Whisky Auctioneer Reviews 

I've been using a few whisky auction sites and Whisky Auctioneer has been the worst experience. The listing glazed over detail for a fundamental defect. Payment was made within 24hrs of auction ending, but errors with WA administration resulted in days of delay. Not even an apology and I felt my £2k plus order was of irrelevance to them. I won't be using WA again in a hurry.

The new website is STILL broken after more than a month to get it sorted. Seriously, as the saying goes, ‘if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it!’ I’m
not the only one complaining about it on TrustPilot so you can be sure that this is a broader issue than Whisky Auctioneer would realise. Surely you have developers or someone who test things in a lower environment before releasing this flaming pile live for public use.

The current auction isn’t even loading for me - shows X number of results when I use the search function but doesn’t display the results (not an internet service provider issue as I’ve tried under multiple wifis and cellular). Also, last auction on the new site, certain bottles e.g Glendronach 18, would show year of bottling on a handful of lots, and not on others. This is different to the old website where all pre label / chill filtration GD18 bottles would have the year shown in the listing so I didn’t have to click into the lot and waste my time scrawling through the info and zooming in on the photo of the back of the bottle hoping to confirm what year of bottling.

Other issues: Shipping calculators STILL don’t work so it’s almost impossible to tell how much it’s going to cost me to ship my bottles other than by doing a dummy run on the site to have the bottles shipped and getting close to the end of the process/transaction. Was easier when they just had a transparent list for X bottles to X location. Oh and surprise surprise, Whisky Auctioneer has increased their shipping costs substantially without communicating this to clients. On top of this, I had a random email from them advising that the storage of my bottles was expiring and that I would be charged storage but didn’t advise which for bottles. When I questioned this I was told to disregard the email but still, test these things before sending them out! You’ll now find on their website that after 90 days storage they charge %1 per 30 days per bottle (at a minimum of £5!). Clearly a money-making exercise or at least force people to ship things sooner rather than late. They say they use DHL exclusively for all international shipping (excluding. USA) but my last order to Australia came through via FedEx - unless that’s changed recently?

I’ll be having the bottles I’ve currently got in storage shipped soon and that it for me for whisky auctioneer. Was an excellent site and the other thing that used to deter me were the slightly higher buying fees and sellers fees. Now with a broken website and even more fees, why bother coming back? Plenty of other competitions around.

Bought 6 bottles 2 in uk and 4 in Netherlands . Roughly just under £8000 for these bottle . Within the Uk delivered no problem at all. 4 bottles from the Netherlands were to be delivered Friday 20th of June 2025. 4 hours before delivery ,Got a text from DHL saying I had duty of £808 to pay . Called them up and had a good conversation with one of there so called customer service and if I did not want to pay the duty I could resell them .
On there web site is so vague about buying in EU country is unreal . Please be aware and don’t buy EU . They should high light on there page that there is a 20 percent tariff on the EU bottles . This auction site is much too large and is only concerned about making money . So many auction sites that give you the best service. Prestige auction whisky hammer . Your bottles arrive within 24 to 36 hours . Even the owner of the auction site brings your bottles to your home if they are expensive .
Night and day . I still haven’t had my 4 bottles delivered . They say ten days it’s a complete con they are doing .
Please avoid this auction site .

Very responsive and friendly staff.

This site used to be useful. I have both sold and bought through it many times. BUT the new site is wholly unfit for purpose with bugs galore. I would caution anyone against using this company until they get them all fixed. One issue is that it is no longer clear which lots are UK and which will incur an import fee.
And everyone should beware being overcharged as delivery rates are wrongly calculated.

BEWARE!

£40 bottle of whisky, £40 delivery, then out of nowhere 4 days later another £40 import/duty tax bill from the courier to import from EU to UK.
I don’t think this company does enough to highlight the potential increase to final auction price. Luckily, i did think this may have been an issue hence why I only bid £40.
Would have cried at a 200% increase on final bid of a bottle at £2k

It's impossible for a company like yours to do not know how many items have your customer in storage....
Furthermore you want to charge you customer extra for longer storage but you can't really tell him where are his storage bottles located....
I am very sorry for you because you was my 1st top whisky auction but now you became one of the worst....
Do not dare to charge my extra for longer storage, because I'm trying to ship my bottles for very long time now and I can't because you send me a list that is totally wrong....

Although a large selection of whisky, the issue is that the bidding goes on far too long, and people start bidding last minute which goes on and on, meaning you lose your bid you thought you had for the last several days. Other auction sites will literally stop bidding at 7pm, perhaps 10-20 minutes beyond that. But this site keeps bidding open way past the 7pm deadline which just seems unfair. Stop the bids at 7pm like you state in the website, and then you won't have the silly bid wars going on for hours on end.

Current website not working properly on both Rum Auctioneer and Whisky Auctioneer. Bids are being undercut and being won by lower bids. Serious IT flaws in new system - bottles showing as UK listings are then switching to EU and back etc, disappearing from watchlists. Needs sorting as the previous website was very reliable

JDS

Quick checkout and excellent delivery, fees and charges are good value too

I've just tried to navigate your new auction website. What have you done? Before, it was so easy to find the whiskies I was interested in. The filters are confusing and what is that floating zero about? What happened to the dashboard? It's a shame that's gone. Now, it's not a pleasurable experience at all.
I don't think I'll be back in a hurry.

Easy to use, great deals and fast delivery

I recently purchased 3 bottles of Macallan whisky from Whisky Auctioneer.

I live outside of the UK and had never purchased from any Whisky Auction before.

The entire process from start to finish was very profesional and seemless.
After only one phone call to their head office, to ask a question, I was allocated a customer services representative, George, who guided me through the entire process from payment, arrangeding the courier, right down to every last detail.

George was fantastic to work with and I must say the entire process went really well.

Thank you very much Whisky Auctioneer

Give those guys a Bells 😃

I would prefer not to have to pay you for storage after purchase. Given the commission you charge I think delivery in mainland UK should be free.

I bought a bottle of single malt Scotch whisky for over £180. When I opened it, the cork disintegrated and the significantly flavour was impaired. It was obvious that the whisky had been stored incorrectly and in very hot conditions. Although the box was normal, the bottle had a sticker on it showing that it had been an export to an Asian country where it had clearly not been looked after. I notified the company, who basically said, 'too bad'. A business that dos not do due diligence on the product it sells, can't be trusted and it's not good enough simply to place all the risk on the purchaser.

The auction journey was as expected. We were successful in purchasing a bottle of whisky for a small amount more than what we budgeted for. The big surprise came with the "add-ons" which inflated the buy price by circa 35%. I would have liked to have this presented to me before the buy confirmation but I know why you may not think this is a good idea. If I had had a full perspective on the add-ons I would not have bid past the budget.

Great place to find that special botle

The fact that you have a European business where we dont have to pay all the taxes is hugely important. Any questions are always dealt with in a quick and professional way, people are friendly when I meet them in the Utrecht office and most importantly you probably have the biggest offer out there for interesting collection-able bottles.

Fantastic site. Lots of choice in each auction for American, UK, and world whisky(e)y