Went to visit Laphroaig yesterday after an agreeable lunch in the Old Kiln cafe at Ardbeg.
I'm a big fan of Laphroaig, it's probably my favourite whisky overall but yesterday I was slightly annoyed at them.
As a Friend of Laphroaig you can turn up at the distillery, take the tour and claim a miniature and a certificate, which is a nice touch. You can also make purchases online and receive a 10% discount but on special days, namely your birthday, you get 20% discount. And yesterday was my special day.
We arrived at the visitors centre and paid £2 each for the tour, redeemable against purchases at the end. We did the tour, they weren't in production, it was drizzling with rain and the young charming girl did her best to remember her lines. Tour over we get back to the shop area and start to pick our purchases which included two bottles of whisky. Good bottles that we couldn't pick up in the supermarket.
I explained it was my birthday, showed them the email I had received that morning but was told the discount only applied to online purchases. I checked on the computer they had in the visitors centre but the whisky I wanted wasn't available online so we had to buy them at the shop. Finally as the total was being calculated we handed over our redeemable £2 vouchers only to be told they didn't apply to the whisky I was buying.
So you can buy the cheapest bottle in the shop and £2 back, but buy the most expensive and get nothing!! It's not much of a loyalty scheme is it?
Come on Laphroaig sort it out.
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