TopHatTobacco has Esoterica
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Sweet
Thanks cohibajoe and embers. Snagged a bag of Margate and a tin of ASTB.
Up to a pound and a half of Margate now. My cellar is happy!
Thanks cohibajoe and embers. Snagged a bag of Margate and a tin of ASTB.
Up to a pound and a half of Margate now. My cellar is happy!
I have ordered many times from them and never run into an oversold situation. I got my bags of Penz and Stone from them Thursday.
It happened to me a month or two ago for the second time. Their problem is they don't have a real time inventory control system. I ordered a whopping 10 tins of Astleys 44 and find out two days later, when I have to call them to see why my order hasn't been acknowledged, they can't satisfy the order.
Agreed. I don't they are evil, malicious people. And they credit you back. It's just the principle of the matter.
(A) I have had product disappear from my shopping cart during the checkout process;
(B) At least on Esoterica, the pages for each item show the number of bags and tins in stock. During drops and after I have completed my order, I have gone back and hit the reload button on my browser multiple times to satisfy my curiosity as to how fast the product is disappearing. You can watch the number go down.
These are, too me, indicia of some sort of real time inventory control system. None are perfect. I have, on 3 occasions within the last year, ordered ESO from forum favorite Smoking Pipes, gotten a confirmation, and hours later gotten an email from them saying, "Sorry, we oversold". I still do business with them. But if you don't want to do any more business with Top Hat, great! It used to be a little known honey hole. Now, not so much.
I think you have two different problems here. With Smokingpipes, so many people are looking to buy simultaneously, the system does occasionally break down. I've never had this happen though at smokingpipes or tobacco pipes. In fact, at tobacco pipes, I've been allowed to choose a quantity but couldn't place the order as the quantity available changed in a few seconds.
Possibly so, but I think based on a lot of experience with drops of Esoterica from both SP and Top Hat that the latter handles them better if you judge by "oops, we oversold, sorry" messages received hours after confirmation from both the vendor and PayPal. SP leads there 3-0.
This is a different world than it was just a couple of years ago and it is entirely possible that the demand for unicorn tobacco combined with the speed people hit these sites due to bots, scrapers, email alerts and social media has stressed even well designed inventory systems in ways not foreseen. Many of the players, if not all, have bought systems from someone else and can't make "simple" adjustments on their own. I think we all ought to be a touch more patient with, and forgiving of,vendors.
This is a different world than it was just a couple of years ago and it is entirely possible that the demand for unicorn tobacco combined with the speed people hit these sites due to bots, scrapers, email alerts and social media has stressed even well designed inventory systems in ways not foreseen. Many of the players, if not all, have bought systems from someone else and can't make "simple" adjustments on their own. I think we all ought to be a touch more patient with, and forgiving of,vendors.
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