I’ve received more communication from Mr. Stanley Chen, the sales manager at Boge. Here’s what I’ve heard:

Dear Phil,

I think the main reason for the flavor difference is the quality of the e-liquid. Since people are complaining about our blank cartos, we don’t think we are to be responsible for the problem of the e-liquid that the users are using.

As we explained in our letter, there are several reasons for the burning taste: 1) filling VG e-liquid and vape immediately; 2) filling e-liquid but the heating coil is not fully infiltrated; 3) using battery with higher voltage. As far as we know, people are using variable voltage batteries of up to 6v. In this case it’s inevitable that the cartos get burnt easily.

If the users use the cartos in a wrong way, it’s not good logic to come to the conclusion that Boge has changed something.

I certainly do agree that different liquids and thicknesses will behave differently in not only Boge cartos, but ANY carto. What people sometimes don’t understand or forget is that if the center core on a carto of this design is dry, it will burn almost instantly. Once that happens, the carto will continue to provide a burnt taste and is pretty much shot.

People also need to realize this when using carto tanks. If you punch or slot, put your carto in a tank, fill the tank, and vape away, you will most likely burn your carto. The carto needs to be primed (filled) before installing it in a tank, or after installation by dripping into it. If not, proper time needs to be given to allow the e-liquid to seep into the carto. This time will vary, of course, depending on the size of the holes, slots, and thickness of the liquid.

What I don’t agree with is that this issue is just caused by the juice, or improper usage. I was able to “taste” the difference between a good and bad cartomizer, as seen by the burnt/savory/bacony taste I received. I did let him know about this.

The most important thing is that we need to make sure that what many users are using are produced by Boge.

Some people also surmise that owing to increasing demand, Boge has opened up more factories but the quality is not the same for all factories. This is ridiculous. Up till now, Boge has only one factory and all Boge products are manufactured in this factory.

I think what we need to do now are: 1) tell the users what authentic Boge cartos are and how to get authentic Boge cartos; 2) tell the users how to use the cartos properly; 3) try our best to prevent fake suppliers from “stealing” the name of Boge.

Thank you again for your attention. I’ll send you pictures of our packaging shortly.

Best regards.

Stanley

Mr. Chen then sent the following which is really good information about packaging:

Dear Phil,

Attached are pictures (you can see them below) of our latest version of standard packaging for your reference. Hope that this will help all users to identify what authentic Boge cartos are. Please also take note of the following points:

1) Now our standard packaging is: each cartomizer has one long and one short condom, with a small stopper at the connection end; then in candy pack with printed content showing style No., SR (for standard resistance) or LR (for low resistance), color, flavor and strength etc; then 5 pcs in one small box with printed sticker on top of the box showing the same content, and finally 10 small boxes in one big box with printed sticker on top.

2) The content of the printing on plastic packs and on stickers on small and big boxes may vary according to different customers’ request.

3) 2 months ago we were using oval transparent stickers on the candy packs showing the flavors and nicotine content , also a round “LR” sticker on candy pack for empty low resistance cartos. But now the standard way is to spray print all information on the candy pack, without any sticker.

4) Of course there are several customers who still insist on the old way or on their own ways. We’ll try to persuade them to adapt to our standard way so as to avoid any misunderstanding.

Best regards.

Stanley

New batches of Boge cartos coming out of the factory and to your favorite vendors will have the old condom configuration, one long, one short. So…

Originals = one long, one short
Potentially bad batch = two short
Potentially fixed batch = one long, one short

I’m hearing some chatter that the “Potentially fixed batch” Boges are doing better.
I have cartos coming to me from Boge (hot off the line) as well as a vendor with a new batch.

I’ll keep you posted on what I find/taste.

Here is a letter I received from Mr. Stanley Chen. Boge appears to be very proactive with this issue and I have high hopes that this will sort itself out soon enough.

Dear Phils,

Thank you for your 3 e-mails. We appreciate what you’ve been doing for Boge. Attached is a letter that we’ve sent to all of our existing customers, clarifying what’s going on with our cartomizers. Also we’ll have a statement of the same regard on our website. We hope that this will eliminate to some extent the doubt that people have about our cartos.

The link you gave me at alibaba.com is not ours.

Here is the link in question: Trueman Boges??

There are lots of sites claiming to sell Boge products. We’ve already start our compaign against these fake Boge products. The main way to ensure that what you are buying are authentic Boge products is to buy directly from us. However, we do have lots of U.S. customers who are selling our cartos and who have made great contribution to our company. We’ll discuss with them how to protect our brand and how to develop together on a win win basis.

We’ll arrange some samples and send directly to you. Please let us know how many pcs you need, and, prefilled or blank? and your detailed mailing address?

Note: I asked for some cartos directly from the factory to see if there are any differences between them and what I have. Both visually and in taste on their latest runs.

Now we’ve already got back to the long condom version.

YEAH!!

Actually the cartos in both the long and short condom versions are exactly the same.

We do hope to work closely with you to clarify this issue and hope that all Boge fans will have their beloved Boge cartos in the near future.

Best regards.

Stanley

Here is the letter, and yes, we’ve seen this before:

Dear Valuable clients and all Boge cartomizer users,

First of all thank you very much for your persistent help and support to Boge! We note that recently there are some negative comments on the quality of our Boge cartomizers. We find that most of the complaints focus on blank cartos. After detailed investigation, we’d like to release the following clarification:

1) Boge’s prefilled cartomizers are regarded as the best cartomizers in the market, owing to their perfect performance and consistency in quality. We’ve seldom received any complaint about prefilled cartos.

2) Boge has never changed any material for our cartomizers, no matter blank or prefilled ones. Some people think that the fiber filler has changed, but actually there is no change at all. There are only 2 changes to our packaging. The first change is the condom, but this only happened to several batches in early April, 2012, when the original supplier of condom was out of stock so we had to use condom from another supplier, which was a little bit loose and shorter. However, there wasn’t any change at all to any material of the cartos. One or two weeks later we used the original condom again and everything remained the same as before. Some people are talking about the long condom version vs short condom version. Actually the cartos in both versions are exactly the same. We don’t think the length of the condom could have any effect on the quality of the cartos. The second change is that we spray print the style No., flavor, nicotine strength and resistance of heating coil etc. on the candy packs instead of using transparent stickers.

3) We think the way of filling e-liquid into the cartos is crucial for their performance. For prefilled cartos, we use an injector to fill e-liquid deep inside the cartos twice. Each time the e-liquid is distributed evenly in three different places. In this case we can make sure that the heating coil is fully infiltrated before the users inhale. This is why our prefilled cartos perform so well so far. For blank ones, we are not able to control the users’ way of filling. An user can get the burnt taste easily if the heating coil is not fully infiltrated. In addition, if the cartos is burnt for the first time, it won’t work well in the future no matter how much e-liquid you inject, because the inner parts has already been damaged. Please fill in the e-liquid correctly to ensure that all units work well. We don’t think the so-called “condom method” is good because the e-liquid will get into the hole in the middle of the carto and then get into the smoker’s mouth easily.

4) VG e-liquid is thicker than PG one. It takes more time (maybe 5-10 minutes) for VG e-liquid to go through the fiber filler and reach the heating coil. We don’t know how our blank cartos work with other brand of e-liquid. We only know that Boge cartomizers, filled with Dekang e-liquid, are gold standard in the electronic cigarette industry.

5) Some users put our blank cartos into clear tank (like the so called DCT or F16) and find that they don’t work well. This is quite understandable as our cartos are not designed to be used in the clear tank. Our cartos are intended to be used with 3.7v batteries (output voltage is 3.3v) only. It’s not recommended to use our cartos with other devices.

6) There are lots of fake Boge cartos in the market. When you search “Boge” on www.alibaba.com, you’ll find thousands of “Boge products” but most of them are not produced by Boge. We can not exclude the possibility that a certain proportion of the complained Boge cartos are fake. We’ll continue to fight against such fake products to safeguard our rights and interests, and maintain the reputation of the quality of our products.

No matter what the reasons are, we’ve taken this issue seriously. We are doing something to optimize our products. We’ve added automatic assembling and inspecting machines to increase our productivity and guarantee our quality. We’ll continue to enhance the 100% inspection system for all cartos before shipment. We have never, and will never compromise on quality. We trust that we are able to provide all Boge fans with perfect cartos whose quality is as good as usual.

We thank you again for your kind concerns! We are open to any opinions you have about our products. If you have any questions, please feel free to send e-mail to info@bogecig.com （Attn: Mr. Stanley Chen）or visit our websites at www.bogecig.com and bogetech.en.alibaba.com.

With our best regards.

Shenzhen Boge Technology Co., Ltd.

A PBusardo Review – The Bam – Kalamazoo Vapor Shop

Vendor Link:
Kalamazoo Vapor Shop

Gallery:

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A PBusardo Review – Jazz Carto Pipe Shorty

Vendor Link:
Jazz Carto Pipe

Gallery:

I’m getting more and more correspondence on the Boge issue. I’ve created a new page under the Knowledge Base section called “BOGEGATE”. As I get pertinent/interesting information, I’ll try to post it there.

A PBusardo Video – BOGEGATE

Manufacturer Link:
Bogecig

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A PBusardo Review – 4 from Cigtechs

NOTE – The Juicy Peach did not come from Cigtechs nor is it available on their site. Must have been mixed up in the bunch by someone (yeah, ok… it was me). Sorry about that!!

High Caliber – Strawberry Banana Smoothie
High Caliber – Juicy Peach
Windy City Vapor – Apple Pie
Zikwid – ZenBerry

Vendor Link:
Cigtechs