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The Decant Dilemma

post #1 of 17
9/15/10 at 6:02pm
Thread Starter 
Greetings Everyone!


Just when I thought I had this all figured out...haha. I thought I would buy decants to save money, rather than buying full bottles. However, what do you do when you use your 5-10 ml decant? I'll tell you. You buy a bottle, or 2, if you really like the fragrance and don't want to run out. I don't know guys...Has this happened to you?
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post #2 of 17
9/15/10 at 6:15pm
Thinking about ,Rosehavn ... there has only been one decant ( 2 of it actually ) - Sous Le Vent - that I finished up and bought bottles of. Others, I don't finish and give away or are still languishing somewhere in my perfume den .
In the long run, decants did save me money though price per ml, decants are probably more expensive.
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post #3 of 17
9/15/10 at 6:21pm
It absolutely has happened to me. I ended up having to go to Germany to find the last two bottles of a love of mine.
It has also saved me a ton of $$$$ by sampling the highly rated and finding that THAT just doesn't work for me.
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post #4 of 17
9/15/10 at 7:26pm
I've just been patient and the few I've liked that I've sampled were eventually acquired in swaps. Mostly, I've done blind buying and swapping.
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post #5 of 17
9/15/10 at 7:32pm
Usually, if you have enough bottles, minis, samples, and such, you should get quite a bit of life from a decant. Yeah, if it's a goldmine, buy the bottle. Otherwise, move on and keep looking.
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post #6 of 17
9/15/10 at 7:32pm
Decants are helpful, especially when samples are getting more scarce. Sometimes you don't really want a full bottle of a fragrance, you just want enough of it to be there whenever you want to remember it. If you like it so much to buy it, then there was no harm, you just spent a few extra $ per ml. Though in some cases it's cheaper to buy decants than a bottle of a large flacon is offered and a generous person is doing a no-profit split.

Sadly after this whole no decants on ebay dilemma, decants are getting harder to get for a good deal as well. TPC has ridiculous prices (seriously, some 30ml decants cost as much as the full 50-100ml bottle). So I find myself not buying decants currently.
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post #7 of 17
9/15/10 at 7:57pm
I can't allow this thread to turn into solicitations for decant sales. Please remember that solicitations of forbidden items and sales/swaps/wants in signatures by those who do not yet meet marketplace requirements is a violation.
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post #8 of 17
9/16/10 at 7:31am
Thread Starter 
Does anyone else buy full bottles when they thought a decant would be enough? Do you do this often?
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post #9 of 17
9/16/10 at 7:54am
Rosehavn, i`ve bought some full bottles when the price of the full bottle wasn`t that expensive or i could get a bottle at a great deal. Sometimes you also don`t have the option of buying a decant for an affordable price.
In general i buy FB of the decants that i really like, but i don`t expect them to finish, i end buying the bottle and giving away the decant. But in most cases i haven`t finished the decants I've bought yet...
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post #10 of 17
9/16/10 at 9:04am
I use decants a lot. Generally it's if there's something which I sampled or just smelled a couple of times but I'm just not sure about. In some cases it might be too expensive for me to buy a full bottle. Most of my wardrobe are 5-10ml decants. In most cases by the time I'm done that decant I've got a very good idea of if I want a full bottle or not. If I never finish it, well then I don't buy a bottle. So in that way, yes, it saves me money. I also started off by buying about 5 100ml bottles of stuff that everyone talks about and wants to sample, even though I only wanted about 50-75ml of them. the 100ml bottles were economical. I then traded 5ml decants from those bottles to build up a wardrobe of another 20-30ml decants of various other things. Even with the cost of the atomizers, my time, shipping, etc, it was still worth it (and fun!).

So in part, what I'm saying, is that I acquire decants with the express purpose of them potentially leading to FB purchases.
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post #11 of 17
9/16/10 at 9:20am
Decants are not so expensive if the fragrance is not available here. It's cheaper than a trip to fancy France just to buy a full bottle of perfume!
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post #12 of 17
9/16/10 at 2:36pm
Decants have saved me tons of money. Yes, the occasional decant turns in to a bottle purchase, but I know by then that I will really love the fragrance. A decant gives you time to really experience a fragrance and make informed buying decisions.
I will not buy from TPC though. I think the prices are ridiculous. I love a couple of those folks and have dealt with them for years before they became a part of TPC, so that's not a personal attack. I just think they price things too high, and there are plenty of other places to buy decants.

-Slim
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post #13 of 17
9/16/10 at 2:52pm
Pure Malt, i tried it and wasn't impressed but kept a decant just cause it was so rare...ended up using the whole decant and im waiting on a bottle
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post #14 of 17
9/16/10 at 2:57pm
Just to be clear about BN policy, we are allowed to put a link in our signatures to an off site page where we can sell whatever we want (that is legal, of course), right?
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post #15 of 17
9/16/10 at 3:03pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bigsly View Post

Just to be clear about BN policy, we are allowed to put a link in our signatures to an off site page where we can sell whatever we want (that is legal, of course), right?

Don't ask me. They came and told me I couldn't use my decants for 3 days as punishment. JK!
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post #16 of 17
9/16/10 at 3:04pm
decants are the way to go if you dotn care much about that Amouage Lyric Bottle...
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post #17 of 17
9/16/10 at 5:04pm
I've only ever bought one decant from TPC, 8 ml of Diabolo Rose. I had sampled it the year before, but as I have so many other rose perfumes, I wasn't at all sure that I would use it often enough to warrant buying a full bottle. A smallish decant was the way to go. Not too expensive, not too little perfume-- just enough to make up my mind.

As it turns out, I did go on to buy the full bottle, but I think the decant was money well spent. Would I do it again? Depends on the relative cost of the full bottle and the decant.
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