# VAPERITE | BLACK FRIDAY IN-STORE SPECIALS



## Vaperite South Africa (22/11/18)

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Reactions: Like 1 | Winner 2


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## baksteen8168 (23/11/18)

@Vaperite South Africa - the store I went to has no knowledge of the Tesla WYE. 

Other than that I did get some batteries and the I8. Thanks for the awesome deals.

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## Animefaerie (23/11/18)

The port elizabeth branch claims they are not running any of these specials in store. @Vaperite South Africa


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## Dela Rey Steyn (28/11/18)

Have you received any feedback from @Vaperite South Africa @baksteen8168 and @Animefaerie ?


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## Animefaerie (28/11/18)

Dela Rey Steyn said:


> Have you received any feedback from @Vaperite South Africa @baksteen8168 and @Animefaerie ?


 None. You?

Very disappointed in @Vaperite South Africa, especially our local store. False advertising as these specials were not available (as told to me over the phone), a R100 shipping fee for online orders, more than anyone else and yet no communication, no response to email, etc. 

Thanks Vaperite for the specials this black friday, but after my great experiences with other stores, I don't think I'll be dealing with a store that can't give a d*mn.


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## jm10 (28/11/18)

Iv dealt with them 3 times and each time there was an issue or mess up. Just got tired and dont deal with them anymore. They cannot manage their black friday deals at all. This year i definitely made sure to stay away from them. 

Im not saying their all bad, Barry and Farah are the real assets, they were the only people that made the whole bad experience manageable and resolved my issue when no one else would show me the time of day.



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Reactions: Agree 2


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## BioHAZarD (28/11/18)

jm10 said:


> Iv dealt with them 3 times and each time there was an issue or mess up. Just got tired and dont deal with them anymore. They cannot manage their black friday deals at all. This year i definitely made sure to stay away from them.
> 
> Im not saying their all bad, Barry and Farah are the real assets, they were the only people that made the whole bad experience manageable and resolved my issue when no one else would show me the time of day.
> 
> ...


should we start a new poll

Reactions: Funny 8


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## jm10 (28/11/18)

BioHAZarD said:


> should we start a new poll



Hahaha your comedic timing is always on point


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Reactions: Agree 2 | Thanks 1


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## Animefaerie (28/11/18)

Black friday can be hectic, so I understand that things get delayed, but added to my experiences throughout the last year, this is my last purchase from them. So many other stores to support instead, ones with helpful staff and great customer service.

Reactions: Like 1


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## baksteen8168 (28/11/18)

Dela Rey Steyn said:


> Have you received any feedback from @Vaperite South Africa @baksteen8168 and @Animefaerie ?


Nope. I am happy with the charger and batteries I bought though. Just wish the stores also knew of / stocked the mod that was on special too.

Reactions: Like 1


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## Animefaerie (28/11/18)

Gary from Vaperite PE contacted me to see what he could do to fix my experience, which was very kind, but since I ended up ordering online, he's not really responsible for my grouchiness.

Reactions: Like 1 | Funny 2


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## Vaperite South Africa (28/11/18)

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the late response to all your queries via this channel but we have contacted you all via PM by now. 

Firstly, the Port Elizabeth and East London shops are JV shops and as such we have allowed our partner, Gary, to decide on the specials he will run versus imposing on them the specials we are running for our other 14 company owned shops. However, we have taken the decision today that the PE and East London shops will now be included in offering the same specials as our other shops going forward. This will include our weekly "Spotlight Specials". This will help to avoid confusion and align all of our shops to our brand messages posted via social media and mailers.

As for our online order processing, Farah is now the lady in charge and she has done a sterling job since taking over that position. If you have had a negative experience with online orders previously, please give us another try as Farah is putting all our previous male online administrators to shame.

As for Black Friday, we received hundreds of orders between Friday through Monday and by 8:30pm last night all orders had been processed and were waiting for collection by Courier Guy. Many had already gone out by Monday. Farah and Daniel worked late into the night on Monday and Tuesday to get all the orders packed and processed.

The only major issue we had was that our special on the Tesla Terminator should have been for just the mod at R212 each but our website administrator copied and pasted (figuratively speaking) our "bundle" product which had been running under our "On sale" section and did not remove the reference to free coils and a free cover. We only found this out when the first customers started to receive their orders and they queried this. We are now going to be sending out coils and covers to all customers who bought this item whether they ask us for it or not. This will cost us thousands in shipping costs but that's what we are prepared to do to keep everyone happy, even if they don't ask us for it.

I need to point out a few facts about online sales and Vaperite in particular although some of the following comments will also apply to many other online retailers who also operate B&M shops:
- Firstly, as mentioned, we now have Farah running our online department and she is doing a stellar job, far outperforming any of the previous employees who worked in that position.
- Vaperite has a large 750 sq m warehouse located in Kelvin off Marlboro Drive, Sandton. We have 16 retail outlets located around the country. We distribute to all of our shops and to our online clients from the warehouse. At times, when the warehouse does not have an item in stock, we ship from one of our shops. 
- We have over 1500 products, including variants of products, which we offer for sale. Supplying 16 outlets is quite challenging as different regions have different buying patterns. With the rapidly evolving vape hardware and juice industry, it is difficult to establish historic data, although we are getting on top of that.
- When we have a sale like Black Friday, many of the items on special are discontinued or superseded items. Some are simply items which are no longer in demand. We may have 5 in stock or we may have a few hundred in stock. All may be at our warehouse for clearance on our website or some may be at our shops as well. This is why we offer in-store specials and separate online specials .... it all depends on where the stock is located. This is also the reason that some shops will not have all sale items in stock .... limited amounts.
- Another factor affecting online is that South African online consumers are relatively unsophisticated compared to, for example, US consumers. EFT as a payment option is unheard of in the USA except for possibly a fraction of e-commerce websites. Many South Africans, possibly due to the amount of crime and fraud in SA, are still uncomfortable paying with credit cards. So for every EFT we have to wait until the funds are physically in our account (thanks to a handful of fraudsters in SA who have taken many online vape retailers for thousands with fake proofs of payment). This also adds to our workload.
- Do not take the following personally if you happen to be one of the people who do this but to add to our workload are the people who use the wrong reference for their order such as their ID number or their mobile number, instead of their order number. We have to search through hundreds of orders to find this person's order. Then there are the multitude of emails querying the status of orders. As much as we strive to answer every query as soon as possible, this takes away from order processing time. Time spent answering emails is the time in which we could have packed an order. Multiply this by ten queries and ten orders may have to wait until the next day. Then there are customers who give us the wrong address and we have to resolve delivery issues with the courier company. Saying all this, we know that people make mistakes as they are human but, so are we, and we will makes mistakes from time to time.
- Many customers contact us to ask why their order is on hold as per the emails our e-commerce website automatically sends to you as soon as a status is changed. Hold is an automatic status assigned while we are waiting for EFT funds to reflect in our account or while we are packing orders received prior to yours. Processing means we have verified the funds AND are now packing your order. Successful credit card payments should automatically change the status to "processing" except that we are having occasional issues with VCS, our payment gateway, as their plugin on our website is not communicating correctly and we are being forced to verify all credit card payments via the success / failure emails we receive after each credit card transaction. They are working on finding a fix for this. This is why some credit card purchasers receive an email saying order "cancelled" after a successful payment. ONLY when Courier Guy collects are we able to update the system with a note with the tracking number. We are finding that certain email domains are blocking our automated emails which adds to the confusion as some clients do not receive updates.
- Lastly, R100 is not a lot of money for shipping as that is actually higher than our cost. Between the shipping material and Courier Guy charges, our cost exceeds R100. This is also the reason why we charge for shipping for orders of less than R1000. ALL orders of R1000 and over get FREE shipping. When we run specials like Black Friday, many items are already being sold at below cost or at minimal markup.

Anyone who purchased one of our Black Friday specials got a great deal. It was hugely successful for us and we hope that those who purchased from us are satisfied with the deal they got and the items they purchased.

Reactions: Like 1 | Winner 1


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## baksteen8168 (29/11/18)

Vaperite South Africa said:


> Hi everyone,
> 
> Sorry for the late response to all your queries via this channel but we have contacted you all via PM by now.
> 
> ...



Hi @Vaperite South Africa 

I have not been contacted via PM (nor did I expect to be  )

Let me start off by saying that I am very happy with what I have purchased at your Benoni B&M store, be it with this promotion or any of my previous purchases. The staff there are always friendly and helpful, and I will definitely be supporting the store again.

My criticism stems from this - While I understand that stock gets distributed differently to different regions depending on how specific items sell, I take issue with the fact that the Store had no knowledge of ever stocking some of the items that were on the "In Store" specials pamphlet. This not only makes the store look bad, but also reflects badly on VapeRite as a whole. If the mod was the only reason I went to the store then I would probably have been much more upset, but I needed batteries and a new charger so at least I didn't make the drive for nothing. Ultimately it worked out in my favor as I got my wife a much better mod at a different store (She wasn't sure if any mod bigger than her then setup would irritate her and the Tesla WYE fell comfortably within what I was willing to pay for a mod that might not get used)

Reactions: Like 1 | Agree 1


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