Update: I was reading my blog (I’m one of the few who do) and realized that this post would probably make more sense if I relayed the context. When I made the purchase from E.A. Carey, I was sent and email asking me to review my purchase. This is the full text of what I attempted to submit. I copied it here because a) my blog needs material, and b) the site kept erroring out every time I tried to submit the review there, and I wanted to put it somewhere so that it wouldn’t be lost forever - so I copied and pasted it here. I also realized it is pretty negative, but it is true, so I’m going to leave it for now. BTW, as far as I know, it never did appear on the review site.
I bought two pipes, a tin of tobacco, and received a free portion of bulk aromatic. I like things to be upfront when I do business, and this is where Carey Smokeshop is lacking most.
Their scheme where they want you to pay them $25 so you can get your items for the “sale price” - the same price that shows up in your shopping cart when you select buy - they want you to pay $25 for getting items at this price. For one year.
Mind you, their sale price - the one you have to pay them $25 to get - is not really even competitive. I can purchase the same product at a lower regular price than I can get it for the gimmicky membership price - and that is forgetting that when you pay $25 to save $25 you haven’t even saved anything at all.
For example, consider a tin of MacBaren Scottish Mixture - the membership price is $10.51 while the regular price is $11.95.
Suppose you’re going to buy 16 tins of Scottish Mixture, and you pay their membership - you may have just as well saved your $25 up front and paid the regular fee because you haven’t paid a dime’s worth of difference, and if you were dumb enough to pay for the membership AND bought less than 16 tins, you got suckered for more money than you would have paid at “full price.”
Suppose you know you’re going to need more than 16 tins of Scottish Mixture in a year, yes you’ll start saving money beginning with your 17th tin, but if you want to save even more money, buy them pretty much anywhere else online. I checked the price of this tobacco at three other online merchants and it ranged between $7.40 and $8.70 with no phoney membership schemes.
On the other hand, if you plan to buy a lot of Carey pipes, you don’t have to buy sixteen to start “saving money.” More like half a dozen.
I bought two of these pipes - a Duncan Hill Aerosphere and a Magic Inch. I’ll likely never buy new from them again, because I don’t think they are quite worth the membership price, much less the regular price. Not that I feel I got ripped off, just that I think there are better deals on pipes out there. Both the pipes I received were poorly drilled - the draft hole met the tobacco chamber about 1/8 inch higher than it would on a properly engineered pipe. This impacts the burn making it uneven, and impossible to smoke to the heel.
Were these drilled correctly, I think they’d make pretty darn good smokes for the money actually. Probably some of the older estate versions floating around on the online auctions are drilled better - I have one such “magic inch” Carey that I picked up in a lot for a couple dollars that is drilled correctly. By the way, on both of the new pipes I bought, the stamp wasn’t even applied evenly on either pipe and some of the nomenclature is missing on both new pipes. And again, not an issue on the estate pipe.
Maybe Carey should put less effort into devising clever schemes to sucker people out of money and more effort into the workmanship of their pipe.
Also, one last tip on their free tobacco. Whatever you do, don’t pick a second choice if it is cheaper than your first choice. I carefully selected two blends - a English and, like a good boy following directions, chose one of the repackaged Lane bulks as a second choice. Both were in stock, and of course, they sent me the cheaper of the two anyway. I guess calling this tacky is looking a gift horse in the mouth?
Positive notes - they shipped the order fairly quickly and packed it well. There is a real person there who will answer your emails, in fact she was even nice enough to send me an email letting me know I wasn’t getting the order for the price that shows up in the shopping cart because I didn’t allow myself to get suckered into the membership scheme.
For the folks at Carey, here is how you can improve:
1. Get rid of the membership scheme on your pipes and pipe tobacco. Its insulting. Treat all your customers the same, offer one price to everyone. If you have to charge higher prices to make ends meet, so be it, but don’t try to camouflage it with that sleazy membership scheme.
2. See if you can lower your prices - just a little.
3. Find a way to restore some workmanship in your pipes. They feel like they were made in China with their poor drilling and uneven stamping. Sorry China. They would be nice pipes for the money were it not for the shoddy workmanship.