Uhhh…yeah.
As a consumer and someone who has worked customer service this is such a poor way to think about it. The carbonation is not the retailers fault. If you have someone who keeps coming back for freebids, OK, let’s talk. Showing a lack of trust in your customer even if they’re 200 miles away is short sided. It’s a sure fire way to get a bad reputation if you allow your company culture to have that attitude. If you go the extra mile for your customer (the ones that really matter, the end customer) you’ll earn the sort of loyalty from customers that will keep you afloat in lean times. If you can keep the worst customers happy, then the good ones will also notice and will reward you for it. While this one customer may or may not bring you back business, it’s about creating a culture in your company where everyone strives to give the customers the best experience possible. Companies that do this survive and thrive.
Ultimately the end customer decides. The distributor and the retailer want to make money, which means selling product to the end consumer. If the consumers aren’t happy and coming back for more, your relationship with the distributor, and their relationship with the retailer will not survive.
It seems to me that you have to assume that the complaining customer is someone who occupies a future choke point that your company will need to pass through in the future. Would I hand deliver a four pack two hundred miles if I knew that it would grease the wheels for doubling my net worth? Yup.
Another thing to keep in mind is that minor bad experiences get told a lot more that good. So occasionally it takes a pretty extraordinarily good story to get positive stories going.
No matter what you do there will be unreasonably unhappy people. You have to just treat them right anyway and move on. When you start assuming customers are wrong you are heading down the path of having a sense of entitlement to their business, which is a fatal flaw
Yes we had a couple concerns about our Pale ale. Problem was I have never made Pale Ale.
I’ve always heard that bad experiences get spread 10x further than good experiences.
Leos is in a tough spot. How is he to make good on this issue? Ship a replacement 4-pack; what if that’s not allowed where he or the recipient reside? Send coupons or vouchers; what if that is not allowed and how difficult would it be for Leos to secure a coupon program with retailers?
I’d attempt to explain what is not allowed and why. Then try to find a creative solution. Such as bring me the four pack so I can try to figure out the problem and i’ll feed you and replace the four pack.
I complained about skunked beer to a brewery once. I know this wasn’t the brewer’s fault, but, I thought they should know their product was mistreated after leaving the brewery.
They mailed me a check. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t expect it. I did cash it.
Got to be careful around this crew! Every batch I meant! 
Let me know if you need any help with quality control. I work for free.
Leos, how did you end up handling the situation with the guy that complained about the flat four-pack?
On a side note, I am just now imagining a racket where someone sends off emails to every brewery within a few hundred miles complaining about something and seeing what they get out of it.
I want to know. I even check the beer rating sites weekly to see if there are any problems that someone might mention about my beer.
The one and only time (early on) I did not taste a batch, it turned out the caramalt was not the 30-40L stuff by more like carapils and it turned a dortmunder in to a german pils. Lesson learned.
Are you willing to pay?
A few years ago I bought a sixpack of Sam Adams Oktoberfest that was obviously bad-it tasted like soured Budweiser. I sent an email to them, that afternoon somebody from the brewery called me and asked for more details about thee brewery of origin, bottling date, etc. A week later I got a check for $25 and a Sam Adams glass. OTOH I bought some infected bottles from a brewery in Arizona, I emailed them twice and never heard a word from them.
I had a sixtel from that batch. Distributor had already heard from several bars and it was replaced post haste.