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I believe China was removed from the approved epacket list last year, if memory serves .. although I don't buy ecig material of any sort from China, I do buy certain things that I use in my business .. my shipping costs from China to me have gone up substantially in the last year ..
Hmm. You may be right. But FT still offers free packet (actually they have 2, one is free and the other is usually no more than $3). However, no other vape retailer does. They use an "expedited" service which is DHL Ecommerce (ultimately delivered by USPS) which will cost anywhere from $7-15 or so for a "normal" order. FT also offers DHL Ecommerce (listed as USPS Expedited), but they charge far less for it. Regardless, shipping costs are still reasonable and a lot lower than if shipping from USA to china. I wonder if it's not really "epacket", per se", but relabeled as something else lol.
With the way things are Right Now, I'm Not sure this Administration would want to go down that road?
And with e-Cigarettes on the Green Mile with PMTA's/Consumer Shipping Bans, would it really be needed anyway?
It would sure help lighten the load on customs. Of the vapers that are willing to still order from china, what percentage are willing to pay $20+ for a tiny package, let alone whatever it would cost to ship a couple 510 kits? My guess is very little. However, with PMTA, China might be the only avenue for most vape gear. I dunno. Might be worth the cost and risk to some.
Whatever get-arounds they come up with all it would take is for an ANTZ activist to order something on-line and tell the authorities what is going on. Nobody is likely to take the chance.
There's an old Say'n... "Everything has a Price".
And I'm just Not Sure that this Administration would want to Lean on China over e-Cigarettes via ePackages. Because it Isn't just e-Cigarettes that go into those ePackages. Seems like the Name of the Game right Now is doing things to Jump Start the Economy.
With an almost Total B2C Shipping Ban and the Looming Iron Fist of the FDA Hovering over the e-Cigarette market, I would say that the Administration will just Play Out the String. And let e-Cigarettes Die a Quiet Death.
Yeah and we are not in a bubble here on ECF if ANTZ groups want to know anything all they have to do is read the forums. I figure that's how they got ahead of us in the first place lol!
Cigarettes did not die, yet, I don't believe they can be shipped unless it's under certain circumstances .. I don't know the ins and outs of the B&M vape shops as it relates to them getting their products, but I'd think this shipping thing has to be a boost to the B&M's .. no .. ??
Yeah, well .. if a USA based mail order ecig outfit has a Website, it's pretty easy for anyone to root it out .. and what mail order outfit does not have a Website .. ??
But the Big Problem is that when you walk into a Liquor Store and see all those Cigarettes behind the counter, about Every one of them are Grandfathered under Deeming.
BT/Tobacco Distributors also has an Army of Compliance Officers who Only Job is to make sure the Forms are filled out right. And the Records all Jive. And Years of Experience doing so.
So Cigarette arn't going Anywhere because of all this. In Fact, I would say that their Sales are going to see a Nice Up-Tick in Q2.
And even if a B&M can get Stock to Sell, how Long will they be able to Sell it when the FDA Starts Rejecting PMTA's?
I wonder if they haven't already seen this uptick in sales. I wonder how many unprepared vapers who could not or for whatever reason chose not to prepare just threw up their hands went back to smoking already in the past several months?
The thing is so much stuff, not just vape gear, is sent to the USA via packets and DHL. Buy something from Amazon, if it's not Prime it might be coming from China. Loads of Ebay sellers are from China. Then all the direct from China seller sites, Wish, Ali Express, etc. If they want to restrict trade trade from China in general, then they will mess with the shipping, vape goods to individuals are too small a percentage to shut the entire system down. They will try and learn what packages to check, ie. "Filters", but then the vendors will just change. It'll be cat and mouse. The trick for us is to never make a large order, and to expect some orders to be confiscated.
Well from what I've been reading, China-to-USA epacket isn't dead, it's jsut that shipping costs have risen since COVID-19 & ePackets were seriously impacted because it is mainly shipped on flights. Due to more than 95% flights from CHina being halted and with the rest being occupied by overseas govt and DHL as well as other shipping companies to ship PPE, space was limited and prices soared.
USA Epacket is alive.
USA Epacket is alive.
Back during the EVALI scare in 2019 and all through 2020, Alibaba and AliExpress, soon followed by DH Gate, blocked all US IP addresses from viewing 99% of all vape gear on their websites. I proved this to a certain disbelieving ECFer using proxies. I don't know if they are still doing this and I'm not willing to go through all that trouble again as I hate even so much as thinking of any of those spammy chinese marketplaces. Gives me an utter headache trying to shop at those types of places.
But my point is, there are ways to severely limit sales of certain items in this digital age, if the will is there.
But my point is, there are ways to severely limit sales of certain items in this digital age, if the will is there.
“Keep asking yourself: if this bill [FSTCA] is good for BigTobacco, how can it be good for public health? The fact is it can’t. This bill is nothing more than a ‘Marlboro Protection Act,’ written to keep Philip Morris at the top of the tobacco market.”
Enzi Denounces House Passage of
I don't know, but I was able to view "cheap" ecig mods on Wish recently. I don't know why anyone would buy them. $60-80 kit that had three wattage modes: 40, 60, and 80. A tank with one coil and nowhere to buy new ones. You could go to your B&M store for that money and buy a cheap kit with variable wattage and get replacement coils for it.
I don't know anything about wish, too spammy for me the few times I did visit that site. Worse than Ali.
But most chinese sites did not block USA. However, Banggood did. They didn't block the listing but you could not checkout most vape gear if your shipping address was USA. Not sure if they still do it. Come to tihnk of it, it might have been Gearbest, however I did recently purchase vape from Gearbest.
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