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guys, I was only joking about the titan and tornado, hence the winkey smiley

I had a chat with a self-confessed consumer/economics/business pedant the other day and she had some interesting stories to tell me about what people can and can't say when advertising/marketing a product.

It was a real eye-opener I tell you. Basically, the way I understand it is you can say anything you like if the claim you make is simply immeasurable because there is no set standard. For some people, "a" cigarette could be 4 or 5 puffs on a fresh-air (low tar/low nic ready-made) or 12 long and hard draws on a full strength filterless.

There are analogue cigarettes out there with almost no nicotine, therefore it is wholly acceptable and 99.9% legal for me to start an e-cig company and sell cartos with a small amount (0.5ml) of medium strength juice and claim that it will provide the equivalent of 40 fags in both nicotine and vaping/smoking puffs.

I inquired as to "how far" a company might push the boundaries and the reply was "the boundaries of exaggerating claims are only limited by how far a company is prepared/risk to it's own reputation and what it can say without ruining it's own chance of surviving in the market".

I could sell a new type of Biro tomorrow for £2.99 and claim it lasts 1,000 times longer than a regular Biro. Nobody can or will stop me, I simply take the chance of looking like a company that lies and takes peoples money on false pretenses. Incidentally, the mobile network "EE" (Orange) put it's prices up last week to all it's contract customers. By law, they could put everybody's monthly charge up to what ever they want, as the small print in the contract allows them to do so. I asked the question that if all the directors wanted to shut down the company and make millions of pounds overnight, could they not bill everybody £999 per month?

I suspect half the reason why some e-cig companies charge so much is because they have no long-term ambitions for the brand. This might be down to the threat of an e-liquid ban.

If I was in charge of one of the top mini e-cig brands, I might see "pricing" as the last thing on my agenda and simply charge as much as possible before the ban arrives or enough people know the cost of these things.

If we tried to sell bread for £3.99 a loaf in the supermarket nobody would buy it.
and yet, certain e-cig brands charge £3.99 for one cartomiser and people fall for it.

They get away with it by inventing/claiming whatever they like.