For myself personally, I had begun dabbling into rebuildables for some time and found some success doing so.
The last time I attempted to setup a new carto in one of my IBTanked, I had five bad cartos in a row and had wasted about 10ml of good juice attempting to prime all five. I'd had some bad luck with bad batches of cartos before, so this was the last straw. I've been rebuilding almost exclusively since. My old cartos and tanks have been sitting in a drawer for nearly 2 years.
Rebuildables gave me complete control of my vape. I no longer was dependent upon the QC of a cartomizer manufacturer, I was. If I got a bad vape, I had no one to blame but myself. Plus, wire and cotton is much cheaper than a cartomizer and lasted much longer. There was no reason to keep using a cartomizer. Cotton or rayon used in a rebuildable is a better wick than polyfill. Wire coils in a rebuildable can last months compared to weeks in a carto.
I get those who are still using cartos and cartotanks. However, looking back, cartos were kind of a pain to prime properly; it took time and patience. But the quality control of cartomizers often was unacceptable, too, at least for me. Ikenvape had excellent quality control for a long time, but then Ikenvape's Chinese manufacturer began screwing with him and the quality became inconsistent. As we know, Ikenvape closed their doors earlier this year, too.
Improvements in vaping technology was the beginning of the end for cartomizers. Clearomizers improved their coil heads by designing them more like cartomizers, with larger coils and better wick materials. These coil heads were easier to replace than a cartomizer and were the same price or cheaper.
And as I pointed out above, those willing to learn how to rebuild found a better vaping experience.
Vape shops stopped carrying cartos and tanks in their stores because they stopped being popular and they took up a lot of shelf storage space that was better put to use by more profitable items. Vape shops could not make a profit with cartomizers or cartotanks, either.
When I worked at a vape shop, I tried to get management to sell IBTanked cartotanks. Management had discussions with Harry to attempt to work out a deal for a bulk buy of tanks, but since Harry was already selling his tanks at rock bottom prices, a deal couldn't be reached where our vape shop could make a profit. In addition, management was going into a different direction ---> RBA's and the newer generation of clearotanks.
