Yet another newbie with a story and a question!

Hello to all!

I've been checking out posts all over the ECF for a couple weeks now - what an amazing group of people you all are

I've been a "social" smoker off and on for many years, but it never seemed to be a problem for me to go weeks without a cigarette. Over the past couple of years, that changed. Stress or whatever - I don't know, but I became a very committed smoker - ugh! To make matters worse, I was a healthcare provider who smoked (boo, hiss, shame on me) and had a father who was dying of complications related to heart disease and lung cancer. If that can't make you quit, you know you are in trouble!

After my darling father died, I was watching a show on TV that showed a character using an e-cigarette. I'd heard of them, but had never seriously considered it - now I did. Patches and gum had not worked for me because it wasn't just about the nicotine - it was that physical "hand to mouth" habit that I needed a substitute for - no wonder smokers tend to gain weight while trying to quit! The e-cigarette seemed too good to be true.

After doing some research (but not having yet found ECF), I ordered a Blu. Yes, I know Blu is not very popular here on ECF, but I refuse to be a hater! I am forever grateful to Blu because the day I received my starter kit (March 25th) was the last day I ever smoked a regular cigarette - YAY! Now that I've discovered vaping I will never smoke regular cigarettes ever again!

After finding ECF and the wealth of information it contained, I joined the V4L family and bought a KR808 starter kit and an spare XL battery from them. Love it! Especially my PINK Diamond Series battery with the little crystal thing on the end - I'm a very "girly girl"! The battery life is much better than the Blu, which I now keep just for vaping in my car. There's only one minor issue that I wanted to get some feedback from y'all on:

Along with my V4L starter kit, I ordered several of their sample packs of carts in several flavors so I could try a bunch of new stuff. After hearing so many good things about V4L, I was a little dissapointed in the flavors - some of them were just plain awful (like 555 and Wowboy, which so many people seem to like so much!) but ALL of the carts have a strange, plasticky undertaste to them. I know from reading here that you can get a dodgy cart now and then, but all of them had that strange chemical taste - so I'm wondering if it's just me? Even the coffee flavors, which I expected to love, tasted strange. Before you ask - yes, I removed the little plastic buttplug thing from the carts before I used them!

I tried blowing out some of the extra juice onto a tissue (props to Mary Kay for sharing this trick!). I also just tried "vaping through" the bad taste, thinking it was just so different from the Blu cartomizers that maybe it would just take a little getting used to - no luck. I'm ordering some different flavors to try thinking maybe that's the problem. But I'd like to hear feedback from anyone who's had a similar experience. I know taste is a highly subjective thing - did you need to "shop around" a lot to find carts that had the flavor you were looking for?

Could it be that the WOW carts I ordered were PG, and I've been vaping with Blu, which is glycerin based? (don't know if Blu is actually VG based - the website just says "glycerin"). Maybe I should stick with VG type stuff?

Any advice would be appreciated. You guys rock!

 

Great suggestions from all! I was thinking about going the juice route (great how-to videos here!) and was wondering if I should reuse these carts. Gonna give it a try with juice from V4L as well as some of the companies Levitas suggested.

Thank you!