When to complain - need a little help moderating my expectations

Need a little perspective from someone with more experience than me (pretty much everybody at this point...)

I bought a fiver of the Kuba Deluxe Tubos from the devil's site. When they arrived I opened one and the little piece of leaf packed in the end of the tube was so dry it disintegrated as I removed it. The cigar itself was dry as a bone. I opened the other four and they were all pretty much the same.

I sent an email to customer service and they responded with some boiler plate stuff about me having 30 days to return them if I was not satisfied. I decided to put them in the humi at 70% and see how it went. After about two weeks they looked much better and tonight a buddy and I smoked one.

About halfway through they started cracking and splitting. My buddy lost a big piece of the wrapper on his. Last third was almost unsmokable.

So my question is this: what is reasonable in terms of taking the issue up with Cbid? Should I chalk it up to my impatience, learn my lesson and let the other three sit for six months? Should I contact Cbid and let them know what happened and ask them to replace the two? Should I send the three back and ask for a refund on all five?

This particular problem is not really a big deal but I would appreciate some pointers on what's reasonable. If its a cost of doing business thing, I understand. Just doing my best not to be a d-bag.

Any advice, thoughts or pointers from past experience would be appreciated.

PS - I know, I know, I should have taken the Acid sticks and shoved them up my dogs as for a couple weeks as that would have probably improved the rH and the flavor. I would have but I tried it before with a Ghurka and it still tasted like shit. :thumbs:

Hello,

Sorry to hear about your cigars, and your dog too....not sure he will ever be the same.

IMHO, as soon as you opened the package and were not happy they should have been returned.
I have never had good luck with dry cigars coming back, but that is. It the point. Cigars Intl. the owner of CBid, should know how to pack and ship cigars.


Hope that helps.

Tim

Disregard the Acid hatred as it is all in good fun Jiggles.

Listen to Tims advice. I use to buy from CBid all the time, until I got a dried out shipment. I returned the shipment, and didn't look back.

As far as the tubos, understand this: CB may not have checked the sticks before they sent out, especially since they were in tubos, so it could totally be a human mistake.

In my humble opinion, go to your local or a tinderbox or pretty much ANY "head shop" that sells cigars and oh should find Acids there that you can inspector yourself prior to buying.

Sorry to hear about your cigars. Although they aren't my taste, it's always sad to hear another BOTL lost a shipment to poor handling.

Thanks for the replies fellas. I will consider it a lesson learned and just take care of it right away if and when it should happen again. I'll give the other three a good spell in the cooler and we'll see what happens.

souldog said:

Disregard the Acid hatred as it is all in good fun Jiggles.

Click to expand...

We all good. I was just having some preemptive fun with it myself.

IMHO, if you are dealing with a retail site whose sole business purpose is the sale of cigars, I wouldn't hesitate to send them back right away if they are the not up to snuff. Their business model accounts for a certain amount of loss due to damaged product. I personally don't account for any amount of damaged product in my cigar budget, so they are better equipped to absorb the loss than I am.

What Pipe Smoker said. I would contact them and tell them exactly what you did in your OP. Then return the other 3 for a refund, as they will never smoke well (even after a LONG nap)...

Contact them and let them know your experience. Make it as detailed as possible. From reading other experiences with CBid, they've been pretty responsive in replacing sticks.

How badly does a tubo need to be treated to dry out?

"Those are them there tubed cigars. Just set them over there on the loading dock. No, not that one, the one with southern exposure."

Received a response today saying they would be happy to take care of refunding or replacing the three remaining smokes but would not be able to do anything about the two we smoked. Lesson learned. With my lack of experience it was hard for me to tell on the front end if the condition was something that could be fixed by time in the humi. Next time I'll be more comfortable sending them back. Thanks to all for the pointers, I appreciate them.

Glad it worked out. Got a 5er on the way from CBid Thursday. Those Nestor / Pepin cigars....

Tim