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Overbid of the Decade!

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Omg, that sucks.

A friend of mine likes to offer me money when he smokes one of my cigars. I always refuse cause I never give him anything worth more than $3 anyway. If I was that guy, I'd be giving that to my buddy and telling him to pay up,
 
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cbid will take care of him. They're very good about how they deal with bidding 'mistakes'. Even with bidding stupidity...once....maybe even twice.
 

Cigary43

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CBID is notorious about this kind of marketing as they will show you an image which a lot of people who aren't educated to the process....no worse than any other bait and switch move. Show the Consumer what they will think is the real deal and in the actual deal you have to read what it says...what's the adage...don't believe everything you see?
 

Smoqman

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It's a shame they show a box, when they should be showing a single cigar. The title says "Single" but processing an image and the words to describe something other than that image is not always easily computable....
 

Smoqman

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Guys, I appreciate the sentiments… But we were just trying to help this guy understand something that the company wasn't willing to make extremely obvious to him. We're all in this together and we all wanted to see this guy not make this mistake. It's nothing anyone of us wouldn't do for each other.
 
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For all their failings - and there are MANY - CBID customer service is and always has been outstanding. They are a big business and they are not stupid. I've said before that they MUST be making conscious decisions to accept poor pics/descriptions and often very poor warehousing (pick/pull/packing), but make good for the customers with the customer service staff. It has to be the ops plan --- the problems that we rail about have been going on as long as I've been a cbid patron (7+ years.) They've apparently decided that superb CS allows them to cut costs in other areas without losing enough business to hurt.
 

indyrob

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A few years ago the same thing happened on a 5 pk of sharks. They were posted in the boxes section but the listing was a 5 pk. The bidding went into the $270 range and everybody was tslking about it during the auction. When it was over, a guy I know on cp won...there was a lot of emails flying back and forth but they ultimately cancelled the whole thing. They maintained it said 5pk even though it was in the wrong catagory and out of respect for the bidder they were not going to have him pay over $50 each per cigar.
 

Smoqman

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Rob, you'd think they'd just not post images that do not specifically fit the item for sale or bid? Every cigar producer creates a single cigar image .. and box (pack) etc image at the same time if I'm not mistaken.

I don't really know what to think about their motives concerning such things...at any rate - it doesn't make sense..
 

Craig Mac

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Joel, I appreciate your passion for this topic, but as someone in marketing in the cigar industry, I can tell you that only the big guys shoot images and many of them it's like pulling teeth to get them from them. I see more companies without images or any type of marketing than I see that have it. That job lies on guys like me who have a plate full as is. We shoot box images and use that same image for 5 packs as well. We don't sell singles so I can't speak on what every one else does. But our site clearly state whether it's a box or 5 pack, we also don't do auctions.

Most sites have some type of disclaimer aka CYA and at some point the consumer has to pay attention when they buy. You couple that with good Customer Service and at the end of the day every one is happy. End of story :)
 

Smoqman

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Thanks for clarifying that Craig. Being in the manufacturing business, I can't imagine not taking a photo to accurately describe my products - and I am SHOCKED that cigar companies wouldn't do the same.

A simple task one might assume all company's marketing folks would like to provide for their retailers/ resellers.

Yikes
 

Craig Mac

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Yeah, it's kind of baffling really. Some are great at it like Davidoff with everything you would need and more from product images, logos, in-store ads, email/social media elements and more. But a lot aren't even close or don't offer it to the retailers. And forget about the "boutique" companies, you're on your own there. When you leave that burden on the retailers its a crap shoot what will come of it.
 
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