Direct Shipping!

Have you seen this??

http://www.lcb.state.pa.us/plcb/cwp/view.asp?a=13 28&q=554550&plcbNav=|32369|

Frankly, if this is progress, I can do without. As things stand, if the seller won't ship to Pennsylvania (and most do, which I had not expected), I have the wine shipped to a friend's in NJ. No tax, no handling fee, often no shipping charge.

A 24% tax, on top of a mandatory $4.50 "handling fee", apparently awakens my inner Tea-Partier. And I've never so much as visited Boston.

Not to mention that any winery you might wish to consider has apparently not joined the list of Direct Shippers, to no-one's surprise. All in all, this sounds to me like something the Commonwealth put in place to *prevent* direct shipping, since anyone actually joining automatically becomes prohibitively overpriced.

Funny thing is, even with the world of Online Wine open to me (not to mention Jesey a quick drive away), the PLCB is still getting the bulk of my wine dollars, thanks to the CS program and the recent online sales. They should trust themselves a bit more.

Funny thing is, even with the world of Online Wine open to me (not to mention Jesey a quick drive away), the PLCB is still getting the bulk of my wine dollars, thanks to the CS program and the recent online sales. They should trust themselves a bit more.

Just remember that the PLCB has nothing to do with taxes. They are mandated by the legislature how much to collect, and while private enterprises from out of state can be lax in complying, the PLCB obviously cannot. I believe that they would love to ship to my house but the law prevents them from doing so.

And it's a catch-22, because if Stapleton complained that he could increase sales if they would loosen the laws and let him ship to someone's door, he would probably get fired by those same legislators.