Last night I realized my cooler is almost empty and I needed more cigars.. time to order it is then. Here's my shopping cart at Atlantic cigar:

Oliva Serie G Maduro Belicoso Maduro
$78.95
Acid Kuba Kuba Maduro
$106.95
Oliva Serie V Torpedo
$140.99
Arturo Fuente 8-5-8 Maduro
$104.95
Oliva Serie O Robusto
$68.95
__________
Total: $500.79


I head over to jrcigars.com since they're the "world's largest online cigar store" and my shopping cart with the exact same items as above:

OLIVA SERIE G BELICOSO
OSGB3

$115.26

ACID BLUE KUBA KUBA
ACKK3
$144.95

OLIVA SERIE V TORPEDO
OSVTO
$176.66

ARTURO FUENTE 8-5-8
AF83
$104.95

OLIVA SERIE O ROBUSTO
OSOR
$101.32

Subtotal: $643.14

__________________________
Almost $150 more expensive than Atlantic!


Cool, I call JR Cigars this morning to place the order and ask the female (I think her name was Mary) if she can price match with Atlantic. She tells me:

"Sorry Sir we do not pricematch!"


I told her that my order is $150 cheaper at Atlantic so I will just give them my money instead. :-) She didn't really care. :-)

Their selection and specials are always horrid, their catalog sucks donkey dong as well but I figured there must be something that JR does right so give it a try, ya know? Little did I know how much they don't care about new customers. How are they even still around? This was my last attempt to do any business with JR-Cigars. Go **** yourself JR-Cigars and thank you atlanticcigar.com for always having such great prices. :-)
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You smoke Acids? Yuck!
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C'mon Doug,don't hold back,how do you really feel ?

None of these items is a JR made cigar,and they have to pay the maker just like a B&M.

We do not know the financial part of it,and perhaps they are protecting their store brands.

If they could match prices,they would.
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I agree on the Acids.

BUT I will say that I stick with JR for one reason, I do not shop the popular brands.
I do not KNOW what people like in NCs anymore, and what I have tried of the items
I DO know people love, I don't care for.

When I want troop support cigars I order them from JR when I can get some kind of
swag that I want with a purchase. I like to give that stuff to people who do me right.
So I like to keep a box load of cigar related junk on hand at all times. Granted, the other
vendor you use might also occasionally offer swag with purchase, but I don't really shop
there, so I have no idea. But from a customer service standpoint, JR is terrible, you are right,
they do not care about anything that I have been able to discern. But as long as I am still
sending cigars to the troops, I buy from JR at the precise time that I can kill two birds with
one stone.
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Any time "suck it" is in the subject line, I'm reading further.
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JR very rarely has some good deals. I got the Omar Ortez natural and maduro 60 count boxes for $127 each which was about $40 lower than anybody else. I do remember when they beat just about everybody on just about everything.

MCS
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You could have paid even less on cigarplace.biz. :-)
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I need to say another thing though, there are businesses that are well established that are insulted by people
who try to play the price match game with them, and they have a right to be. At JR they likely think, "hey,
this is not Atlantic Cigar...you want their price, go buy with them." Then mutter a name at you after you hang up.

Business is business, you don't get to be a success by cutting people breaks. Price match is a strategy
employed by people with a goal, to steal business from other businesses. JR does not need to steal business
from anyone, they are the largest cigar retailer on earth. Your money really DOESN'T mean anything to them.

I asked them one day, before the cutter man came into the troops support thread and ended our cutter problem,
"Hey, I am sending a ton of your cigars to the troops, and you are KILLING ME on cutters...not the price, but
the shipping. They were charging per item at that time, and a .01 cent cutter cost $1.26 after shipping. I said
I will buy X cutters if you will JUST CUT ME A BREAK, it's for the troops." Sorry Sir, no can do.
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I always got a cheaper price from Atlantic when I called them to place an order. I think they can only go so low with prices that are posted on the Internet. :-)
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I'm calling 100% BS on that statement right there. EVERY online dealer requires people to value their low prices over seeing and getting the cigars at a B&M. Plus JRs has a massive in store collection that many go to to buy in bulk which hurts every B&M in the Carolinas. Now I'm not saying it's hurt us per se at work, but we would have a hell of a lot more people coming in for Olivas, General, and Altadis stuff if JR didn't have them. Plus their business even hurts the reps who are out there just tryin to sell their cigars and help out the B&Ms. Every large account like that is done by the higher ups in the company, not the reps. The reps end up losing money on things like that since their clients start needing less as people go else where, plus they don't get the commission for an account like that.
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Nope! But I always keep some on hand for friends that like them.
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You are a nicer person than me



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This.
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OP--JRs used to be big and great before Altadis ate them. Now they are just big and dumb.
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WHy even bother with JR if atlantic was lower. I'm just saying.
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This, especially on 1$ shipping first of the month day.
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You can call whatever you like, your paragraph sounds like sour grapes to me.
I understand the perspective of the small B&M against the mighty JR, but this is not like JR became big
when B@st BUY and Sams and all these places became the shape of things to come. JR was a massive
operation LONG before that. If JR is hurting your business, perhaps your business failed to grow at the
right time to BE JR. This is America where anyone can succeed on that level if they are
smart enough to act at the right time and be ready with the cash when the time comes. Saying that
JR hurts your business is like saying "we don't like the customer valuing convenience and selection over
our homey atmosphere and tendency to follow them around like they are going to steal us blind."
We have all gone over this a dozen times, 'how B&Ms shoot themselves in the foot.' The B&M industry
has a lot bigger problems than JR. If anything JR helps you by bringing more customers into the pool and
giving you a boogeyman to rail against.

JUST ONE of the reasons JR is so big is that no MATTER WHAT the economy or the outlook for cigar sales,
Lew Rothman provided a steady stream of income to cigar producers worldwide. Not just when cigars
were popular, but when they were unpopular. He kept the US industry moving. I will grant you that he
has also twisted a lot of arms and played hardball with people who likely resent him for it, but that's also
business. Most B&Ms in this country owe him a debt they can never repay. Love it or hate it, JR succeeds
because it deserves to.

But don't worry, I put this opinion with your 'known fact' that Padron uses Mexican wrappers and have decided
where I should place your opinions on my continuum of validity.....sorry, but it ain't too high, lol.

But a man is certainly entitled to his opinion, and I would not want to tell you your opinion was invalid or anything.
It's one way of looking at things.
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And after ALL that, maybe I misunderstand your argument. I still believe JR doesn't need to steal business. You can
break it down into basic online business models and commissions and all that but in the end, you can't hurt a giant
by throwing a rock at it. How many tanks have the palestinians brought down in 50 years with rocks? JR MIGHT
be bigger if they acted like they needed more business, but honestly, you have to see things from their perspective.
50% of people that complain about stuff to their customer service reps are likely to be chronic complainers that are
likely to be NO KIND OF CUSTOMER TO HAVE in the long run. Good riddance. JR has no need to price match. They
have a hard-won level of inevitablility no matter what their prices. People KNOW JR. They LIKE JR. They USE JR.
JR can make money without price matching. They are a boulder rolling downhill powered by nothing more than
momentum. If you try to stop it, you lose an arm.

And sure, they suck.
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The most depressing part of this post is the time I wasted reading it. I will never get those three minutes of my life back.

If JR sucks so bad why did you even bother calling them to try to get a "price match"?? You could have just creating a thread praising Atlantic, instead of wasting bandwidth bashing JR.

Brad, honestly man, I dont know why youre wasting your time.
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Because I paid for a five minute argument.....that was never five minutes just now.

My apologies also to all that I rub the wrong way. It's the burden of being right all the time.

I KID.

I know a lot of people in the industry are torqued continuously by JR, I just think its a fair way of doing business.
I have gotten what I need way more times than I have felt under-served or over-charged. But in the end, its
like smoking what you like, I guess.
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