Monday, February 8, 2010

My Review of the Knight Sticks Electronic Cigarette:




www.knightsticks.com

(Be sure to click on "Terms and Conditions" at the bottom of the webpage and read the "fine print")

Knight Sticks is without a doubt the worst electronic cigarette I have tried so far.

Not only is it the most expensive one of them all, it is a really bad deal all around. When you sign up for their "Free Trial", they say they will send you the starter kit free of charge. All you need to do is pay for Shipping & Handling at the rate of $9.95 HINT: If you try to close the page, a pop up window will show saying all you need to do is pay $5.95 for a ten day trial period. Other brands offer much longer Free Trial periods.

It took six days for the starter kit to arrive, which left only four days to try the product. Then they will charge your credit card $99.90 and you won't be able to return the starter kit. It comes with only two nicotine cartridges, a battery unit, and a USB charging unit. It arrives in what looks like a regular cigarette pack made out of thicker cardboard than a normal Box type pack. There were no instructions in the Box, just a little card with tiny writing on it telling you the webpage to visit to see the user manual.

They only offer the nicotine flavored cartridge, and do not offer any options to select how many milligrams of nicotine. Green Smoke offers eight different flavors, and six different strengths so that you can wean yourself from the nicotine if you are trying to give up the habit all together.

The nicotine flavor tasted much more bitter than some of the other brands I've tried, and one of the two cartridges in the starter kit made a bubbling noise when I puffed on the cigarette and a foul tasting liquid spat out of the mouthpiece into my mouth.

After only the tenth charging cycle, the battery malfunctioned while I was charging it. When I unplugged the charging unit from a USB port on my computer it wasn't hot right away, but within a couple of minutes the end next to the charger got so hot I couldn't hold it without getting burned.

This happened last weekend, so I had to wait until today (Monday) to talk to Customer Service. They had never heard of a battery unit burning up like mine did, and were nice enough to send me a new starter kit for free. They said I won't have to pay for Shipping & Handling this time. I sure hope they don't try to charge me for this, and if they do they will not like what I have to say when I call them the next time.

This round of talking to Customer Service was a good one, but when I ordered my first round of additional cartridges a week ago, they messed up and forgot to take me off of the recurring billing cycle. I quite clearly asked them to take me off of this, and told them that I would call them when I wanted to re-order cartridges. Their replacement cartridges are a lot more expensive than other brands. You'll pay $59.85 for only fifteen cartridges (Green Smoke gives you twenty cartridges for the same price), and they don't last as long as the ones they send you in the starter kit.

Overall, their product is much more expensive than other brands, and has no options for ordering flavors or different nicotine levels. Other brands offer much longer Free Trial periods. The battery unit became defective in less than six weeks, and some of the cartridges were defective too. Customer Service was a call center, and not in house. While they were nice enough to talk to, they didn't do what I asked them to. Shipping took a lot longer than I had expected, and the packaging was kind of cheap. Their website is kind of cheesy, and hard to navigate. It is designed with the main focus on getting you to sign up for the Free Trial.

If they hadn't made good on sending me a new unit today, this product would have gotten a grade of a D+. As it stands now, I'll give them a C-, but if they don't fulfill the promises they made to me on the phone this morning it will go straight to an F-.

There are better brands out there that are much cheaper and offer many more options. I've had my Green Smoke unit for a couple of months now, and am very satisfied with everything about it. Shop around for the best deal before you buy the Knight Sticks brand. If I could return it and get my money back, I would...

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