Cream City Vapes sprung onto the vape scene several years ago with knockoff Puffco Peak glass and Chinese Puffco Peak Inserts. The Puffco portable dab device was peaking in popularity and Cream City Vapes focused on 3rd party accessories and borderline counterfeit Puffco products.
Cream City also carried a few dry herb vaporizers and participated in the annual 420 vape sales and Black Friday Vape Deals, but failed miserably. Multiple people on Reddit, FC, and 420vapezone communities reported multi-month shipping delays and customer service nightmares involving Cream City Vapes.
By the end of 2022, Cream City Vapes was near the top of the “Vape Stores to Avoid” list.
As of January 12th, 2024, the creamcityvapes dot com URL redirects to a new “Fire Elf” vape store, which seems to sell the same line of drop-shippable dry herb vaporizers and Puffco products.
According to the WayBackMachine / Archive.org this FireElf website has been around since 2008.
The domain has served many purposes over the years, masquerading as a software site, a vacation destination directory, a javascript library, and now it’s an online vape store.
WTF is going on here?
It’s entirely possible that an online vape store is the Fire Elf guy’s 23rd attempt at an online business.
But this is most likely a rebrand by the Cream City guys in an attempt to escape their reputation for ripping people off, taking multiple months to ship things, and generally screwing everyone over.
In the Black Hat SEO world, it’s pretty common for business owners to completely rebrand for the sole purpose of changing domain names. Google blacklists websites that participate in shady internet marketing tactics and it’s easier to buy a new domain and rebrand than it is to earn forgiveness from Google.
Cream City likely suffered from a Google penalty, as well as a piss poor reputation – so they found the shortest and oldest domain they could.
Fire Elf Vape Store is Cream City – AVOID
Search Reddit for Cream City and you’ll find piles and piles of people who have been scammed by this guy.
You’ve been warned. Stick with reputable online vape stores.
A little more proof
I didn’t want to dig into whois info or backend stuff, but a glance at their content revealed several leftover instances of “Cream City”
I was looking for the titanium bucket for my OG Peak lol finally found it on amazon. it doesn’t fit “perfect” but it’s good enough. I know all over reddit the Cream City name was over and always a dead end lol. Now I think I need the hotter mod though now lol