First vapemail is almost here!

[theb0b]

My starter kit with some extra juice has shown up on the Japan Post tracking site! It landed last night and passed through customs this morning and is listed as "Departure from inward office of exchange" at Kanagawa at 06:48.

This order was placed Oct 14th. with bestecig.com

Neither of my fasttech orders have shown up on tracking yet, the first one had the batteries removed, was ordered on Oct 16th and finally shipped on the 21st my second fasttech order was placed on Oct 25th and got out of the door immediately.

My Healthcabin order ran into some problems. Ordered on Oct 25th but delayed because they needed an extra $6 to upgrade the postage. Finally marked as "Processing" this morning after a long wait.

The batteries I couldn't have shipped from fasttech I ordered from DX.com. No way to track them but my experience is about 2 weeks delivery time. DX don't seem to have the battery shipping problems that the ecig shops have.

So the bestecig was totally no hassle from order to landing, (hasn't been delivered yet!).

Fasttech had some battery problems with the first order but the second order moved without any other communication.

And Healthcabin, have been quite slow to respond to problems, but in their defense the "new directive" on shipping liquids only came into force on Oct 25th, so I'd imagine that they were taken by surprise.

I guessing that Christmas orders need to go in within he next month or so to stand any chance of arrival here.

I'm planning on a big order of Fasttech 100ml bottles of highnic, at only $7.47 each for 5, and lots of Healthcabin concentrated flavor and Plain PG and VG. for blending down to strength.

 

[phoenixstu]

Cool beans! Looking forward to seeing what you got!

 

[theb0b]

Well the bestcig order is just a stardust starter kit and some juice, and It's arrived at my local post office and is somewhere on the back of a post bike as I type!

Fasttech looks like it's gone into full meltdown, check out the forums there the FasttechMod had quit in spectacular fashion in a stickied post. I hope my orders got through OK.

 

[nicjuice]

I just order 4 rebuildable atomizer from fasttech on 9th of october, they shipped my order thru hkpost on 16th of october. Tracking code is not working when i track it. Still patiently waiting to my door step.


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[kuritaro9]

FWIW, i ordered 10 vivi heads from them that shipped on 4 oct, and i still dont have them. they have cheap prices, but the shipping dept. sucks.

 

[theb0b]

Yeah! I'm officially a vaper!

My package showed as being at my local post office, but delivery time came and went and I had to go to work. I thought I'd have one of those slips of paper waiting for me on my return at 6:30, but nothing was in my mail box. I put the coffee on, and was just about to light up when I heard a bike pull up outside. The postman had been delayed because of the rain.

I'm surprised how excited I was to receive a small brown cardboard box. The addresses are hand written, so I guess bestecig.com isn't such a big operation.

My package consisted of a small eGo soft case and a blue box. Opening the case, I found a stainless steel 650mah battery with a CE4 on it, a usb charger, a 10ml bottle of Winston super high nic and a spare CE4 with a "free" sticker on it. The blue box contained a 20ml bottle of BestCig Marlboro Shigh nic juice.

The instructions explained about charging the battery for 8 hours before using… I wasn't about to wait that long. I slapped it on for about 10 mins, the charger light was green so I filled the clearo and… nothing. The little soft white rubbery button just flashed! I tried the 5 times thing but, no way Jose! Back on the charger for the bat, out with my multimeter, and the clearo was showing as a dead short…

Humm! what to do? Well I had one free clearo so I filled that and tried again, and it fired. Yeah, my first vape.

So conclusions. My order of a CE4 starter kit with 10ml juice and an extra 20ml, came to Yen 3141 plus Yen 643 for shipping. It took 15 days for delivery and one of the clearos was DOA. I think I may have made a mistake ordering super high nic. It's really giving me a head rush! I ended up with what I ordered, but only because of the freebie that was advertised as being sent with the kit.

So not cheap, shipping time reasonable, quality quite low (generic bat, dodgy clearo), but it did get here and will start to wean me off the nasty analogs.

Tracking tip. My orders show up on the Japan site before they show on the China post site. Check here.

https://trackings.post.japanpost.jp/services/srv/search/input?locale=en

My first Fasttech order and my Healthcabin order popped up on the tracking site this morning so at least the Japan PO know where they are!

 

[kuritaro9]

take a pic of the CE4 head if you are able to take the tank part off. its probably rebuildable. i rebuild all of mine before i even use them, just so i can verify the quality of the coil in there. i also swap out the wicking material. pretty easy to rebuild them. if you are careful, you may be able to pull the coil and reuse the existing kanthal. it may just need to be reseated in the set pin.

Rebuilding standard CE4 Clearomizer - YouTube

 

[theb0b]

Unfortunately it's a soldered one. I've stripped it down but isn't worth rebuilding. In your video the "center insulator" is a plain bush that can be pushed in from the front. On my one, the center insulator is stepped and can only go in from the battery connector side and only supports the center pin just at the battery side. Both of the legs of the coil were soldered and one of the legs had a insulated sheath. It's a nasty cheap design.

I've got some insulators for the screws that attach transistors to heatsinks that are about the right size, but I don't think it is worth the time to mess with it unless my working CE4 fails!

I've got a brass Sentinel M16 and a Kanga Protank II with 5 extra heads incoming. My batteries were turned around but I've got some Pana NCR18650's that will work. I've got another order with an X8 tank with a few cartos and some ego batts arriving just behind that. So I should be all right.

I've bought some plain Glycerin in the drugstore at Yen 350 for 100ml, and I've mixed a little of my super high strength juice with that 50:50 as an experiment. I'll leave it a few days to steep. I might just butcher my dud CE4 into a dripping atty by cutting off the center tubes!

I've noticed that the 100 yen shop Daiso has 30 meter rolls of. 30g .28mm stainless wire. It's not kanthal, but I'm sure it would work for coils.

 

[kuritaro9]

problem with that wire at the 100y store is, it wont be able to handle the type of heat you will be putting through it on a coil. also, you dont know the chemical make up of it. it make had a ton of lead or other chemicals mixed it with the metal to make it pliable. personally, i wouldnt use it, but i also have kanthal wire. if it didnt, i might be inclined to try it once.

 

[theb0b]

Yeah I hear you on the wire, but stainless wire is mostly pretty similar. I don't think I'd risk dry burning it though.

My Healthcabin order arrived yesterday so now I'm totally stocked with RY4. 6x 30ml should keep me going for a while. My one worry is that I only have one battery and one CE4!

Of my 2 Fasttech orders, one is shown as departed HK yesterday. My experience is that as soon as it wiggles it's way through customs here it flies to my door. Poor Fasttech seem to be going through the wringer at the moment. I don't envy their CS staff having to deal with scores of nicotine starved customers complaining about delivery times. The forum there is like a soap opera.

bestecig.com replied to my mail about the DOA CE4 and have offered either a refund or store credit, with no mention of a return needed. So they score one for customer service.

No sign of the batteries I ordered from DX. I hope that my M16 mod and Protank arrive early next week.

 

[kuritaro9]

yeah, im pretty much done with slowtech. its ridiculous that it takes an order 30+ days to get from HK to japan. they "mentioned" faster shipping options, but i then "mentioned" to them that i tried that, and narta customs tends to turn things shipped via HK post back automatically because 99.9% of anything trying to get into japan from HK is bootlegged. its worth it to me to pay a little extra to have stuff shipped quickly. bought some LED lightbulbs from them too that were supposed to be 100v only to have 220v lights show up...

 

[theb0b]

Until very recently most of my China posts got here in about 2 weeks. I think the last couple of months have been an exception. I've never had a shipment turned back n anything I've had shipped here.

I only use the free shipping options, and I guess that I just need to be patient.

 

[kuritaro9]

yeah. i only use the free option because they use singapore post for that. had 2 HK post orders turned back. im tapping out on craptech...haha

 

[nicjuice]

I only use the free shipping options, and I guess that I just need to be patient.

How long does it take to Japan?
I order from them and they shipped it on october 16 and until now no sign of tracking. They shipped it thru hkpost.


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[kuritaro9]

takes anywhere from 15 to 60 days... thats why i gave up on slowtech.... and there is a very good chance of narita customs turning the package back if it was shipped via HK post. they generally use singapore post for the free shipping, but the "faster" pay shipping goes out HK post. japan is automatically suspicious of anything shipped via HK post.