Chinese Retailers / China-Sells.com

Dan I Am

I've spent around €300 over the last month in starter kit and juice, and as an ex-roly smoker I'm way behind on the financial equation atm. I've been looking East to save a few €, but the Chinese retailers listed here in the sticky all have fairly high postage. That would be OK if I ordered enough to make it worth while, but then I'd presumably be likely to have bureaucratic/financial hassles with customs?

The china-sells site ( http://www.china-sells.com/en/shop.php?cid=219 ) seems to have free p&p via regular Hong-Kong airmail (so several small orders avoids customs issues), and their prices look very good. (80mls of 100mg/ml nic concentrate for around €14.5, 6ml cartomiser tanks, packs of 5 large carts or ego-c attys all for €4.5 caught my eye, but they seem to have all the usual stuff, plus a few rarer/newer things).

Has anyone ever tried their stuff? (I can't find much about them on the web, but they seem to have been trading for at least a few years). I'm thinking about getting some base and stuff from there, some flavours from inawera, and some pg/vg from inawera, or locally if possible (Is it even possible to get pg anywhere from retail shops?)

Any thoughts or experiences with these guys? Or anyone have any alternative ideas for Chinese suppliers, or for saving a few Euro?

newmark

I've never heard of them before but just had a quick flick through their website there and they look fairly cheap.

However I'd be extremely wary of buying nicotine off of them especially something like the 500mg/ml stuff they have on their homepage as I'm not sure but that seems like a very dangerous concentration rate.
I believe at high concentrations that stuff can kill by just inhaling it by smelling it. If someone made a mistake using that high a rate, it could be very dangerous and even fatal. I think as well the legal rate for importation is only 100mg/ml though again I'm not sure.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

i think the legal limit is 75mg/ml

achieve

Had a quick look the site and priced both a basic 510 and Ego setup. There are savings to be made. I am one of those who goes my the maxim, if it looks to good to be true, then it is too good to be true - and I would certainly think this re: free shipping But if I am wrong - then great!

However, anyone purchasiing from China needs to bear in mind that in all likelihood you will have to pay another 25-30% approx in customs / vat to Irish customs. So maybe savings aren't as great as expected?

Dan I Am

I didn't notice the 500mg/ml until you mentioned it.

I'm don't know anything (other than what you said, Newmark) about exactly how dangerous concentrated nicotine is, but when compared to the maximum concentrations other companies sell, it does make you wonder about a company that is prepared to post that kind of strength nicotine around the world in regular airmail?

alec76

Some Chinese could sell u up to 1000 mg/ml nicotine .... i don't think it prohibited in China .

Dan I Am

achieve wrote: »

Had a quick look the site and priced both a basic 510 and Ego setup. There are savings to be made. I am one of those who goes my the maxim, if it looks to good to be true, then it is too good to be true - and I would certainly think this re: free shipping But if I am wrong - then great!

However, anyone purchasiing from China needs to bear in mind that in all likelihood you will have to pay another 25-30% approx in customs / vat to Irish customs. So maybe savings aren't as great as expected?

The good thing about the free postage is that you can split what you want up into separate orders to avoid the customs problems. No customs is ow-able on orders under, I beleive, €25 (although things slightly over, or even significantly over, will often slip through the net in regular post. With large courier companies though, I think they receive some kind of commission for collecting the taxes on delivery, so you are much more likely to be charged. There is a sticky all about it on one of the forums here. Maybe the 'bargains' forum?)

As to the 'too good to be true' free postage. I don't know how they do it either, but I know I have regularly bought small electronic items, through ebay or other outlets over the last 3 or 4 years, for pennies, and with free postage. I have no idea how it is worth their while to sell it, or even how they don't make a loss on the postage alone. I originally assumed it was some kind of govt. subsidy to encourage business, but really idk

Edit: Delivery times with the regular HK/China airmail seems to be a total crap shoot though. Fastest I've got anything is about one week, slowest about 5 or even 6 weeks once, usually 3-4 weeks. It is much more reliable than it was several years ago though. Back then I used to reckon about a 70-80% chance of it ever arriving. The last 3 or 4 years I can't really remember anything not turning up in the end.. maybe one or two didn't - not sure.

achieve

BY all accounts, pure nicotine is extremely dangerous. I think that over on UK Forums and ECF that any suppliers selling pure nicotine are BANNED from using the respective forums.

eeloe

Some of their stuff looks mighty cheap, but could the quality be very high? It all appears to be replicas of the Joye products!

Tom123

€300 per month is probably far more than you will need to spend after the first month.

I can probably get by on abut €50pm at this stage.

150ml of e liquid & 10 cartomizers from thebestshop.eu would be more than enough to get me through the month and that is €49 plus postage.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

cheaper again if you diy your own stuff

costs me 2-3 euro to make 30ml of juice
doesn't taste as nice as liqua or irishvapers white label, but it's cheap and ddoes the job

Samba

Looks like a scam site imo.

So many of those dodgy sites are x-sells.com or sell-x etc, not so much of a whimper about them anywhere online on any forum, you would think someone would be discussing those amazing prices, their own forum has a handful of posts on it, and all in Russian?

If you're going to test out the water, i'd go for a $1 carto

I recently paid $1.95 delivery for a pack of cartos from from the HC for standard shipping, hardly expensive.

Dan I Am

Samba wrote: »

Looks like a scam site imo.

So many of those dodgy sites are x-sells.com or sell-x etc, not so much of a whimper about them anywhere online on any forum, you would think someone would be discussing those amazing prices, their own forum has a handful of posts on it, and all in Russian?

If you're going to test out the water, i'd go for a $1 carto

I recently paid $1.95 delivery for a pack of cartos from from the HC for standard shipping, hardly expensive.

Been busy and forgot about this here thing, but finally got around to starting to put in an order, and...... it's not "free p&p", it's "free shipping (you pay only postage)", and minimum order $25. The airmail postage is only a few $ for smaller orders, but unless you only ever make small orders where you juggle the price exactly down to precise cents, you are always going to be risking getting caught for vat and resulting admin charges (for all imports costing over 22 Euro including postage).

Digging a little deeper, it also appears that the 22 euro free import limit doesn't apply to (off the top of my head) "tobacco related products and tobacco substitutes". So that sounds like vaping kit falls into the bracket with perfumes, tobacco etc, where you pay the vat and admin charges for any price amount imported, however small? (http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055862554 is the sticky from the 'online buying' board on the import duty and tax costs I mentioned earlier)

The 'china-sells' site has been around for at least 3 or 4 years , and I don't think it's an out and out scam. I guess all their customers are Russian because of different import laws/duties. I was thinking about putting in an order for some 100mg/ml juice (as much out of curiosity as anything else at this stage, just to see if it got through customs) but on second thoughts, I think that's probably not such a good bet. Thanks for the input guys, I'm heading over to Inawera.

alec76

I guess all their customers are Russian because of different import laws/duties.

i don't think they very popular in russia aswell , unless u buying wholesale

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