Mama P's Wholesome Grinding, Co. Lied, Uncommunicative, non empathetic, promotes illegal use of product, Swindled, grossly overcharged Spicewood Texas

We first heard of Mama P’s during the Austin City Limits Festival back in October 2012. We spoke with the vendor/owner and were pretty impressed with what he had on display. Being located in Spicewood, TX, unfortunately, we did not want to travel that far. A little over a year later, my boyfriend became interested in purchasing an e-cigarette. With a flyer from the vendor still on hand around the house, I thought it would be fun for his birthday to travel from North Austin to Spicewood, stop at a brewery, grab some barbecue and purchase an e-cigarette from this very impressive vendor from ACL. I mean, he went on and on about his award winning grinders, it was clear at the time, this would be a great place to go to invest in an e-cigarette. We should have turned around the second we saw it being run out of a garage under a small unit of condos. We shouldn’t have even gone down the driveway. Driveway, not parking lot.

Alas, driving that far just for beer and barbecue didn’t sit well with me, so we took a look anyway. We spoke with a man named Sean and told him what we were in the market for. Immediately he pulled out a fine looking e-cigarette and informed us of all its greatness including long battery life, that it came with a USB charger and even showed us how the heating element worked and where to put weed. Yes, the actual word “weed” came out of his mouth. While that’s nice for some, we were interested in the separate attachment that held the liquid nicotine, which he went on to say we can purchase separately for $50, in addition to the $100 for the actual e-cigarette, and it includes a one-year warranty. Ok, so we discussed with the employee, $150 for something that was going to be refillable and last us at least a year because of the warranty? Sure. We wanted to make an investment in something that lasted, so we made the purchase. I mean this store sells award-winning products; they wouldn’t sell anything of low quality or lie about it, right? Nope.

Couple of days later the feeling of being swindled took ahold of me and I decided to do some research on the brand of e-cigarette we just bought (SToK), which is where I found that you could purchase the exact same set for $65.00 with the separate attachment selling at $25 (which we learned is no longer made so we’re not even able to use what we purchased anymore. Gut-wrenching moment number one). So we called to try and speak with the owner of how we felt at being grossly overcharged having driven so far, but were informed by a woman that he was at a trade show for two weeks, but that she speaks to him every day and will let him know to give us a call. We called a couple times after waiting for about a week during normal business hours and no one would pick up the phone. Having been swindled, we could only be persistent for so long, so to reign in on our stress and frustration, we waited a couple weeks to return to our pursuit. That’s when the liquid in the e-cigarette started to turn a darker color brown. Having co-workers who also use similar products informed us that we needed to change the attachment. All of the $50 had to be replaced because it’s disposable. There is no warranty. This was confirmed by a SToK rep we called who was appalled at hearing at what we were told from Sean.

So the calling re-continued until finally we spoke to Sean again. We expressed our grievances with the pricing, but ultimately conceded that we weren’t going to get any kind of apology for them marking up their prices, but being lied to, spending $50 on something that we were told has a warranty, but in actuality is disposable, we would not concede. Of course the owner was away at a trade show again and was told to call again in a couple weeks once he returned, and we have still yet to hear from him. And we now can’t get ahold of anyone on the phone at anytime. The stress and frustration is taking a toll on us because we have this three-month-old, unsolved burden hanging over our heads that we are desperately trying to get rid of, but they just don’t care that their employee practiced bad business ethics or sold us a product referencing its use with an illegal substance.