Habanos Verification site (small rant)

[Puros Y Vino]

Ever since I started smoking back in 2009. The Habanos verification site (verificacion.habanos.com) has been absolute garbage.

You either get the site to load, enter you info, do the "I am not a robot" captcha thingy and.......................nada. It just sits there when I use Firefox and then gives you a "verification expired" message. It does even weirder things with different browsers.

If by a miracle you are able to get in. I've found I've been limited to 5 queries and then locked out for 24 hours before I can submit more serial#'s.

Given how much price gouging Habanos has been engaging in, how can they not throw some money at this system and improve it?  As a buyer(less so these past few years) this is a frustrating tool.  What do distributors and retailers have at their disposal?  Do they have access to a different tool? Or do they have to use this one?  Is there no one at Habanos that has a clue about IT?  They surely make use of it when they have to render upcoming cigar releases for their regular site.  Or generate virtual backgrounds for their live events. 

1. What is everyone's experience with that site? 
2. Do you have issues getting results? 
3. Are you able to get your queries done without issues? 
4. Are you limited by how many you can do?
5. What browsers seem to work better? I find some have more success than others and that some browser add-ons or plugins can make it worse.

@El Presidente what do you as a retailer have access to?  Do the larger distributors have to use this piece of garbage too? 

IMO. This site should be globally redundant and be able to handle at least 10K simultaneous connections.  And more importantly that backend data must be supported at all levels so that it can be secured, trusted and kept up to date.

/rant off 😕

 

 

[Wookie]

I used it extensively when I started buying cigars online in the 2013-2015 timeframe. I got all my stock in Europe in the late 1990s/early 2000s and then stopped buying CCs from 2005-2013. The site seemed to work earlier and then got worse 2015-2016. By that time I had a couple trusted vendors so I stopped verifying. When I found FOH I think I did a couple checks and then decided my three vendors were all rock-solid and it calmed my suspicions. Haven't looked back. At current pricing I'm just smoking my stock and buying more NCs. In the States we have very compelling pricing on NCs.  

[raggie]

One reason I can think for the rate limiting is to prevent mass checking, however that’s what the captcha should be for (at least to prevent programmatic checks)…I’ve just had a bad experience overall with the site, which is surprising for how often it’s down for “maintenance!”