"Zephyrus" > wrote in message
om...
> I am somewhat suspicious myself (I usually am about internet vendors,
> particularly foreign).

I almost exclusively use foreign vendors - living in Norway really don't
have a choice. I try to order tea from their country of origin, usually I
get better grades for a better price. It does take some detective work to
find good vendors, but to this day I have never had any problems.

> Then again, lots of tea sites (even trusted US ones) have been prone
> to misinformation and extravagantly bogus claims.

Very true. Also many vendors don't use the traditional classification
systems and add or change the original name of the teas to fancy ones,
making it very difficult to event try to compare. Living in Europe, it isn't
attractive to order samples, as the price of shipping from US or Asia
doubles or triples the cost of the tea.

<snip marketing stories>

> However, what I noted about the site is that most obvious bogus claims
> about pu-erh involve really "old" teas for prices that seem expensive
> to the newbie, but are ridiculously cheap given context (cf.
> abovementioned Rishi example).

I am really a puerh newbie, but I don't think their prices is that out of
line with other puerh vendors in China or Hong Kong that I have been in
contact with. It seems that there are many grades of leaves used to make
puerh , and the price of the tea at any time of it's life reflects this.
Most vendors doesn't put the grade of the leaves on their website, though.

> However, these folks obviously charge a
> lot for their "good" stuff, which one would think would drive
> customers *away*--not the idea of a scam artist.
>
> I'm probably not going to test them out (the $20 shipping is enough to
> drive me away), but I think they don't deserve to be dismissed off the
> bat as a scam.

You are lucky if you think10 per kg shipping is expensive. That is what I
have to pay for *domestic* shipping in Norway!

Lars