Is this normal?

[Poriggity]

I was at the website of a certain vendor, who will remain namless (pm me if you are really curious as to who it is), and I had put together an order of some different cigars, and never checked out.. wasn't sure I had the funds in the bank to pull the trigger.. well, a day later, I got an email saying that while the company would be glad to have my business, they required all new customers to be referred by somone who is a current customer. I found that to be odd.. I can understand why they do it, but my question is, why would they allow me to go to all the trouble of putting an order in my "shopping cart" only to email me a day later telling me that in order to complete my request, I had to be referred by someone... seems like they could lose a lot of business that way...
Scott

[Cigar Penguin]

I have heard of this on another board.....most likely the same vendor.
I only do business with vendors known to be authentic and ones that have no road blocks in purchaseing with a credit card.If some send sealed boxes with codes,bands on,and discretely in a timely fashion,I dont see why others cant.

There are quite a bit of vendors with some quirkey rules.....you can keep them.

My 2cents

[Poriggity]

Seems to me that they will be losing some business with those practices.. I really hate roadblocks.. I guess I will go with a different vendor.
Scott   

[Beerlord]

actually, there are a few places that require refferal, not a hinderance and keeps teh g-man off their packages. 

[Mark]

Scott, PM me the vendor.  If it is the one that I think you are talking about, I'll give you a refferal.

[Poriggity]

Mark, PM sent bro!
Scott  

[MikeD]

Sue to the nature of the business, they would prefer to have their new customers accounted for by exisiting customers.