This place SUUUUUUCKS! I've ordered tons of stuff from them over the years, but this business has seriously gone down hill the past few years. Sure, they've got a decent selection, and their prices are OK. But their customer service ranges from "absolutely terrible" to "non-existent". They are usually slow to reply, if they bother to reply at all. Plus, the quality and consistency of their product inventory is questionable.
Furthermore, their website's product review system is a total joke; It's completely rigged! Several months ago, I ordered five items from them. Two of the products were good, the other three were terrible (one of these three items was a box of cigars that were so dried out and petrified that they were literally unsmokable -- seriously, it was physically impossible to even draw on the cigars!). Anyway, I posted five reviews on their website, one for each of the five products that I'd received...so, just to be clear, that was two positive reviews, and three negative reviews. The positive reviews posted to their site within 36 hours. All three of the negative reviews were deleted, never to be seen again. At first I thought it was some glitch with their site, so I re-posted them...and again, they vanished.
At this point, I emailed their customer service department to ask why my reviews never showed up on their website? Were they experiencing tech issues? Was their something wrong with my reviews: Was it an issue with formatting? My reviews were honest, and therefore negative, but other than that they were completely benign...but, who knows, maybe I had inadvertently and unknowingly failed to meet some obscure requirement they had for reviewing products? I didn't know, but I asked about it all and asked why my they were refusing to post my honest product reviews. Their customer service department simply fled from my question, and avoided the issue by marking my inquiry "closed" and "resolved"...even though they had never bothered to reply. I contacted them again...and again, they simply closed the conversation without bothering to answer. I tried contacting them through their Facebook page, and was yet again ignored.
That was the last straw. After years of shopping with them, I ceased being a Pipes & Cigars customer at that point. It's clear they are completely shady and have no interest in actually running a legitimate business. It's bad enough that they sold me low-quality, crap products, but what's even worse is their rigged, dishonest review system because it means that shoppers can't make well informed decisions about which products to purchase because Pipes & Cigars artificially inflates the ratings of everything on their site by deleting every review that isn't 4/5 or 5/5. It didn't used to be this way with them, but it's clear that they've now decided to flush honesty and fair business practices down the toilet...along with any semblance of actual customer "service". So, screw 'em -- I now give my business to their competitor. read more