Are Premium Juice Vendors Taking Advantage of us?

[drysprocket]

I think the answer is a clear yes, but I'd love to hear what you all think. I truly want to be wrong.

I just had a dreadful experience with my favorite premium vendor...let's call them Feather's Feavenly. You would think that paying $40 for 100mil of juice would get you customer service along with it. But I'm finding that many of these places give the same service as you would get from a pharmaceutical company. And much in the same way- we need them more than they need us, and they seem to know it. I'm just starting to realize how backward this dynamic is.

I know there are exceptions to this, and are some good and caring vendors out there; but then we go to the price. Can these prices really be justified? I'm starting to see why people make the switch to DIY.

Does anyone else get this constant feeling that they have us over a barrel and are taking advantage of our need for juice? I for one, do.

 

[samwest]

I would DYI but I'm lazy as hell. I do like that vendors stuff occasionally. My ..... is with AVE Boba's Bounty. It was my ADV for 3 years then the flavor fell off. ...... me off so bad I almost took the plunge into DYI. But alas, as it is with chasing the dragon I was certain I'd never be able to replicate it. That is further evidenced by the lack of clones for one of the most sought after juices has failed. I don't know where I'm goin' with this but I sure miss that nectar. Anyway, I really want to try % pawns but the price pisses me off no end. How dare they? I won't pay that just out of principle. The best coffee I've tasted thus far is the peoples vape manifesto. Real tasty but the price keeps me from buyin' more. I understand the cost of runnin' a business. I understand dealin' with vendors who change their specs without tellin' the customer or jackin' up their prices, but to pass that on to a loyal fan base and life long customers without an explanation is just rude. Are they gouging' us? hell yes.

 

[Demiurgous]

I figure if I'm paying premium prices, might as well pay it to a vendor that publicly posts the lab results for every juice they have.

I don't mind paying for that.

 

[foggy7692]

Yes, I think most "premium vendors" do what they can, to squeeze every cent out of their juice that they can.

 

[Jovey]

Same here, my ADV is heavenly and i have no desire to find another at the moment, but i know i NEED to just because i pay $15 for 15ml bottle. That is insane! So yeah, i plan on doing the DIY very soon and have a few clone recipes of my ADV already. So since i love to cook, i know i'll enjoy trying to clone my fav juice....but i would love to find another ejuice that i truly enjoy at a reasonable price, so i never have to fear going broke or the vendor discontinuing the juice.

Can't pay high prices for ejuice any longer and when i search online, i actually will leave a site if i see that they price their eliquids too high.

 

[drysprocket]

Same here, my ADV is heavenly and i have no desire to find another at the moment, but i know i NEED to just because i pay $15 for 15ml bottle. That is insane! So yeah, i plan on doing the DIY very soon and have a few clone recipes of my ADV already. So since i love to cook, i know i'll enjoy trying to clone my fav juice....but i would love to find another ejuice that i truly enjoy at a reasonable price, so i never have to fear going broke or the vendor discontinuing the juice.

Can't pay high prices for ejuice any longer and when i search online, i actually will leave a site if i see that they price their eliquids too high.

Yeah, a few days ago, I would have grabbed people by the shoulders and shook them, telling them how great their juice is (My ADV is their Blueberry). But after my experience with their customer service today, I am voting with my wallet and giving them another dime again. This is just a racket, and it's so depressing. I might have to put some serious time and effort into learning DIY; I'm just not sure there is another answer.

 

[jdoebean]

Yes, Buy your nic 100 mg/ml and pg/vg. Inawera and German flavors. Play with gloves!!

 

[Jovey]

You may want to try finding vendor's that offer decent priced samples, that way you can try all kinds of blueberry without paying a high price. If i''m unsure about a flavor when i order, i just get some samples and Myfreedomsmokes has decent prices on samples also. I tried their blueberry cheesecake and snickerdoodle, which i disliked, but that's only because i'm more of a tobacco ejuice lover, rather than desserts. Go figure...the taste thing is truly subjective and you may have loved the blueberry cheesecake.

Worth a try on the samples.

 

[WillyZee]

I never did find a vendor juice worthy of an ADV ... It wasn't until I practised with DIY did I find my ADVs.

The biggest game changer for me was VapersTek nicotine ... well worth 2.5x the average nicotine price.

Super clean tasting nic = super tasty eJuice

 

[HgA1C]

DIY costs are substantially lower than any commercially available juice. As for premade I personally would recommend trying ITC vapes juice, they have several berry flavors. That $40 would have bought you 240mls. Overall, I have tried around 12 flavors and only 2 were juices I did not finish the bottles, but I still thought others might like. I regard them as premium juices check out the thread in this forum as they have a very large following now.

 

[mesamay2003]

Like everything else, there are vendors that offer good customer service, and those that don't...if you're not happy, take your business elsewhere...money talks and lifes to short

 

[DeathBYzombieZ]

Premium vendors aren't taking advantage of anyone. If you brew craft beer and sell it $15 a six pack, that's up to you. it's your creation. I agree that the standard price for 30 ml should be lowered. right now it seems like 30 ml cost around $20, would love that to be $15 but oh well.

 

[alicewonderland]

Yes, Buy your nic 100 mg/ml and pg/vg. Inawera and German flavors. Play with gloves!!

you dont even need to buy that high 100mg. ecigexpress sells em in regular concentration like 3mg, 12mg, etc all of em. 250mls of just 12mg nic is like 11 bucks. i just shop there for my monthly juice, comes at around 30$ for juice + several mixing flavors. you can save tons more money buying 100mg nic in bulk, but i find that is just more hassle with measuring and cutting. with the 12mg i buy every month I just put them in 10ml bottles, then drop a few flavor concentrate in every morning in a bottle and off to vaping, simple and easy. no steeping no measuring no gloves no headaches. it just dilutes down to around 8-10mg but im fine with that. takes less than a minute to make your own eliquid.

thats like what? $1.30 per 30ml of unflavored 12mg nicotine, then lets say a few drops of several flavorings is another $0.25-$0.50
so it comes out to around $2 a 30ml bottle of DIY (the way i do it).

Personally, seeing how cheap and easy it is to do first hand has prevented me from buying pre-made juices for over a year, i just don't see justification in reselling something at 1000% markup(yes a thousand percent not a hundred).

You dont need a laboratory or some super secret hidden recipe to make some good juice. A lot of the flavors some of these premium eliquid vendors sell are just basic stuff u can buy, blueberry, strawberry cheesecake, cinnamon sugar cookie, strawberry kiwi, banana fosters, custard etc. All these flavors come concentrated, its not like you have to mix Flavor#XdeltaY Serial#23123123 with component X variation224 to get blueberry. You have one bottle of nicotine, you have one bottle of flavoring -> add some flavoring to nicotine bottle = done.

a lot of these vendors just look to me like they are making basic eliquid, maybe that add a drop of X with Y instead of just one flavoring, but it's just all fancy marketing with pretty pictures and fancy names for basic flavors aimed to sell. if the price of eliquid was around the 300-500% markup I would purchase and support vendors with good marketing, but 1000% is just ridiculous. The reason ejuice prices skyrocket I believe is just because of inexperience of the vapers, they are scared to try DIY because they think it is some in depth proccess with measuring, steeping, and chemicals which it isnt. All the materials to make easy flavorful eliquid is readily available online, people are just too scared to try or make up excuses about 'convenience' of buying premade imo.

 

[denali_41]

yea they are sticking it to you ,but they have overhead and such so thats the name of the game

after getting into DIY i realize the actual cost ,,and only buy premium for curiosity's sake nowadays

 

[ukeman]

I would love to agree but after trying to replicate my favorites for almost a year, I've given up on DIY for a while.
I have a few pro juices that I must have: Pencil and Handlebar by Must Vapes, and Bamskilicious Lychee (which can't be found in larger than 30ml).
When you vape 3mg nic like I do you tend to vape a hell of a lot of juice.
At least you can get Must Vape in 120's... for about $.50 a ml. = 68 and then the sites i buy from give you reward points so it goes down from there after buying a while.

I do make a DIY Lychee that I mix with Bamski and cut the price way down too... and that's after trying every brand of concentrate there is and not getting close enough.

All that said, if I did'nt have the money I could make a decent juice ... its not hard, but to try to duplicate the ones I pay for, forgeddaboudit.

That said again, 85% of the expensive juices I've tried I can easily live without, and the ones that cost $1 a ml too.

 

[jkress]

DIY costs are substantially lower than any commercially available juice. As for premade I personally would recommend trying ITC vapes juice, they have several berry flavors. That $40 would have bought you 240mls. Overall, I have tried around 12 flavors and only 2 were juices I did not finish the bottles, but I still thought others might like. I regard them as premium juices check out the thread in this forum as they have a very large following now.

I second that...great prices and I too love just about everything I have bought from them and even the couple I didn't LOVE are still very vapeable...just not my fav's...They have 50/50 and max VG but I just placed an order and a few of the juices are now available in 30/70!! The huge thread they have on here is helpful to get a read on flavors! They have a lot of fans and they love to share views...that's how I found them!
Good Luck and happy vaping...

 

[duc916]

I just had a dreadful experience with my favorite premium vendor...let's call them Feather's Feavenly. You would think that paying $40 for 100mil of juice would get you customer service along with it.

I recently went through this with my go-to vendor, who is the only one I'm aware of who sells EliqCube's Oober Goober in 120ml bottles (for $69!).... I was hooked on this stuff for the longest time, but the price! Get real! I kept telling myself "Well, it's still cheaper than smoking!".... but in reality, not by much!

The tipping point was when every time I placed an order, it was at least FOUR days before the tracking status finally changed from "shipping label created" to finally landing at a post office (in SoCal). When I asked for an explanation why it was always like this, he blames it on the post office! He assured me this is the way it is in ALL post offices. I buy tons of vape gear from all over the country, always Priority shipping, and no other post office holds Priority mail packages for four freakin days, you freakin' liar! Sorry.... I'm just insulted that this dude thinks he can jedi-mind trick me via email about the way of the world.

I finally decided I can live without Oober and recently bought four 30ml bottles of juice from MBV for 1/4 what Oober costs per ml, and I LOVE them! So I'd like to publicly say THANKS to EliqCube for choosing a lazy ...... distributor and turning me on to other juice that's every bit as good as theirs for 1/4 the price, and only THREE days to my door.

 

[duc916]

If you brew craft beer...

I know very little about DIY juice but I know it has nothing in common with brewing beer, which takes actual skill, far beyond trial and error with a few squirt bottles.

The 8 hour line at Russian River Brewing Co. this time of year is proof of what real craftsmen do with their craft.

 

[newjack21]

I have had really good customer service with Giant Vapes. They carry many premium e liquids and are SUPER friendly. Ships fast, friendly and fast responses to problems. Once usps screwed up and delivered to the wrong state, so my vape mail was delayed. Contacted CS, they tracked the package, re routed it, and sent me three cupon codes for the inconvenience, and it wasnt even their fault. Hope this helps

 

[DeathBYzombieZ]

I know very little about DIY juice but I know it has nothing in common with brewing beer, which takes actual skill, far beyond trial and error with a few squirt bottles.

The 8 hour line at Russian River Brewing Co. this time of year is proof of what real craftsmen do with their craft.

My point is its a craft. It's something that is in demand. Look at the bigger picture, It was a comparison.
Brewing beer isn't that hard dude. I could make a Pliny the elder clone.