[neoflex]

I'm in the no difference camp, although I sometimes feel the Joes deals are some sort of seconds as the sticks don't always seem to be up to par with their regular retail counterparts. Like others mentioned, to test this correctly you would need to buy specimens from both retailers and let them sit in your controlled environment for at least a month and than pop the bands off and have others smoke them blindly. You also have to keep in mind to that some retailers sell smokes online that manufacturers go through great lengths to keep them from hitting the online market but the online retailers buy them through a Brick & Morter and in turn put them online so who is to say everything you are getting was meant for online sales only?
Again, as mentioned previously the logistics of having two different smokes for different markets would just be too costly to make it worth their while IMHO.