicates the user is a Wine Country Connect employee
Vintner Indicates the user is a verified vintner
Moderator Indicates the user is a moderator of the forums
Kickstarter This user was a backer of our Kickstarter campaign back in 2018
VMP This user is currently a member of our VMP membership plan
Membership This user is currently a member of our membership plan

How do I change my forum settings?

You can change the look and feel of the forums, including:

  • which posts are displayed
  • whether or not you’d like to be emailed when someone mentions your username
  • if you’d like a dark or light theme
  • how you’d like to use user profiles

These settings are available on the Forum Settings page.

What are user profiles?

User profiles are pages that show a specific user’s forum activity, including:

  • topics created
  • comments added
  • likes given

You can view your user profile. In order to view other user profiles you must allow your user profile to be viewed. You can control this setting from the Forum Settings page.

What are whispers?

If you’d like to send another user a private message you can send them a “whisper”. Whispers work just like public replies except only the usernames you specify can view a whisper.

You can learn more about whispers here: https://casemates.com/forum/topics/introducing-whispers-1