The main ‘Costco’ store (In NY) does sell beer. If you want wine or spirits you exit the Costco, but still under the same roof and in the same building enter the ‘subdivided’ store that sells that. Separate registers also. But they do all they can to try to give the illusion that it is the same store.
Didn’t know NY allows returns, not sure how I would go about using that but at least it’s there.
Interesting aside, in PA you can only get a case (24+) of beer at a distributor if you want less quantity (say a single or 2, or even a six), you need to go to a restaurant or bar and order that to go (which has separate pricing for drink in or carry out). This is very confusing for AT thru hikers who don’t need a case but would enjoy a couple of beers and walk across town to the only thing in the guidebook that appears to be the only source of beer one can carry out. One place seems to be getting around that by selling single beers as well as basically microwaved pizza so it is a restaurant.
First, this is a section of law on “refilling.” It is obviously intended to apply to a very specific circumstance: Refilling.
A liquor bottle is partially empty because the establishment is making cocktails for sale with it. When originally acquired it was Jose Cuervo Especial Tequila Reposado. You cannot sell, or possess, a bottle with that JCE label that doesn’t contain what JCE originally bottled in there. You can’t refill that half-empty bottle with the Costco Kirkland brand of Tequila Reposado. You can’t possess such adulterated liquor–they don’t have to catch you actually selling it; it’s enough to just possess it. (This avoids the problem of a proprieter pretending that they know about the refill “mistake” and were just about to get rid of it, but would never in a million years actually sell it to a customer.)
This law does not proscribe:
A store owner from refunding money to a customer dissatisfied with purchased alcohol
A store owner from accepting a partially-emptied open bottle that has the remnant of the original contents in it.
FWIW, the rest of my research and a few phone calls (including Costco’s legal department in CA) suggest the following summary:
In Illinois, it is not illegal to be refunded money for a product you bought, even if that product is alcohol.
As for Costco:
A physical return of product is not a requirement at Costco for refund. Individual decisions might be undertaken at an individual store based on managerial discretion if a purchased product is not physically returned.
Costco policy in general is to try to avoid a physical return of alcohol in Illinois. A dissatisfied customer returning an opened alcohol container in Illinois might run afoul of the strict Illinois law on how that opened container should be transported (the law requires an opened alcohol container not to be transported in any area of the passenger compartment readily accessible to driver and passengers). Costco’s legal department feels the risk of a customer blaming Costco for making them return the physical container is not worth taking. Therefore, stores are to simply refund a dissatisfied customer without requiring the empty or partially empty original container.
My associate’s store should have taken the partially empty bottle once she had it there, and marked it Not For Sale so that it would be discarded. She should have been refunded, and told that next time a physical return of an alcohol purchase was unnecessary for a refund because of the transportation bother.
It was the opinion of the Costco leadership with whom I spoke that this remarkably generous Costco policy is enough of a Costco differentiation to drive customer loyalty over other stores. They are aware employees get confused between “Costco doesn’t want customers to return open alcohol for legal reasons,” and “Costco won’t refund open alcohol because it’s illegal.” Big sigh from management on educating employees about the fine points of the difference. They obviously need more pedantic employees.
YMMV, as my associate’s experience suggests. I suspect she can get her money back if she presses the issue.
IANAL. I haven’t even stayed in a Holiday Inn Express recently, much less one in Illinois. But it seems to me that your cited reg talks about “original package” of booze, not all containers of booze. What’s an “original package?” Well, the Definitions section for the part of the Illinois Admin Code dealing with the Illinois Liquor Control Commission, 11 Ill. Adm. Code 100.10 doesn’t say. Their Liquor Control Act does though, at what is now 235 ILCS 5/1-3.06
The quote mentions “…corked or capped, sealed and labeled by the manufacturer…” An open container is, by definition, no longer any of those things. The section you cite is a prohibition against retailers refilling their old containers and resealing the containers themselves, which the ILCC reiterates as a banned practice in their Trade Practice Policies, number 35.
The Trade Practice Policies, AIUI, do not have the force of law; they instead illustrate business practices that are acceptable by the ILCC. Another TPP, number 32, lays out how a retailer can exchange defective products with their distributor. The TPPs are silent, as far as I can tell, on whether a consumer could return a defective product to a retailer. But absent a statute or local ordinance saying they can’t, I don’t see why the same logic in TPP 32—no return unless due to a bona fide business reason like defective or damaged—couldn’t apply in the consumer context. I’d be interested to hear about any cases or ILCC letters or other admin actions on the subject.
Again, I’m not a lawyer.
Edit: And it looks like Chief Pedant found the answer. Still interesting to read about, all the same.
I learned some time ago that I haven’t got a bat’s chance of getting the law right.
Nor does language in the law mean what I think it obviously means–at least in practice.
So for all I know, doorhinge is right on the money and I have no idea what I’m talking about. But as I said, if so, our understanding of language is at odds…
While this law was undoubtedly meant to prevent the adulteration of alcohol, I think it would also be applicable to returns of opened containers of alcohol. I’m betting this statute is what Costco based their policy for alcohol returns on. If it were me, I might push the issue if I was returning the product because it was faulty (turned into vinegar, for example) but it never would have even crossed my mind to try to return it if I simply didn’t like it as much as I thought I would.
Yes, the section is titled “refilling”. However, it also makes it clear that a retail liquor business can not possess an “unsealed” container of hooch. I believe the key word, as related to our present issue, is Section 100.290 use of the word sealed. A returned bottle of opened wine is no longer sealed and would, if accepted by the retail liquor stores employee, be legally considered to be on premise.
A fast-talking store owner/manager (or someone with more political clout than the agent, this is still Illinois, after all ) might be able to convince an Illinois liquor agent that this was a one time event or a mistake by an employee but that’s a crap shoot.
Retail stores have to protect their liquor license. Do they risk their liquor license to retain one customer?
) might be able to convince an Illinois liquor agent that this was a one time event or a mistake by an employee but that’s a crap shoot.