LAST CHANCE | DarkStar UK Made E-liquids | £1.50 per 10ml Bottle | OFFER ENDS SUNDAY

[DarkStar]

This is the last week of our £1.50 per bottle launch sale. £1 postage on all orders for first class delivery regardless of order size - this means you can get 6 bottles delivered for just £10. We always include something extra free for you to try with every order so this really is great value for money!

You will find the deal on our homepage: www.darkstarvapour.co.uk

All our liquids are mixed and bottled in the UK with the highest quality UK sourced ingredients available. We use USP/EP grade VG, PG and Nicotine Base and the PG:VG ratio of our liquid is 70:30. There are 15 flavours currently available and more will be released very soon. I highly recommend the Fresh Lime, Raspberry Candy, Fruits of the Forest, and Liquid Amber flavours as these are my personal favourites.

Because of the great success we've had with the launch sale it will be continuing after Sunday but prices will be increasing to £2.50 per 10ml bottle.

We have been developing recipes for new flavours which will be available in the next few weeks and we have a new postage schedule for all orders (link: http://www.darkstarvapour.co.uk/about-darkstar). If you have any comments or questions please either reply to this post or email [email protected]


Happy Vaping!

Rob - DarkStarVapour

 

[GothicCorpse]

i ordered some before but dont know if the flavours were forgot to be added or? was no taste no smell nothing ? out of 7 bottles and iv steeped them for like 2 or 3 weeks now or maybe even more did the hot water drink etc still nope

 

[seank]

Yeah. I got the same. Nice flavours, but very weak. Emailed Rob to tell him of my dissapointment,and got this reply,
Hi Sean,

Sorry to hear that you didn't enjoy the liquids but I really appreciate you taking the time to leave me that feedback. It has certainly been taken on board.


Kind Regards,

Rob - DarkStar Vapour. Thats it. After buying the juice and using parcel motel At an extra cost of E3.50. See the thing is,Fair enough one or two flavours being weak, but all five? Plenty of other people complaining about the weakness of the juices. Read on one of the threads that the flavour had been improved, and even saw some offer of recompense, but not for me! And now hes putting the price UP? Having said that the sweet strawberry was nice. Anyway Darkstar seem to like the positive comments about their very cheap juices, but ignore the negative ones. There is another thread with negative comments about their juices that Rob apparentley hasnt seen! So in short its a pity, I would have given them another go, but for the dismissive email....I'm out. Plenty of other vendors out there.

 

[Blackhack]

I got six bottles and binned them after trying them, steeping them, mixing them.....I can honestly say that they're even worse than some of the cheap chinese juices....

 

[shezzuk1]

My experience of Darkstar has been amply good for the price I paid. I bought £70 worth ordered 3 months ago and what I now have has steeped for ages. All of them are vapeable but obviously not as good as liquids that are £5 a bottle. The 36mg nicotine was what swayed me and it got me off the rollies. With time the juices seem to have darkened a little in colour and are definately stronger in taste. I vape my darkstar juice in an iClear X.I which is quite airy and it is perfectly satisfactory.

 

[DarkStar]

Yeah. I got the same. Nice flavours, but very weak. Emailed Rob to tell him of my dissapointment,and got this reply,
Hi Sean,

Sorry to hear that you didn't enjoy the liquids but I really appreciate you taking the time to leave me that feedback. It has certainly been taken on board.


Kind Regards,

Rob - DarkStar Vapour. Thats it. After buying the juice and using parcel motel At an extra cost of E3.50. See the thing is,Fair enough one or two flavours being weak, but all five? Plenty of other people complaining about the weakness of the juices. Read on one of the threads that the flavour had been improved, and even saw some offer of recompense, but not for me! And now hes putting the price UP? Having said that the sweet strawberry was nice. Anyway Darkstar seem to like the positive comments about their very cheap juices, but ignore the negative ones. There is another thread with negative comments about their juices that Rob apparentley hasnt seen! So in short its a pity, I would have given them another go, but for the dismissive email....I'm out. Plenty of other vendors out there.

Hi Sean,

It's not that I bury my head in the sand when it comes to negative feedback; changes have been made to 5 or 6 of the recipes since launch date based on customer feedback (yours included - I specifically remember your email actually). I'm sorry to hear that you thought my email was dismissive. I'll admit it was rather short but the content was honest and I did change the Peach Melba flavour shortly after. Not to be confrontational but may I ask what sort of reply were you would have found to be reasonable?

I know that some of the flavours aren't particularly strong but that's intentional to an extent - my market research prior to product development told me that a lot of vapers found many liquids on the market to have an overwhelming flavour that was too strong to be enjoyable over an extended period of time. Because of this I aimed to develop some of the liquids to have a milder, less intense taste to fill that gap. Not all of them by the way; only those that worked well at a lower level and that were well received by the consumer trial I ran. Some flavour concentrates taste great at lower percentages but have less pleasant overtones that begin come through as the percentage increases so it's a case of finding a balance between flavour quality and flavour strength - I tend to favour quality in these situations.

I'm going to quote from your email as I think it illustrates this point well: 'Peach Melba Very small amount of flavour, But good flavour. Liquid amber, Small flavour, Tasty enough,prefer my Hangsen USA mix. Lemon sorbet again very little flavour. Wild strawberry Really good flavour,not strong enough,but I like this flavour a lot'. From these comments I reasoned that it wasn't that there is no flavour, it's just that the flavour was too mild for your personal preference. Taste is subjective and no liquid will appeal to everyone. Around 70% of the feedback received is very positive as can be seen by looking at the threads in Reviews and Bargain Basement on this forum. We won the Vendor of the Month award in February too, and this was before most of the recipe changes had been made, so I don't think that's an optimistic estimate. Perhaps 10% of feedback is neutral and maybe 20% negative; almost exclusively people commenting on the weaker flavour (or the Blackberry - that was an issue too for a while with many commenting on the 'perfume' like taste). The thing is I can't change recipes based on the minority's preferences. Having a consistent product is important so people know what to expect when reordering and we have plenty of repeat customers to think about.

The point of the low launch prices is so people can try the liquids out at minimal cost to themselves to see if they like them. We really haven't made much in the way of profit over the past few months as it is a priority to build customers early on instead, so unfortunately offering refunds to anyone who simply doesn't like the flavour is unfeasible. Obviously if the order had been filled incorrectly or the product received is otherwise not as described it is an entirely different story. The liquids are mixed using precision lab equipment and by following a carefully designed process that make the chances of sending out a product inconsistent with the recipe minimal so I am very confident that what you received was exactly as it should have been hence why a replacement wasn't offered. It just so happens that you didn't like the flavour, which is fair enough.

I genuinely am sorry that the liquids weren't to your liking, especially after the extra trouble you went to using parcel motel. I'm even more sorry that you felt snubbed by my email as that really wasn't the intended tone. I hope you can see where I'm coming from with this reply anyway. I don't claim that everyone will like the liquids, but I do believe we have a good product that the majority of vapers will enjoy, especially those who have a preference for milder flavours.


Regards,

Rob - DarkStar Vapour

 

[Sarin]

There are loads of companies in loads of markets all over the world but the successful long term ones all share the same traits - excellent customer service, not scared to admit that they might have made a mistake and offer to rectify the situation, sometimes at financial cost. After all, one negative review can cancel out 10+ positive ones. Customers have the choice to, and often do, decide to go elsewhere.

 

[GothicCorpse]

maybe they could do it so y ou could double the flavours for a little charge ? for people like me who like flavours lol?

 

[DarkStar]

There are loads of companies in loads of markets all over the world but the successful long term ones all share the same traits - excellent customer service, not scared to admit that they might have made a mistake and offer to rectify the situation, sometimes at financial cost. After all, one negative review can cancel out 10+ positive ones. Customers have the choice to, and often do, decide to go elsewhere.

I completely agree Sarin. Negative news spreads much faster than positive and I'd even say 1:10 is a little low with this thread being a good example so far unfortunately. It's just me that deals with customer service for DarkStar at the moment and I do try my hardest to be fair and compliant with customer requests - I'm quite a picky customer when shopping online myself so I try to treat customers in a way that would leave me satisfied but you can't win them all. To be fair I don't think the feelings expressed so far are representative as we've had a great deal of positive feedback over the last few months (most of it public and a fair amount on these forums - a good example can be found here: http://www.planetofthevapes.co.uk/forums/showthread.php/29383-February-Vendor-of-the-Month-Vote ).

I'm actually a little surprised with a couple of these posts as I thought the interactions had ended on an amicable note, but on reflection I could have done more to help them. The problem with having such low prices while starting out when cash is scarce, then including freebies on top of that, is that to supply complimentary replacements to anyone who wasn't satisfied (even if just a small proportion of customers) would essentially cancel out the small amount of profit being made. If the margins were better as they will be next week I'd have more flexibility without too much risk to the bottom line. Reading my reply to the email referenced above I realise that I should have spent more time on it though.

Hopefully we'll see some more positive posts in the following pages but I respect that if people are dissatisfied then they are well within their rights to post in this thread.


Rob - DarkStar Vapour

 

[DarkStar]

Hi @GothicCorpse

That's not a bad idea, however quite often the flavour profile changes dramatically when the percentage of concentrate added increases. A good example is our Blackberry flavour which I was mixing at 12% to begin and it had what was described by many as an unpleasant perfume like taste. After hearing the same thing 3 or 4 times I realised that lowering the concentration by as little as 2% almost completely got rid of that effect but left the nicely rounded Blackberry flavour intact. It's mixed at 8% now and I think it's much better. The feedback has definitely improved since making the change.

It's worth mentioning that it really isn't a cost issue though; I'd hate for you to think that I'm skimping on flavour to save money. The cost of the flavour concentrate in comparison to all the other ingredients and raw materials (bottles, labels, mixing equipment etc.) is very low. They're mixed the way they are because that's what the consumer trials we conducted at the very beginning told me was best. Perhaps I didn't have enough seasoned vapers in my test group but I still can't ignore all the positive comments. I'll definitely be taking a few days to revisit the recipe development stages after reading the comments on this thread though - perhaps there is a better middle ground to cover than we currently are doing.

In a few months we will be releasing a separate range of liquids that will be mixed 50/50 PG/VG with much more potent and also very unique flavours. I think they'll appeal much more to seasoned vapers who prefer a powerful flavour kick from their liquids rather than a pleasant but mild taste. If you follow us on Facebook or Twitter you'll get the announcement as soon as they're released but I'll definitely be posting on here at the time too


Rob - DarkStar Vapour