Puer tea sample issues from vendors

Bing holes are a bit of a let down, but not enough for me to complain.
Destroyed leaves or crumbled tea dust however would certainly warrant an email. I’ve been fortunate enough that I haven’t had to go through that yet.

If anyone sees blahh looking leaf from me, I want to know! Maybe contact the vendor or tell the post office guy yo stop grinding your green

As someone who’s broken up countless cakes for sampling, I think it’s inevitable that some samples are just going to be worse than others. I generally try to include at least one decent sized chunk and minimize the amount of broken leaves and dust. If there is at least one good session of a tea in there, then the sample has served its purpose.

However, from my very biased point of view, samples are more or less a favour that vendors do for customers. Of course I certainly don’t expect people to buy a cake sight unseen, but even with a slightly higher price on samples per gram, you lose money with them compared to a cake. There’s more packaging, more time spent preparing them (especially if you’re consciously trying to make them even in terms of broken leaves and chunks), and in end, a cake can leave behind 10-50g of pure dust that’s not fit to send – depending on how it’s pressed, material, size of leaves, etc.

In the end nobody (except maybe LP) wants the binghole, but it’s gotta go somewhere. I try to spread it out, but I can see how other might not want to pay attention to that. Unless the sample in question is a relatively expensive sample (~$1/g), I would just try taste around the less than ideal leaves or just order another. If someone contacted me with that issue, I’d of course be nice about it. I’d maybe even throw in a free sample of the same tea with their next order (if their attitude wasn’t shitty), but I’d be shaking my head on the other side of the screen.

If the samples are free there is no cause for complaint to the vendor, no matter how bad it is. If you paid good money for fine tea as a sample, then I’d say an email is warranted just as a FYI. But since it is not a whole beeng, I don’t feel the vendor is obligated to replace it.

I may not always buy the free sample that I am given by a vendor but I always appreciate it. It is like the vendor is saying thank you for the purchase. Yunnan Sourcing used to give out free samples with all their puerh tea. They no longer do. While this does not stop me from buying I definitely noticed that they stopped.

With Puer samples, it’s unfortunate to get a poor sample. In my opinion, dust and small broken leaves should normally be part of the sample cost markup and should not be included at time of packing. However, shipping may cause breakage due to bad handling. Bad packaging should be the retailer’s issue. Another issue might be the compression & breaking up of the cake – I wouldn’t expect a brick or tuo sample to come in as whole leaf as it’s unlikely that it could be broken up into whole leaves successfully.

It would be considered rude to ask for replacement of a free sample although worth giving feedback to say why you think it was a poor sample. If you paid for the tea, you should be getting enough whole-leaf product and so any reasonable fault on the shipper’s part would be clearly communicated and they would likely consider shipping replacements.

Finally, if you do get a really compressed block, don’t try to loosen every leaf. But I’d rather use the first 3 or 4 (longer) brews to loosen up the leaves before properly starting the session. Better that than breaking up the leaves. If your sample is partially loose leaf and partially compressed block, add the loose leaves when the compressed block starts breaking up and do a final rinse before starting the session.