VAPERS are mistakenly buying food coloring for DIY vape juice online and then giving it a poor score for its nicotine content.

Eagle-eyed Rob Whisman made the discovery after being surprised to see a string of one-star reviews for some strawberry-flavored generic food coloring drops on Amazon.

Whisman wrote on Twitter: "It's fun looking up concentrated food flavoring on amazon and finding people who thought it was vape juice." On closer inspection, the problem appeared to be more common than a few one-off mistaken purchases on the global shopping site, with Capella Flavour Drops being forced to post a disclaimer on its Amazon page selling Sweet Strawberry Concentrate stating: "THIS IS NOT VAPE JUICE."

Even with the public notice in place, reviews for the strawberry flavor concentrate had a slew of poor reviews from disappointed vape users with 2.9 stars from 38 reviews complaining it wasn't an adequate vape juice.

One shopper, who gave it one star, complained "Not an e-juice".

Another one-star review for the orange Creamsicle concentrate flavor, explained: "Taste is terrible and barely gives out vape," while the Capella Flavour Drops's page selling bottles of Blue Raspberry Cotton Candy - described by the sellers as "great for use in coffee or tea, smoothies, protein shakes, and baking" - had more disappointed vaping customers.
One wrote: "This vape juice doesn't taste sweet, or blue raspberry. This juice just takes like an unknown medicine."

The seemingly obvious mistake, however, could be blamed in part to an alleged search fault on Amazon which directs shoppers to Capella's Flavour Drops when typing in "vape juice" to its search engine, according to Britain's Telegraph newspaper. Like many food colorings, vapers use the drops to mix their own vape juice, which is also likely contributing to the mix-up by novice users who think the concentrated food flavor is the finished product.

In the customer questions and answers section of the products, in response to the question "does this have nicotine in it?" someone responded, "It's not vape juice."
While it's not believed to be dangerous, the confusion doesn't seem to be slowing down for shoppers and possibly sellers alike.

Another Twitter user added: "Oh man now I'm dying thinking about these retailers freaking out over all the negative reviews and having no idea what vape juice is."