OK, I confess that I am always looking to try new cigars and get a good deal, and Nwb's recent wins on Thompson's auction site convinced me, against my better judgment, to give them a try after all of these years.  I am a very regular customer of the Devil and Monster sites (and occasionally JR) so I know the ropes on how auctions work and don't get sucked into any bidding frenzies or ever pay higher than the best deal I can get somewhere else.

So set up an account at Thompson this week.  I was bidding on two 5-packs of PDR 1878 Oscuros, winning all week.  There are only 2 units for sale, and you can bid on one or both.  My bid was $12 for each one, and I am winning.  As what usually happens, in the last moments of the auction some last minute bidding occurred, and I was outbid.  There are now two different winning bidders , each for one 5-pack @  $16, and I need to bid $18 to win either of these.  That's a little higher than I wanted to go on these, but I decided to bid on just ONE now at $18 because I want to try this cigar.  Thompson rejects the bid and tells me I have to bid "more than $24" because MY last bid was $12x2.  But I am now only bidding on ONE 5-pack.  And no, I was not entering it incorrectly, and I went back 3x to see if I could override their glitch.  They wanted me to bid "more than $24" on a single 5-pack.  Forget it!  

This is a clunky site to navigate and takes entirely too many clicks to get through the bid process or check your Watch List or Bid List, or even to scour what's up for sale.  Their offerings are mostly sub-par, with only a sprinkling of decent cigars.  Despite that I opted out for email on their "recommendations for me", I am getting their emails anyway.

Shame on me for not listening to my better judgment and those of you here that warned us all! I've got a couple of other pending bids, but as soon as those expire, I'm deleting my account with them.  

I do not deal with Thompson though I look at their site sometimes.Sometimes when I search for other cigar sites I get a Thompson pop up for 5 packs,it pisses me off and I cannot get rid of this glitch.

I started to set up an account but just couldn't bring myself to enter my payment info. I guess your experience just validates my decision!

Thompson sucks.  Don't ever use their auction site.  That just increases competition....

In all seriousness, that stinks.  I've never run into that problem, but I've never tried doing what you were doing.  As far as selection goes, you have to wade through a lot of shyt to find the gems.  For most people, it isn't worth it.  The site setup could be a lot better, too.  It is very clunky.

With all that being said, if they corrected those issues, you wouldn't be finding any great deals anymore since people would be more apt to use them.

So I went and looked to see if this was actually posted on the Dutch Auction rules, and it actually is:

"A bidder is not allowed to lower their "total bid value" (bid price per item times the quantity of items bid on) at any time."

Stupid rule and makes no sense, especially considering Thomspon loses money on what could be higher bids.

Just another reason why Thompsons is one of the all time worse vendors.

Haven't bought from Thompson's for a couple of months, but never had a problem with them . . . then again, never tried to drop from bidding on two items to bidding on one.  Sorry, Bruce.

Thats a real gyp right there.  The fine print is always a  bytch...