What are some of your worst purchasing regrets?
What are some of your worst purchasing regrets?
Mine was yesterday, I bought a papa john's pizza of medium size and some garlic knots. I was feeling like shit because my job and store is very good at that, so I stress ate. I contemplated in the car which would've been more valuable for my buck to dine with. I picked pizza.
$20 (more like $27 but I took away the price of the knots) was what it cost for a meats-based medium sized pizza from there. The problem I had with the pizza was that it didn't look like a medium, it looked like the smaller-end of a medium. Secondly, the person cutting the slices did a shit job, because I had two smaller slices than the rest. And I felt there wasn't enough meats spread evenly.
I honestly should've picked a chinese buffet because at least I would have variety and I could eat as much as I wanted. Plus saving a few dollars.
This is the first and last time I'm ordering something out of my comfort budget.
Got an expensive leather jacket as a kid, for far more money than I had paid for clothes before or have since. Assumed it was indestructible being leather. It was not that kind of leather jacket, and I managed to tear it wide open in maybe a couple weeks.
Oh boys, there are too many. The most recent is the iPad though
2011 Jetta TDI. Newly married, my husband has a weakness for shiny new things. He had a 2008 Jetta and wanted to sell it and “upgrade” to the more efficient and environmentally friendly (er, about that) TDI. A few years later we bought a second TDI.
If you’re not familiar with Dieselgate, well, yeah, we got defrauded basically. Long story short, we ended up selling both and replacing them with…
Teslas. Sigh. Fuck me.
Well, that's some luck you've had.
I've actually thought about looking for an old TDI, since it's a bit different, more resistant to American trade issues and possibly in my budget. If you're in a rural area it actually is greener, too.
Many years ago I paid 170 dollars for a forever license to what was essentially a VPN that only worked for netflix.
The company got shut down several months later and I could no longer see netflix from around the world.
Now days I don't even have netflix though
An Intel Atom notebook with 2GB RAM and 32GB storage acquired for $200 on Black Friday. Despite many attempts to optimize it, it was practically unusable 4 years in. If I had the foresight to buy a used ThinkPad for the same price instead, it could have been my daily driver to this day.
Also a faux leather wallet. The "leather" started turning to goo and powder about a year in. Some of my cards and my wallet photo still have some of those decayed fake leather bits stuck on the edges or rubbed in.
I got a saddleback wallet for Father’s Day 10 years ago and it is gorgeous. If it ever dies and they still exist they’ll replace or repair it for free
I have an irrational hatred for faux leather I won’t touch anything with it that melty And peely texture is so awful
My spouse and I were broke grad students with a baby on the way. We needed a car. Someone in our tiny town was selling a 1992 Accord for $1000 (this was in the early 2010s). We bought it and put in another $1000 to get it to run.
The only problem? It was a stick shift. I didn't know how to drive standard; at the time, my spouse didn't drive at all. I tried to learn, but I was so nauseated from my pregnancy that I nearly puked every time the car lurched... which was often. I never did get the hang of it. Eventually we bought a newer automatic car and traded the Accord in for a whopping $250.
These days we could weather a $2000 mistake without too many problems, but back then... yeah, that one hurt.
Airport Sandwich €12 and it tastes like gas station sandwich.
From the hitchkikers guide:
It is by eating sandwiches in pubs on Saturday lunchtimes that the British seek to atone for whatever their national sins have been. They’re not altogether clear what those sins are, and don’t want to know either. Sins are not the sort of things one wants to know about. But whatever sins they are are amply atoned for by the sandwiches they make themselves eat.
If there is anything worse than the sandwiches, it is the sausages which sit next to them. Joyless tubes, full of gristle, floating in a sea of something hot and sad, stuck with a plastic pin in the shape of a chef’s hat: a memorial, one feels, for some chef who hated the world, and died, forgotten and alone, among his cats on a back stair in Stepney. The sausages are for the ones who know what their sins are and wish to atone for something specific.Airport prices are on a whole other level
Hm, no, I can't imagine that I've ever experienced a worse purchasing regret than the one you described there with the pizza.
My brain is too scattered to think of biggest, but most recently was ordering anything from the cheap Chinese food place! Cheap! Mostly tasty!
Also gave me something that made me so sick for 2 weeks and unable to keep other food down I had to get an xray to make sure everything was okay! Ultimately it was but man! Bad two weeks!
I took my car into the dealership for a full work-up and diagnostic in January, roughly $1k… mentioning the light and the recall I had heard about. Well, they said everything was good and unless I brought the car in with the light on they couldn’t do anything about it or the recall. Days later, the light came back on driving home early from work. So, I head right there, while the engine is stuttering and fighting to make it across town. There isn’t any availability until end of the following week…
I go across town to a hole in the wall mechanic and get seen immediately. They diagnose a cracked head gasket and blown radiator pretty quickly, order a new engine because it’s like $375 and under $2k to install. Done by Monday.
I originally went to the dealership. I explained the problem, the cars keep a warning light log that they can access… and they missed the obvious issues but still charged me $1k for work that didn’t matter my more, because I got an entirely new engine and radiator.
Sounds like a stealership
1k is excessive for looking over your car.
That's because dealerships are scammers. I used to pay $108 for a simple synthetic oil change. Wal-Mart did it for $71.
My dealership wants like $1,000+ for brake/rotor pad service. Other places around charge at least a few hundred dollars cheaper.
I learned that going the mechanics route is better and that's not saying there are no scammy mechanics, because there are. But once you find someone who's fair and knows their shit? Give them your business.
I take my first experience at a motorcycle dealership as a baseline. To work on my bike they charged £55/h labour for the two of them. So I just think, minimum wage x 3 per person is a good price for mechanics. Now it'd be about £75.
I got an iPad, think it was second generation. That thing was fucking useless. Couldn't do anything without a subscription service. Games sucked. Couldn't sideload. Don't know what I was thinking.
A decade later I got a galaxy tablet and its one of the most useful things I've ever bought. Writing tablet in meetings. Second screen while gaming. Portable screen while training/cooking. OLED is perfect for reading comics.
Sorry I think I got distracted and missed the spirit of the question.
I've owned many iPads. To claim you can't use it without a subscription service is ridiculous. Yes, you need an Apple ID to download apps from the App Store but that doesn't cost anything (just like a Google account).
You're comparing two electronic devices that are ten years apart from each other. Of fucking course the new one is going to be better. If you think a Galaxy tablet is great, you should really try a new iPad.
I mean, you're just coming off sounding like an Apple-hater and someone who hasn't ever actually owned an iPad. Maybe even a bot.
I mean, you’re just coming off sounding like an Apple-hater and someone who hasn’t ever actually owned an iPad. Maybe even a bot.
Yeah, that opinion was clearly an attack on an in-group you personally identify with! /s
You had me in the first part, but that last paragraph reeks of Apple fanboyism.
Anyway, I also had an iPad 2 back in the day and it was a pretty solid machine coming from media players and digital photo frames of yore. Also an amazing mobile gaming experience compared to the cramped iPod touch or iPhone of the time. But terribly frustrating if you wanted anything outside the walled garden, even something as ubiquitous as Adobe Flash support.
What plumbercraic says though is absolutely the case today. Some of my family use Apple devices. Mind-blowing what ad- and subscription-infested apps they endure on the regular. Sometimes they'll ask me to recommend friendlier apps and I really wish iOS had its F-Droid equivalent. Yes, the Play Store also has terrible apps, but when only the Apple App Store exists, I have to spend time hunting for the one good app, which could just as well enshittify the next year.
I actually just switched my tablet from a galaxy tab S8+ to an iPad pro. I use it for work a ton too so it needed to be able to keep up with me, and the iPad is enormously better in basically every way (except side loading which I don't do anyways) than the Galaxy tab.
Plus its not even like the Galaxy tab was cheaper. It was like $200 less than my iPad and my iPad has cellular which is incredibly nice.
>$1500 on an all new parts DIY PC complete with a Windows license. Nowadays everything's outdated and these same parts would be like $800 max. Even back then I could have saved at least a couple hundred just by swallowing my pride and buying used.
I haven't bought brand new tech since, and I have not regretted it yet.
Buying computer parts is one of those areas when buying high end is usually cheaper in the long run. My 5800X3D / 3090 build is still extremely relevant despite being two generations behind the latest hardware. I have no desire to upgrade and I’ll probably be able to push it for another 2-4 years easily.
Never bought a Windows license though, and I’ve been building PCs since 1998.
I'm not saying I won't buy high end. Just not new. There are so many used parts in circulation, and some of them in pristine condition. They're cheaper, work almost as well (if not just as well), and keep e-waste out of landfills/being stripped for precious metals. I get to pat myself on the back and save some money, what could be better?
Buying just slightly below highest end (so 5700X3D/3080) is the best bang-for-the-buck of all, IMO.
I just upgraded my seven-year-old 1700X/Vega 56 system to 5700X3D/9070 XT, and I expect it to be good for probably another seven years at least, give or take failure of the original motherboard I'm still using.
I used to do the same, and for stationary PCs, that's still my recommendation. Sure, some might actually need bleeding edge stuff for for some specific niche high performance thing, but for most people that's a waste of money.
The only exception is for laptops. I rely on laptops as I'm often on the go, and I've generally had better results when going high end (within reason) than going mid-tier.
I'm thinking of buying my next set of PC parts used, but i'm scared of the reliability. Which is weird because i buy absolutely everything else scond hand
It's a crap shoot, but as long as you can verify the supplier (or at least ensure return/refunds) it's been okay.
I've gotten 2 GPUs and 4 CPUs through eBay, and only one of the GPUs was a scam—still got my money back within the day when it didn't arrive on schedule (the lister had already deactivated their account)—the RX 6600 is working great so far, and the CPUs have held up in some office workstations and server for a few years now.
I've also gotten tons of used ram and used ssds and hdds. I've had a few times in my workplace where a few sticks of OEM ram and HDD failed, but haven't had that issue with any of the used stuff (work or home).
I may be really lucky, or I may be the right amount of cautious (or both), so YMMV—definitely check with others for their experience before you decide to take the risk. Just keep in mind that if you go looking for scams and horror stories, it's gonna seem like that's all that happens, and the reverse holds if all you look for is success stories.
My workplace has an e-waste bin we can rummage through and I've scavenged many an upgrade for my machines. If it weren't for that, I'm not sure I would have the same confidence troubleshooting used parts. Making a couple of assumptions here, but upgrading with used parts one by one would be a good starting point. I've had good luck returning eBay items that were described as working but were in fact defective.
It is actually a good filter to have. There are some things you can get second hand and no problem. But you don't know how much wear and tear something has gone through like PC parts.
iPhone 3G. Awful performance, even worse battery life, no multitasking, next to no storage space, couldn't do shit without iTunes, and even with iTunes the options were severely limited. Overpriced locked down piece of shit. Streamlined UI was pretty much the only good thing about it. Got an android phone not long after and it was like night and day.
I cancelled my contract early to trade in my 3G for a “DROID” and never looked back.
Samsung A03.
After years of buying the cheapest phones possible, i got really tired of it and spent more money to get a better one, hoping to finally be free of all the bullshit.
It's the worst phone i've ever owned.
Cost me 100€ second hand instead of the ususal 50€. I am so disgusted
If you still are using it, try this:
- Disable RAM Plus under Battery and device care > Memory
- Reduce transparency and blur under Accessibility > visibility enhancements
- Disable the home screen media page, if it's there
- Use 3-button navigation instead of gestures
Got just a bit more performance out of a friend's A03s that way.
Oh wow, i wasn't expecting helpful advice for that specific model. Thanks!
I sympathize. The A0 line of Samsung phones, holy shit they suck. I have an A02s but it's not my main phone, thank god. It's sluggish, takes 3 whole minutes to finally boot up, everything on it runs slow, the keyboard interface takes 10 seconds to finally pull up. It's technically not even that old when I got it and a year after, it did this.
Oh and it's battery goes from 100% to 94% in a few minutes with NOTHING running.
The fingerprint scanner never worked properly, i had to register the same finger 3 times to make it kinda usable. Now a few months later it doesn't work at all.
Rent every month. The scam eventually ends so at least it won't be forever. It just lasts the rest of my life.
Those Samsung earbuds which had a proprietary connector from back when every phone manufacturer refused to use 3.5mm plugs to push their own breakable standard.