The Regal Cigs Scam : Aftermath
A few months ago Spinfuel published an article called “SCAM ALERT: Regal Cigs is another PRADA Cigs. (If you want to take a few minutes to read that article go ahead…we’ll wait…) Okay, done? Let’s continue.
This article pointed out just how deceptive and corrupt some e-Cigarette companies are, particularly Regal Cigs. Regal is one of the worst, and they have given birth to dozens more. I mean, just this morning we were alerted to one out of Miami called ECIGAID who are practically a mirror company to Regal.
Seriously, this business model of hooking people with a free Starter Kit and then ripping them off with, well, not only a crappy single-battery starter kit that they wind up charging you $150 for, but extremely expensive crap cartomizers that can sell for as much as 12 bucks PER cartomizer (not $12 a pack, $12 PER SINGLE cartomizer) is exploding on the scene and everyday more and more people are being ripped off.
So, we blew the whistle. Hopefully we saved a few people from making the mistake of doing business with these guys, and others like them.
This week I wrote a piece about V2 and Bull Smoke that has spread so fast and so wide that we are still fielding phone calls and answering emails from people all over the globe. We never thought it would cause such a ruckus. We were genuinely surprised by the reaction. The Regal piece, which in my opinion is worse than what V2 is doing didn’t get near the exposure that the V2/Bull smoke piece is getting.
Anyway, this morning an alert reader sent us a URL to a press release dated August 22nd, 2012, that absolutely shocked the hell out of me. CLICK TO READ THE PRESS RELEASE. (Go ahead, we’ll wait…)
Yes, you are reading it correctly. Regal Cigs has been able to turn the tables on Spinfuel by glomming on to a piece that was published in The Wall Street Journal about Spinfuel and, are you ready… turned it into a positive piece about REGAL, and making it appear that Spinfuel has ENDORSED them! I swear, talk about turning the tables!
Well, all I can say is that this morning I’m feeling several different things about this press release; I think its great that The Wall Street Journal wrote a piece on Spinfuel that we didn’t even KNOW about, I feel pretty good that our reach is getting wider and wider, and we just might have some tiny bit of influence on the industry as a whole. These are all pretty good things to think about.
But I also sort of admire the tenacity of the writer (not the writer, but his tenacity) of the press release, a Michael McGarety (if that’s his real name) for taking what was a pretty hard slam on the deceptive practices of Regal Cigs and using our own words to bolster their reputation. That was a pretty slick move, and if I were just as slick, just as immoral as this guy I would be applauding him right about now. Instead, I’m just sad. I am sad for him, for the industry, for you, and for all the future Vapers to come.
Don’t get me wrong, I am so very incredibly grateful that Spinfuel is SO MUCH MORE than a publication that simply wants to spend all it’s time going after these corrupt companies. Because if we did that, if we changed our mission statement to one that committed Spinfuel to “only” exposing the bad guys I would go certifiably insane reading things like the press release in question. Hell, I’d go insane just trying to keep up with all the corruption out there in the first place.
I am grateful that Spinfuel has become a force in the eCig industry in less than a year, I am grateful that I had the foresight to change the direction of Spinfuel shortly after launching it , and I am very grateful for every one of you that come here to read what we write. But after all is said and done, the problems in the industry, the deception and the corruption are so much more than I could ever imagine.
To think that my passion to bring the benefits of electronic cigarettes to the attention of tobacco users, to find and promote the good guys that are in this business to make an honest dollar by producing a good product and selling it at a fair price, and standing behind what they sell, to expose the bad guys when we can, to use these products and to let you know if you should spend your very-hard-earned-dollars on them yourself, and to just enjoy the company of fellow vapers, would lead to becoming a company that The Wall Street Journal thinks is worth writing about is just overwhelming.
I love where Julia, my staff, and myself are taking Spinfuel, but seeing just how thick the deception truly is, to get a real feel for the amount of corruption that we all must tread through, I realized today that whatever it is we are able to do now and in the future, it is no more than a ripple from a rain drop on the ocean. In other words, like cockroaches, you crush one and the thousands of survivors scurry away and repopulate the lost.
Let us all cling to the hope that the eCigarette industry will one day see the great “shaking out” that comes to most other industries soon after their infancy and when its over the good guys will be standing after the smoke clears, and the bad guys go off to lick their wounds on the golf courses or clubhouses, remembering the times when all they had to do is throw up a website full of Chinese knockoffs and process the credit cards of the uninformed.
We live in interesting times, but these are also treacherous times. Hang tough people, hang tough.
John Manzione
