Attention!!! - Why it is important to view actual subs.

[Switched]

quoted from liv2ski... http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...roblem-nic-titration-results.html#post4564211

Thanks Kurt.

I am also with Hoosier on this one. I have seen the posts on BE from the start. People flocked to this supplier in search of dirt cheap nic. I tried his stuff and never bought again. I would rather pay more and know what I am getting than save a few bucks. I have purchased nic from many suppliers and will now only buy from RTS, MFS and Xtreme. When I think about how much I was spending a day on smokes ($15.00) spending a few extra bucks for top quality nic is nothing.

I also wonder how many more of the "high" test bottles made it out the door and I am hopeful nobody ends up with issues

Thanks again Kurt for the effort in obtaining the results

What started the ball rolling... http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/diy-e-liquid/224197-boxelder-nic-feels-wayyyy-too-strong.html

I post this public announcement as a warning to folks who do not normally surf the DIY forum and rely on 2nd and 3rd hand info here or via PMs.

IMHO if you are going to roll your own, you should at least be versed with the appropriate info. It totally appalls me to see week in and week out folks posting the red text. My mama told me long ago If it is too good to be true, it probably is. I never buy nic on sale, that should be enough of a hint, and when I do it is from a reliable supplier.

Please be careful folks and vape happy

ETA: BTW if anyone hasn't already figured it out - Kurt is the man and this is where DIY questions should be directed to. As a professional and a vaper he will be more than happy to answer all concerns.

 

[Pipeous]

Pretty scary really. order 100mg and get 245. think you are mixing down some 25mg and it's 60mg... and it could be a worse case scenario

 

[Switched]

The thing that upsets me the most is the uninformed coming on the scene and chasing deals, that really gets my Polar Bear panties in a twist, whether it be liquid or hardware. Established vendors sell at established prices and will seldom hold a sale to good to be true.

 

[Concat]

And to top it off, they are trying to pass their stuff off as the Pakistani antibiotic Levonic! lol... jk. That's some pretty scary figures. I always felt nic concentration from a couple vendors were off, but usually on the low end. 200 mg+ is crazy.

 

[Eddie.Willers]

And to top it off, they are trying to pass their stuff off as the Pakistani antibiotic Levonic!

Methinks this was an attempt by them to stay below the regulatory radar by not mentioning 'nicotine'.

As an aside on the whole Box Elder issue - I think it shows poor customer service skills on their part in not responding but, overall, I think this is an isolated QC incident rather than general sloppiness and shoddy merchandise.

 

[CellWho]

Holy crap!!!!!! Thanks for the heads up.

 

[TallGrass]

Hard to say how isolated it is... how many vendors have been using Box Elder's nicotine without verification of the nic level? I would imagine there's a bunch of them.

 

[Switched]

Methinks this was an attempt by them to stay below the regulatory radar by not mentioning 'nicotine'.

As an aside on the whole Box Elder issue - I think it shows poor customer service skills on their part in not responding but, overall, I think this is an isolated QC incident rather than general sloppiness and shoddy merchandise.

There is absolutely unequivocally no excuse, when others run concentration tests on their liquids prior to the liquid being used.

The gist of the whole post is: stop chasing bargains and seek advice in the DIY section.

 

[Kams Cats]

Wasn't there a thread in this forum not to long ago where someone asked why some e-liquid seemed a lot stronger then others even from the same vendor. It has me wondering.

 

[Mindfield]

Holy Jebus. Those results are freaking scary. And to think I was this close to buying from BE in September, but RTS came out with their Labor Day weekend sale so I bought theirs at an even cheaper price. (I also went with them because they offered smaller bottles of PG and VG, since I didn't want to buy entire gallons of the stuff, shipping would have been insane.) Since I'm tremendously happy with their nic (and it definitely feels like it's the proper concentration) I'm going to stick with them for my base.

BE gets their nic from China, too, so it looks like their China supplier has some serious 'splainin' to do. RTS extracts their own nicotine from locally grown stuff.

 

[r4nd0mCh40s]

Rts also tests all of their nic, as does gentlemansreserve who flat out say they test that i know of, there are probably more registered vendors that do, but i wouldnt buy from the vendors that have be nic base ever, i am just starting to get into DIY and I always looked towards RTS for my nic, i made sure to read up on his thread and find out everything i can before committing to it. Espically dealing with a deadly chemical like liquid nic, but what is crazy is the amount of difference there is between what is said to what was actually tested 100mg posted 40odd in the bottle, to 272mg nic

 

[Mindfield]

Rts also tests all of their nic, as does gentlemansreserve who flat out say they test that i know of, there are probably more registered vendors that do, but i wouldnt buy from the vendors that have be nic base ever, i am just starting to get into DIY and I always looked towards RTS for my nic, i made sure to read up on his thread and find out everything i can before committing to it. Espically dealing with a deadly chemical like liquid nic, but what is crazy is the amount of difference there is between what is said to what was actually tested 100mg posted 40odd in the bottle, to 272mg nic

Seriously, you get someone who vapes 36mg mixing up their usual batch and they'll end up vaping damn near close to 100mg/ml! They'd probably know it when the first puff shreds their throat to fine silky strands, and it would probably make them feel pretty ill for a while, but it wouldn't kill -- nonetheless that's bloody dangerous. Not to mention handling 272mg/ml nic alone without lab gear is dangerous all by itself.

 

[Switched]

I listened VP Live and watched/listened to the shows last night.

I would like to extend congratulations to all that participated in a difficult situation. What appalls me with the entire scenario is not what was said last night, but what was not said last night, which IMHO spoke volumes. The great divide between ECF and VF was clearly evident if one spent time reading some of the comments in chat without associating comments with names.

At one point Michael got extremely upset and maintained his cool. Kudos my man because you did a fabulous job moderating the conversation where needed and stayed out of it when not required, all the time maintaining the ship on course. Not participating in chat allowed me to remain focused on what was discussed - vice focusing on chat comments. The clear lack of leadership displayed by the CEO was simply appalling and spoke volumes of BE. I call him the CEO because he made it quite clear last night that is who he was.

There was a certain following that raised the issue of how do we know the liquids received by Kurt where actually genuine untampered liquids from BE and not some competitor trying to smudge a reputable vendor, which is a extremely valid point, and one that was supported by BE to some extent???

What wasn't said...

Was the CEO of BE grabbing the bull by the horns (leadership) and correcting the process within the company to ensure this never happens again. THAT IS WHAT A CEO IS SUPPOSE TO AND EXPECTED TO DO.

It was allured to on (sort of) a couple of occasions (by Cozzi (your mission if you chose...)) that they were going to forge ahead with new procedures, but the lack of enthusiasm led me to believe otherwise. He was worried more about his reputation than the problem and fixing it. IMHO that does not inspire consumer confidence, and if anything drove or will drive consumers away.

In closing it is not the quality of the product that influences whether I would use BE or not (never have, so I don't have a dog in this fight) but after listening to the CEO (Brad Balcher, (yes I know his name)) convinced me that I wouldn't in the future neither. There is clear evidence that lack of QA and QC within Box Elder does in fact exist, and the reluctance of the CEO to get to the root cause of why this happened does not inspire consumer confidence.

The red herring that kept popping up was exactly that a red herring and merely playing on legalese IMHO. The facts in this particular case were presented and admitted to by Brad. One cannot dispute that Kurt purchased 48mg instead of 100mg, and that fact alone demonstrates procedural problems within the company.

Not once did I hear we are going to shut operations down until we can get to the root of the problem and put in place measures and procedures to ensure this unfortunate incident doesn't occur in the future. IMHO independent testing is merely window dressing like closing the door after the fox is already in the hen house.

Regardless of where the 272mg came from, the clear denial from BE IMHO was reckless. Yes I understand you do not have to incriminate yourself (advise from counsel) OTOH to take that stance without investigating how IT MIGHT have happened is totally irresponsible and IMO reckless.

IMO the need to smudge a competitor is remote, Brad scuttled his own ship last night with his lack of demonstrated leadership and accountability. The fall guy, a labeler - sound familiar folks

 

[Mindfield]

I didn't see any of the shows, but I did get an E-Mail from BE about this whole situation, and what I got out of it was basically, "We have good quality control, we get pure nicotine and dilute it, then we have independent GC/MS tests performed on our nicotine liquids, so we know they're top quality and exactly what it says on the tin! But there's the most remote of remote changes errors may exist. But it's probably a smear campaign by a competitor! That liquid was planted!"

Hyperbole, but only slightly. What spoke volumes wasn't so much what they said in their mailing, but how quickly they put this mailing together and sent it out. It would have been one thing if they'd said, "We take these allegations very seriously and we will be conducting a full internal review and analysis of our products," that would have been fine. Even if they were confident in the quality of their liquids it would have been nice to know that they'd have been willing to give a serious and deeper look into it just in case something was starting to go serious south since their last round of tests. But instead they focused on conducting damage control and playing the blame game. (And even if they didn't name names, we all know who they were blaming.)

Very unprofessional of them.

 

[kanadiankat]

...... It would have been one thing if they'd said, "We take these allegations very seriously and we will be conducting a full internal review and analysis of our products," that would have been fine. Even if they were confident in the quality of their liquids it would have been nice to know that they'd have been willing to give a serious and deeper look into it just in case something was starting to go serious south since their last round of tests. But instead they focused on conducting damage control and playing the blame game. (And even if they didn't name names, we all know who they were blaming.)

Very unprofessional of them.

You nailed it with that one. Real damage control would have been to take the allegations seriously and look into them.

 

[Can_supplier]

And to top it off, they are trying to pass their stuff off as the Pakistani antibiotic Levonic! lol... jk. That's some pretty scary figures. I always felt nic concentration from a couple vendors were off, but usually on the low end. 200 mg+ is crazy.

I think I was laughed out of the forums for making the comment that a questionable name like that, could be a sign of other business oversights.

And here we are..

It doesn’t matter what responsibility the CEO takes over this matter. Selling liquid at that strength is not responsible to start with. It can, and apparently will, lead to this. We are all lucky here that this claim was made in the forums, not a lawsuit over harm and or death with FDA (HC sure to follow) involvement.

There have been question of strength from other suppliers liquid, but when you are working with a reasonably low strength, the errors in concentration are also low. I’ve seen tests where some questionable product's 24mg was between 14 and 30mg, not good, but not dangerous.

We are playing with fire with this high strength stuff. Yes I know, before I get flamed, 9 out of 10 vapors can handle that stuff safely. The problem is the remaining 1 who can’t, but thinks he can. One fool getting harmed by this stuff and we are all going down. Selling to anyone with a credit card is a surefire way to make it happen. I’ll further suggest, if the strength is unknown, no one can handle it safely. Agencies like HC are looking for any reason to hang us, why these guys value the business so little they are risking giving them one can only be to make a dollar.

Maybe BE was setup. Maybe BE is claiming a setup as damage control. Who knows, who cares. If they were a responsible company they would offer the same volume of nicotine at a lower strength for the same price. The extra cost of base and shipping are nothing.

This company is playing with fire for no reason than to market for themselves using an irresponsible product. I’m not sympathetic that they got burnt, as they are risking burning us all just to make a buck. I bet they are happy they are getting all this free buzz.

I know it’s bad form to criticize another supplier, but what they are selling is irresponsible and dangerous in the wrong hands. Even if one chooses not to buy from them, their product is putting vaping as a whole at risk.

 

[Concat]

I agree. It's sort of like, I would never recommend 100 mg to anyone, but I'm confident I could use it myself. A person is smart, but people are stupid.

As for the this fiasco, I will take it with a grain of salt. I don't know for sure that BE is incompetent, but I do know that their response leaves a lot to be desired. They should be taking this more seriously instead of assuming it's all lies.

 

[Mindfield]

As for the this fiasco, I will take it with a grain of salt. I don't know for sure that BE is incompetent, but I do know that their response leaves a lot to be desired. They should be taking this more seriously instead of assuming it's all lies.

This is where I am with it. I don't think BE is actually incompetent because they get their juice from China so they aren't directly responsible for how it gets made. What they are responsible for is making sure that they're getting what they asked for, and if they aren't, to do something about it, and so far they haven't done either of those things and instead concentrated on trying to shoot down the naysayers and blame "the competition" for alleged smear campaigns against what they're claiming is product what is what it says it is.

Even if it is and they're sure it is, the responsible thing to do is to go have another round of tests done from each batch and be transparent about who's doing the testing, what the tests involve, and what the results found. It may cost money to do that, but not doing it and trying to lay diversions is going to cost them even more.

 

[Switched]

I think I was laughed out of the forums for making the comment that a questionable name like that, could be a sign of other business oversights.

And here we are..

It doesn’t matter what responsibility the CEO takes over this matter. Selling liquid at that strength is not responsible to start with. It can, and apparently will, lead to this. We are all lucky here that this claim was made in the forums, not a lawsuit over harm and or death with FDA (HC sure to follow) involvement.

There have been question of strength from other suppliers liquid, but when you are working with a reasonably low strength, the errors in concentration are also low. I’ve seen tests where some questionable product's 24mg was between 14 and 30mg, not good, but not dangerous.

We are playing with fire with this high strength stuff. Yes I know, before I get flamed, 9 out of 10 vapors can handle that stuff safely. The problem is the remaining 1 who can’t, but thinks he can. One fool getting harmed by this stuff and we are all going down. Selling to anyone with a credit card is a surefire way to make it happen. I’ll further suggest, if the strength is unknown, no one can handle it safely. Agencies like HC are looking for any reason to hang us, why these guys value the business so little they are risking giving them one can only be to make a dollar.

Maybe BE was setup. Maybe BE is claiming a setup as damage control. Who knows, who cares. If they were a responsible company they would offer the same volume of nicotine at a lower strength for the same price. The extra cost of base and shipping are nothing.

This company is playing with fire for no reason than to market for themselves using an irresponsible product. I’m not sympathetic that they got burnt, as they are risking burning us all just to make a buck. I bet they are happy they are getting all this free buzz.

I know it’s bad form to criticize another supplier, but what they are selling is irresponsible and dangerous in the wrong hands. Even if one chooses not to buy from them, their product is putting vaping as a whole at risk.

Rob,

We know your position wrt 100mg, can we please move on.

One would presume that a "chemical company" would have trained chemist on staff, and a set of protocols that preclude what happened from happening. This is the debate not the fact that high concentrations of nic are being sold. Notwithstanding, at least the facilities are separated from quite a distance so this mishap should not have happened, but it might have happened. If you didn't listen to Brad last night, in all honesty you are merely playing Monday morning QB here. My updated post provided the concise details of close to 2.5 hrs of beating around the bush before I had enough and went to bed.

I listened to the remainder this am where some state this should have been conducted behind closed doors??? To that I call BS, in the open is where it needed to be instead of swept under the rug.

You receive your liquid from China, what test do you conduct to ensure that what we are getting is what is advertised on your site, or is 36mg harmless enough that we don't really need to?

 

[Switched]

This is where I am with it. I don't think BE is actually incompetent because they get their juice from China so they aren't directly responsible for how it gets made. What they are responsible for is making sure that they're getting what they asked for, and if they aren't, to do something about it, and so far they haven't done either of those things and instead concentrated on trying to shoot down the naysayers and blame "the competition" for alleged smear campaigns against what they're claiming is product what is what it says it is.

Even if it is and they're sure it is, the responsible thing to do is to go have another round of tests done from each batch and be transparent about who's doing the testing, what the tests involve, and what the results found. It may cost money to do that, but not doing it and trying to lay diversions is going to cost them even more.

Exactly...