With the ever-increasing sin taxes imposed on cigarettes, prices got so high that I just started buying online from Indian reservations several years ago. One in Kentucky went out of business, so I found another. Prices vary significantly from reservation to reservation.
Nowadays, they all seem to want an e-check rather than a credit card, then insist on receiving a fax of a picture driver’s license, even though they ask for DL# and state as part of the order form. Add to that, that they can take up to three weeks to ship, even after receiving electronic payment. Less expensive than buying them retail, sure, but it’s a heck of a lot more hassle. Fuck that.
I made the switch to buying duty-free from the EU. Fast shipping, credit cards are accepted, and there’s none of this proof of ID/age bullshit, or having to be home to sign for the package. My brand normally costs $50+ per carton, retail. The average Indian reservation charges about $20 less per carton, but adds $2 a carton for shipping. This new supplier charged $6.99 per carton for Philip Morris; shipping from Switzerland was only $7 for the entire nine cartons, priority mail.
I thought I was seeing things, but the Swiss Post declaration, printed in French, German, and Italian, clearly stated what the contents were (Dreissig Schachteln Zigaretten), along with a value in U.S. dollars of $20 per package. There were three packages, each containing three cartons. The whole shipment cost $67.
From an Indian reservation, it would have cost that for two cartons, before shipping. So . . . I got nine cartons for what I’m used to paying for two, a lot faster (less than five business days), with a whole lot less hassle.
Gotta love duty-free.
Send me that website — PLEASE!!!
I tried buying smokes online a few years back. A few months later I get an invoice from the state of Ohio demanding the $60 in taxes they would have received if I bought the cigarettes in Ohio.
me too. SEnd me that website.
If I can ever get moved into a house, rather than an apartment, I intend to grow my own tobacco.
That’s strange, Jim. NY tries to do that to NYers who order online from out of state, but there’s nothing it can do to people who buy from an Indian reservation in NY, and have them shipped to another state.
Then again, one year NY tried to bust people who would drive to PA to buy fireworks. It sent police out to PA to photograph license plates of any car with NY plates parked at fireworks stands. That didn’t work out too well.
Done, C and Janrae. You have Gmail.
If you’re capturing my @yahoo address, would you mind shooting me a link?
I was half expecting a barrage of comments taking me to task for being a smoker. Instead, people want the link.
Memo to legislators in D.C. and all 50 states who impose these sin taxes: You’re changing our behavior alright, but not in the way you expected.
Please my I have that link?
I’ll come to your house and wash windows. Seriously.
http://www.go4cigarettes.com/index2.php?in=order&id=&type=cigarettes
under f-q-a says they no longer sell cigarette and refer you to another site k2smokes and thats where i’ve been ordering from and how i found this blog by googling $6.99 barclay because their site has been down for 2 weeks. i emailed them and they said it would be up last week and it wasn’t so it looks like that site is over too. i hope we can find another one.