Another B&M rant

[faeriekitsune]

So I got a call from a friend of mine tonight. He was having problems with his new mod and was in the neighborhood so he thought I might be able to help him out as I'm the most advanced of our group of friends.

I had heard he got a mod, but hadn't seen him lately. I'm sitting here thinking he had a MVP or istick with a PT3 or nautilus.

Turns out he's had his mod for like a week or two. Bought it at the local B&M, they set it up for him and let him walk out the door. sigelei 100W box mod with a Stillare clone running a .4 ohm dual coil. He was running it at 100W the whole time.

He came over because his cotton wick burned and he couldn't replace it.

They sold him a high power mod and rda, and didn't even make sure he could build a coil. No battery safety, no basics. He doesn't own kanthal, no rebuilding supplies. The only point in their favor is I'm pretty sure those were Panasonic 18650s I saw in it. (Red?)

TL;DR-
I'm just getting tired of B&M's catering to someone walking in and saying "I want to blow huge clouds" without taking into account user level, experience or anything. They don't care if you blow your face off because you don't have the experience for what you're using, they just want your $160.

 

[BackDoc]

Idiots coaching idiots ...........

 

[BackDoc]

I have to qualify , idiots coaching the Uninformed

 

[chrisKRAWLER]

A friend of mines brother just bought a mech and igo w 6 at a tobacco shop today and they sold him 10 amp batteries to go with it and put a .4 ohm build on it! Hes never even used a blu e cig. I told him to come by and ill show him how to rewick it and give him a proper battery. It just frustrates me that ppl dont even care about end result.

 

[ElConquistador]

Maybe the business model is for him to come back every couple of days and pay them $10 to stick a new sliver of cotton into the atty.

 

[Jake67]

Every time they get someone to walk through their doors is another opportunity for the owners of these shops to try to sell something else.
The way business is being done in this industry is sad.


Sent from my iPhone

 

[Rocketpunk]

I sure to goodness hope the pendulum swings back to normal vaping. This "extreme" version of vaping has lost all sight of what vaping was originally about (quitting smoking). It can be downright dangerous, and what we're seeing are the blind leading the blind. I work in a B&M and do you know how many kids (18, yes, but they're still kids) I just subconsciously shake my head at? They're all young men (I've only met two females -- both women -- who were into rebuildables, and they most definitely were not cloudchasers), the vast majority have never smoked (well, not cigarettes, anyway) and they care little for safety. You can do your best to emphasize safety first, but this cloudchasing crowd of boys will have nothing of it. The biggest umbrage I take to cloudchasers is how they look down their noses at anything that isn't a mech mod with an RDA on top. Please, kids, please realize -- rebuilding is NOT, by any means, the be all, end all, endgame for vapers. You're the fringe. Why, all of a sudden, is the ONLY way to "truly experience vaping" is via rebuilding?

And did you ever even smoke before? Are you trying to quit smoking? Or is it the new cool thing to do, and you want to be as cool as your buddies and do little vape tricks (that no one even really cares about except you and your friends.)

 

[Ed_C]

I guess you could say, at least it was a regulated PV,......but still pretty crappy.

 

[Norrin]

Yes but it's bad business practice, you help someone get things right and they come back you screw them over they go elsewhere.

 

[TorontoOntario]

In my honest opinion its the consumers fault. I personally would love it if everyone in business practiced 100% ethical sales operations but face it there are many store owners in every business that put money over everything including the customers safety and I actually expect it to some degree. This is why you have to be an informed consumer and research. The amount of time I spent just on researching batteries alone is crazy. I do agree that's shady and I feel bad it happened to your friend and happens to a lot of people but this is why again I believe you have to be an informed consumer and not make an impulse purchase before researching (with anything not just vape gear.) Anyways I do feel bad and I hate that shop owners/employees do that, I actually got banned from a BandM that I frequented a lot of which I will not name for informing a women who had just come off the street (probably impulsively) that her big dripper and I think it was a Fuhattan (it was some mech) probably wasn't a good first choice for an e-cig and the 69.99 MVP which I thought would be good could be had from my favorite Canadian vendor for $30 cheaper. I still feel its on the consumer to make an informed purchase due to the fact that in business now n days people will do anything to profit.

Just my opinion when I constantly read these type of rant threads but what do I really know.

 

[Neolithium]

So I got a call from a friend of mine tonight. He was having problems with his new mod and was in the neighborhood so he thought I might be able to help him out as I'm the most advanced of our group of friends.

I had heard he got a mod, but hadn't seen him lately. I'm sitting here thinking he had a MVP or istick with a PT3 or Nautilus.

Turns out he's had his mod for like a week or two. Bought it at the local B&M, they set it up for him and let him walk out the door. Sigelei 100W box mod with a Stillare clone running a .4 ohm dual coil. He was running it at 100W the whole time.

He came over because his cotton wick burned and he couldn't replace it.

They sold him a high power mod and RDA, and didn't even make sure he could build a coil. No battery safety, no basics. He doesn't own kanthal, no rebuilding supplies. The only point in their favor is I'm pretty sure those were Panasonic 18650s I saw in it. (Red?)

TL;DR-
I'm just getting tired of B&M's catering to someone walking in and saying "I want to blow huge clouds" without taking into account user level, experience or anything. They don't care if you blow your face off because you don't have the experience for what you're using, they just want your $160.

This is just sad to see. Our busiest local place will find out what you want and give it to you (Within reason), they don't upsell and will spend quite a lot of time with people who are interested in higher power or mechanical mods - heck I asked about a clone and we had an hour long conversation where I learned SO much. My rants point is that not all businesses are interested in a quick buck- some are genuine people that want repeat customers because of service not a desperate need to have coils made for what they were sold in a moment of being uninformed.

 

[VHRB2014]

So............

What`s his opinion of sucking burning cotton?

Kinda reminds "me" of the stinkies, kinda has that paper taste. LOL.

 

[wheelie]

So............

What`s his opinion of sucking burning cotton?

Kinda reminds "me" of the stinkies, kinda has that paper taste. LOL.

 

[Rocketpunk]

Some B&M's will not build for customers. They may check your builds out and suggest what may be wrong or how to tweak it, but as far as actually building it for the customer -- definite no no for some. Liability reasons. Others may build for the customer but require a signed release form (they'll build what you ask them to build, but if you blow your chin or hand off, vent a battery, or otherwise do something to win the Darwin Award, that's your fault, not theirs).

I used to want to be a teacher, but not anymore. I know we were all eighteen once, and old fogeys hate on young kids all the time, but damn, if some of these kids aren't just... plain stupid.

 

[VHRB2014]

Ya, ya should`nt worry about thats too much.

Da Gobbermint WILL take care of it!

 

[Norrin]

In my honest opinion its the consumers fault. I personally would love it if everyone in business practiced 100% ethical sales operations but face it there are many store owners in every business that put money over everything including the customers safety and I actually expect it to some degree. This is why you have to be an informed consumer and research. The amount of time I spent just on researching batteries alone is crazy. I do agree that's shady and I feel bad it happened to your friend and happens to a lot of people but this is why again I believe you have to be an informed consumer and not make an impulse purchase before researching (with anything not just vape gear.) Anyways I do feel bad and I hate that shop owners/employees do that, I actually got banned from a BandM that I frequented a lot of which I will not name for informing a women who had just come off the street (probably impulsively) that her big dripper and I think it was a Fuhattan (it was some mech) probably wasn't a good first choice for an e-cig and the 69.99 MVP which I thought would be good could be had from my favorite Canadian vendor for $30 cheaper. I still feel its on the consumer to make an informed purchase due to the fact that in business now n days people will do anything to profit.

Just my opinion when I constantly read these type of rant threads but what do I really know.

Although I do sort of agree with what your saying, wasn't it much better when you could go into any shop to buy something and get well informed people putting you in the right direction (presuming your old enough to remember this) shop keepers would actually sell you something cheaper that was better for you so that you would come back to someone you could trust. Things have changed and although some things are better many things are worse.

 

[ronnbert]

I sure to goodness hope the pendulum swings back to normal vaping. This "extreme" version of vaping has lost all sight of what vaping was originally about (quitting smoking). It can be downright dangerous, and what we're seeing are the blind leading the blind. I work in a B&M and do you know how many kids (18, yes, but they're still kids) I just subconsciously shake my head at? They're all young men (I've only met two females -- both women -- who were into rebuildables, and they most definitely were not cloudchasers), the vast majority have never smoked (well, not cigarettes, anyway) and they care little for safety. You can do your best to emphasize safety first, but this cloudchasing crowd of boys will have nothing of it. The biggest umbrage I take to cloudchasers is how they look down their noses at anything that isn't a mech mod with an RDA on top. Please, kids, please realize -- rebuilding is NOT, by any means, the be all, end all, endgame for vapers. You're the fringe. Why, all of a sudden, is the ONLY way to "truly experience vaping" is via rebuilding?

And did you ever even smoke before? Are you trying to quit smoking? Or is it the new cool thing to do, and you want to be as cool as your buddies and do little vape tricks (that no one even really cares about except you and your friends.)

I agree, not all B&Ms are evil and just looking to take your money and send you on your way. Where I work, we make sure to find what will suit the customer, not just the latest and greatest mech. I would say 70% of our customers use units such as eGos and MVPs, and our average customer age is in the 30s.

When a new customer comes in the store, I don't even puff on my mech, just so I don't influence to run before walking. I will even send someone interested in mechanicals or box mods back out the door to do their homework, and point them to ECF and Baditudes blogs to make sure they get correct info. Once they are ready to purchase, I point out that with high wattage boxes, there is no need to super sub-ohm and you can achieve the same results with a .8 to 2 ohm coil at 20-50 watts. After purchase, we sit them down, and show them how to build, while re-enforcing battery safety and ohms law to make sure they understand what they are getting into.

As for 18 year olds, I have probably scared off a few non-smoking potential cloud chasers who see that it takes some work and knowledge to "chuck clouds" and quickly become disinterested due to the work they would need to put into it. We also card anyone we don't recognize and even potentially looks under 25.

TL-DR: Not all B&Ms are bad and if we support the good ones and refuse to do business with the shady ones, hopefully the market will correct itself. Blanket statements like "all B&Ms are greedy, and don't care about customers" are unjust and just as bad as saying "people who re-build just want to 'chuck clouds' and build .01 ohm coils".

 

[cad99]

I went to a b&m for my stater kit doing my homework first I had a idea what what I wanted they tried to sell me a rta and a mech as well.so I just left when I ran out of juice hours from home a poped into another and every one had mechs rda and me and my clero where out of place.i don't drip and drive.but they were actually helping people and not upselling anything they would drill for you if that's what you wanted tech you how to wrap etc very impressed I want to pop in for there Friday cape meets but never seem to make it happen.


Living the dream one nightmare at a time.

 

[Samthejuicemane]

Funny, at first I thought you were talking about me because I have the same setup, and had the same

 

[Samthejuicemane]

Funny, at first I thought you were talking about me because I have the same mod, atty, and ohm setup, and had the same problems about my wicks burning up. But I don't have those problems anymore and I don't use red Panasonics.