ComplaintsforThe Wine Collective

• Initial Complaint

  03/10/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Delivery Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  As of March 10th, 2023 no employee that left or was fired from TWC before May 15th, 2022 has received their tax documents for 2022. All employees who still work there have received their information. When ex-employees reach out they are ignored for days. When communication is received, TWC implicates the payroll provider they are using, saying there was an error in the system, the information did not transfer when they switched providers and they are working to correct the issue. The company has a history of providing false information to employees to retain a good image, resulting in consistently late payrolls and each employee being told a different way to perform the same task. This kind of miscommunication causes frustration and created an incredibly tense work environment. Many employees left around the same time due to the manager/owner at the time being unable to perform or manage his team. It it these employees who are affected by this payroll provider issue. We are all tired and simply want to put that owner behind us. It was under his watch that this error went unnoticed. Regarding the tax forms, no date is able to be given when the tax information will become available and the deadline is approaching. We are now 30+ days past their legal deadline to provide tax information. The cost of filing taxes increases each day, they are now putting a monetary burden on people who haven't worked for their establishment in over a year. This kind of failure is extremely common under that owners watch.

  Business response

  03/22/2023

  The report by our former employee about the delay in issuing W-2s to former staff is correct, in that they were not issued until today, March 22. 2023. We have, however, worked to keep all employees informed and up-to-date about the situation and have been working behind the scenes for weeks to resolve the matter. Below is an excerpt from an email that was sent to all of the affected employees on March 8, explaining the situation:
  
  “I wanted to write with an update on your W2 from The Wine Collective. First, I apologize that it is taking so long to resolve this situation and to get you your document. I am aware of the inconvenience this causes and I assure you I have been working for weeks to get this resolved.
  
  To give you a bit of background: in May of last year, we switched to a new payroll company. At that time, only the information of those who were currently employed at the Collective was transferred over. As such, when the time came for the payroll company to generate W2s, they only generated them for people who were employed at the winery as of May 15th, 2022. Unfortunately, by the time I realized the error, I was told that it was too late to transfer over the historic payroll information to the new company. At the same time, the old payroll company could not generate the W2s for us as there are apparently legal implications and forms that need to be filed with the federal government that they could no longer file on our behalf. This is when I enlisted the help of our accountant’s office who has since been working with both payroll companies to make sure the W2s and all associated paperwork get filed.
  
  I, too, share your frustration that this has taken so long and am doing everything I can to move this process along.”
  
  Prior to sending this email, we contacted all of the affected staff members on February 6 once we realized the problem to let them know we were working on getting their W-2s and to ask for their current addresses. In the interim, there were some text message exchanges with some of the employees in response to their concerns to let them know that we were still working on a resolution.
  
  I admit that I let too much time pass in between communications initially as I was primarily focused on figuring out how we were going to resolve the problem since at that time, neither our current nor our historic payroll company said they could help. It took weeks of back and forth between the 2 companies and our accountant’s office to finally resolve the situation. Once I became aware of the gaps in communication, I sent the above email describing the problem to each employee individually and then sent a follow-up email on 3/15. A final email was sent today with their W-2’s attached, as I only received them last night.
  
  Most of my communications with the former staff members were positive and many thanked me for the time I was taking to resolve the issue. I had several contact me to tell me not to worry and that they appreciated the updates. As I explained to those that were upset by the situation, I was doing everything I could to find a resolution to a complicated problem and that there was no mal intent.
  
  The Wine Collective is a family-owned business that was set to open in March of 2020. Despite the mountain of challenges that we faced having to open during a global pandemic, we have remained open since July of 2020 and have worked tirelessly to keep our staff members employed, even foregoing our own salaries for many months. I regret that this staff person had a negative experience. We are fortunate to have many long-term employees, which is not easy in our industry. As a new business, we are working to continually improve our operations and are committed to providing a safe, pleasant, and respectful work environment for our staff.
  
  If you have any additional questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.
  
  Sincerely,
  Lea

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