After 4 months of waiting and many, many delays on the actual shipping date, I finally received my ebay humidor from robustohumidors. Problem is my collection grew so much during that 4 month wait that I ran out of room in it before it even came. So now I am looking into a much larger cabinet. Possibly an aristocrat.
It was delivered with a dented in corner on be rear top from shipping damage. I blame this on poor packing. He claimed that they all go out with wood reinforced corners. There were none in my box. It was just a large box with packing peanuts and 2 small thin pieces of ply to protect the front and back of the unit. Had there been any protection on the corners Im sure it would have been fine. Even a little cardboard would have stopped the damage. I was so frustrated with how long it took to receive that I didnt even want to think about waiting for a replacement. When I emailed him about the damage he responded by saying he ran out of the wood reinforcements (helloooo....cardboard?) and he would open an insurance claim with UPS for me. No Thanks. This was the packers fault not UPS.
Overall the humidor is nice for the price. I won the auction at $142. I added an additional shelf (that I dont even use because the interior is too small), and a lock. After shipping it came to almost $250. I also purchased the set & forget humidifier from Bob for an additional $280 (almost twice the cost of the humidor itself!). Installing the Set & Forget was a breeze. I just drilled a small hole in the back large enough for the power wire. To keep the hole size small I cut the power wire in half and ran that through the hole then spliced it back together. I sealed the hole up with some silicon window sealer. I will end up uninstalling the Set & Forget when I get my new, larger humidor. It is an extremely high quality unit. I couldnt be happier with the way it is working.
Back to the humidor itself: It seems like a quality built unit but some design aspects I don't exactly agree with. It is heavy and sturdy weighing in at almost 70lbs. To keep costs down it looks like the exterior is veneered rather than using nicer woods. Could it be made of MDF? The hardware is cheap but gets the job done. Will it stand up over time? Who knows. The key is sometimes hard to work. You have to stick it in the hole but then kind of fish around to catch the latch mechanism. The interior of the humidor seems small compared to the exterior. It is a box within a box design. The humidor seems to be built around a frame so there is air space between the exterior wood and the interior spanish cedar box. Had the humidor been built without a frame but rather with nice joints and then lined with the cedar, the overall interior dimensions would have been much greater. The builder claims that this air gap is intentional to insulate the humidor from temperature changes. I see it as unnecessary and an excuse for an unprofessional design. It looks as if there is almost as much as an inch of airspace between the cedar and outer box.
Dont get me wrong.....at the price of $142, this humidor cant really be beat (although I think that he has raised his starting bid price to above that amount). I do have a sour taste in my mouth from the sale. I found 16 weeks to be very excessive for any built to order humidor, and I just do not see the craftsmanship in this humidor that would warrant anything close to that time frame. It was originally stated in the description it would take 4-6weeks. A few days after I won the auction it changed to 8 weeks. After that time frame had passed I emailed the builder every two weeks asking if it was ready yet. Each time he pushed the deliver date back by another week or two. He pushed the delivery date back a total of 5 times. He claims that NOW deliver times are much shorter but he was making that very same claim BEFORE and throughout the entire 16 weeks that I was waiting on mine. On top of that...During that time he was STILL selling more of these on ebay.
I originally planned on buying a couple of these. I was going to buy this one, check the quality, and if it was nice buy another one or two. I now know for sure that wont be happening. It is just an OK humidor. Nothing special really. Anyone with some tools and minor know how can build one like this. I would have prefered to build it myself after that wait. It can easily be done over a weekend. The price I got it for was the best thing it had going for it. It holds the humidity well and is functional, so in that aspect it is a nice unit. I never got to leave feedback on ebay for "robustohumidors". By the time it came it was passed the ebay time frame for leaving feedback. I would probably have left negative feedback if I had the chance too.
To keep this review balanced here are the only 2 other posts on this humidor I have been able to find. Both of which I read before purchasing and made me decide to go ahead with buying one.
http://www.cigarpass.com/forumsipb/index.php?showtopic=33501
http://www.cigarpass.com/forums/lofiversio...php?t31633.html
Here are some pics of the humidor and my stoggies:
Outside
Inside
Opus
Fuente's
ISOM's
Padron and LFD Chisels
Singles:
It was delivered with a dented in corner on be rear top from shipping damage. I blame this on poor packing. He claimed that they all go out with wood reinforced corners. There were none in my box. It was just a large box with packing peanuts and 2 small thin pieces of ply to protect the front and back of the unit. Had there been any protection on the corners Im sure it would have been fine. Even a little cardboard would have stopped the damage. I was so frustrated with how long it took to receive that I didnt even want to think about waiting for a replacement. When I emailed him about the damage he responded by saying he ran out of the wood reinforcements (helloooo....cardboard?) and he would open an insurance claim with UPS for me. No Thanks. This was the packers fault not UPS.
Overall the humidor is nice for the price. I won the auction at $142. I added an additional shelf (that I dont even use because the interior is too small), and a lock. After shipping it came to almost $250. I also purchased the set & forget humidifier from Bob for an additional $280 (almost twice the cost of the humidor itself!). Installing the Set & Forget was a breeze. I just drilled a small hole in the back large enough for the power wire. To keep the hole size small I cut the power wire in half and ran that through the hole then spliced it back together. I sealed the hole up with some silicon window sealer. I will end up uninstalling the Set & Forget when I get my new, larger humidor. It is an extremely high quality unit. I couldnt be happier with the way it is working.
Back to the humidor itself: It seems like a quality built unit but some design aspects I don't exactly agree with. It is heavy and sturdy weighing in at almost 70lbs. To keep costs down it looks like the exterior is veneered rather than using nicer woods. Could it be made of MDF? The hardware is cheap but gets the job done. Will it stand up over time? Who knows. The key is sometimes hard to work. You have to stick it in the hole but then kind of fish around to catch the latch mechanism. The interior of the humidor seems small compared to the exterior. It is a box within a box design. The humidor seems to be built around a frame so there is air space between the exterior wood and the interior spanish cedar box. Had the humidor been built without a frame but rather with nice joints and then lined with the cedar, the overall interior dimensions would have been much greater. The builder claims that this air gap is intentional to insulate the humidor from temperature changes. I see it as unnecessary and an excuse for an unprofessional design. It looks as if there is almost as much as an inch of airspace between the cedar and outer box.
Dont get me wrong.....at the price of $142, this humidor cant really be beat (although I think that he has raised his starting bid price to above that amount). I do have a sour taste in my mouth from the sale. I found 16 weeks to be very excessive for any built to order humidor, and I just do not see the craftsmanship in this humidor that would warrant anything close to that time frame. It was originally stated in the description it would take 4-6weeks. A few days after I won the auction it changed to 8 weeks. After that time frame had passed I emailed the builder every two weeks asking if it was ready yet. Each time he pushed the deliver date back by another week or two. He pushed the delivery date back a total of 5 times. He claims that NOW deliver times are much shorter but he was making that very same claim BEFORE and throughout the entire 16 weeks that I was waiting on mine. On top of that...During that time he was STILL selling more of these on ebay.
I originally planned on buying a couple of these. I was going to buy this one, check the quality, and if it was nice buy another one or two. I now know for sure that wont be happening. It is just an OK humidor. Nothing special really. Anyone with some tools and minor know how can build one like this. I would have prefered to build it myself after that wait. It can easily be done over a weekend. The price I got it for was the best thing it had going for it. It holds the humidity well and is functional, so in that aspect it is a nice unit. I never got to leave feedback on ebay for "robustohumidors". By the time it came it was passed the ebay time frame for leaving feedback. I would probably have left negative feedback if I had the chance too.
To keep this review balanced here are the only 2 other posts on this humidor I have been able to find. Both of which I read before purchasing and made me decide to go ahead with buying one.
http://www.cigarpass.com/forumsipb/index.php?showtopic=33501
http://www.cigarpass.com/forums/lofiversio...php?t31633.html
Here are some pics of the humidor and my stoggies:
Outside
Inside
Opus
Fuente's
ISOM's
Padron and LFD Chisels
Singles:
