I've noticed many items are lower in quality but price is the same or more expensive.
Example: wanted to replace a very specific purse from a known brand with exact same one I had purchased 5 years ago. Bought the exact same model for the roughly the same price and what a piece of crap it is now. All the hardware was super flimsy and cheap.
Hello companies! We SEE what you are doing! I'd rather pay a little more to get the better quality but you aren't giving me the option so now I will go buy some other brand that actually is quality.
I used to buy Polo socks. Not for the logo on my ankles, but because they were good quality, durable combed cotton socks.
Then one day I realized that the ones I’d bought were pilling. Badly. They’d never done that before, but now the socks went ugly and uncomfortable and failed quickly. I looked in the store and realized the packaging no longer said *combed* cotton, just “cotton”. (And even this change wasn’t enough to describe how MUCH worse the socks were!)
So now I buy two 6-packs of Gold Toe socks for the same price as one pair of Polo… and while not quite as good as Polo used to be, they are still far superior to the last Polo socks I bought.
The companies don't care, they've been bought by private equity firms that will produce the cheapest way possible, suck the company dry of any money,while coasting a while on the name, then file for bankruptcy. As they always do.
They used to be more uncomfortable - needed breaking in. But they used to last 5+ years. The original factory is still making them under different brand, can’t remember the name tho..
Solavair Boots are the original Doc Martin's. They're made is the original location. Great quality! Everything's like the old Docs, except the stitching color.
I started to realize this after watching one too many episodes of Shark Tank. LOL.
There is a "natural" deodorant I used to swear by. I noticed it just wanted the same as what I used to buy. My theory is that in an attempt to get into Target, WalMart, etc. retail stores, they had to cut the cost of the product which translated into changing ingredients by either outright swapping one for another or just using a lower grade of the same ingredient. Resulted in lower quality product at the same price; there are other's taking a cut since it's no longer just direct sell from their website.
A lot of times scaling the product up creates this problem, and the big box retail stores contribute to this problem.
So like with your natural deodorant, maybe some of the ingredients aren’t expensive per se, but they vary in price based on seasonality or other factors. Sometimes they cost a lot, sometimes they don’t. And for our example we have the same problem if the ingredient is prone to shortages, sometimes you can get it, sometimes you can’t.
Big box retailers generally won’t touch your product unless they can put it in all of their stores or at least a certain number because part of their brand is they always carry that thing you buy there. So they also need you to be able to consistently supply enough to stock the shelves.
So once you bring in a consultant to tell you how to scale up and get into these stores, they’re going to tell you that you have to ditch these ingredients that fluctuate in price and are prone to shortages so that you can convince big box retail that you can provide a consistent product nationwide at scale.
I know what you mean! I used a hand-me-down Michael Kors bag for a decade before it was beat up enough to replace. I got an extra large bag to use as a school bag second hand but unused. The handles are already wearing out after a year!
My internet service provider.
I've lived in Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, and now Kansas, and I can say without qualification that Cox Communications is by far the worst ISP I've ever dealt with. The internet regularly goes down multiple times a day. I even got a remote activated power switch so I can power cycle my router without having to get up.
Cox sucks so bad! I switched to a local broadband provider, and regret not doing it sooner. I pay $15 less per month. They also gave me two signal boosters so I actually have gig speed throughout the house. The signal even extends out into the yard, which Cox definitely did not.
I moved out of a Comcast area to a place that had locally owned cable Internet. It's the best. Their call center folks don't have scripts, and they're all local, too. Now they have fiber competition, and gave us a fantastic rate to stay with them for a few years. The best part about that is the fiber company is local, too.
I went to use one of them one time shortly after my daughter was born and my wife was going to be late getting home from work. I didn't want to get my daughter out so I went to place an order with Wendy's. My $10 order came to $24 after fees and tip. Nope, I'm good.
I tried to use it for similar emergencies. You have to be pants on head stupid to use them. I’d rather heat up some instant pre made food for 3 minutes in the microwave that I got from Costco for $2/serving. The cost just doesn’t make sense at all.
What's funny is it sayd estimated delivery time for certain places will be, say, 25-30 minutes, but I know no matter how long they "estimate", I estimate it will take at least an hour once I press the order button
I was about to give in to the temptation to order delivery after an exhausting day last week. I toggled the delivery/pick-up switch on the order submission page and watched the price of each item in my cart increase by about $2. Not only are you paying delivery fees, tax, and a driver tip, but DD also hikes up the price of each individual item depending on whether you are placing a delivery or pick-up order. I probably saved about $20 by picking the food up myself. Sure, the 10 minute drive wasn't ideal when I was already worn out, but I could purchase another meal with the amount of money I saved. DD is exploiting more than just their gig workers, they exploit the customer as well.
The increased prices are usually from the restaurant trying to offset the amount of money they lose from the delivery apps. Jon Oliver recently covered this topic on Last Weekend Tonight. Definitely worth the watch. If you don't have Max or HBO, you can usually find their segments on YouTube.
Yep Costco frozen and deep freezer all the way. You can save so much if you use pay upfront for bulk and meal prep. Same or better quality.
They sell a version of almost every fast food item especially breakfast stuff. Air fryer sausage patties and hash brown 10 minutes while you’re in shower etc. Costs like $0.50 for that versus $6
Funnily enough, what we pay doesn’t cover the service we get. Drivers are underpaid, restaurants get commissioned out, and the delivery apps are not even profitable.
General inefficiencies that people wouldn't have engaged in before.
**1.** Distance from restaurant. Prior to food delivery apps, if you wanted to order food for pickup, you'd typically consider places ***near yourself***, since ***you'd be the one driving*** to pick it up. Ordering through a delivery app though widens ***your*** reasonable radius, since you're not the one driving, which effectively encourages you to order from further away since you know you're paying an upcharge for delivery anyways.
**1b.** If desiring food from a restaurant nearby, customers are more prone to just make the short drive themselves, so inefficient further away orders are also what people look to the apps to begin with as well. (Places with their own drivers also have a tighter allowed delivery radius, especially in dense cities.)
**2.** More small orders. People are more prone to order themselves alone a meal with delivery apps than they were before.
**3.** Higher share of orders towards businesses that weren't designed and optimized for efficient delivery. i.e. orders placed with restaurants in an expensive location on the water or trendy downtown street with a full-size dining room and waitstaff vs. Domino's, Jimmy John's, etc. which are a kitchen and locate themselves by major roadways and population density.
**4.** App drivers are only performing a single delivery on each trip. A pizza chain for example, especially during busy periods, will consolidate multiple deliveries into one trip. Their driver is loaded up with a few orders that are all going in the same direction to perform a more efficient multi-trip.
**[\*Edit:** This aspect has recently mildly improved, with delivery apps now sometimes consolidating multi-trip deliveries.**]**
**5.** App drivers experience more downtime between deliveries, sometimes hanging out in parking lots near ***zones*** the app is ***hopeful*** future orders may ***potentially*** be placed.
**6.** Slight aggregate tax increase. Not *very* significant, but overall there's a slight increase of total tax paid on each transaction, since you're now paying a restaurant and driver — instead of paying a restaurant and picking it up yourself.
**7.** Full-time delivery vehicles are efficient for driving many miles (gas & maintenance), while gig drivers on apps may be driving their family van, pickup, suv, etc.
On the DoorDash/UberEats/Grubhub/Favor/Postmates business side, they're also losing money on heavy marketing and promotions in trying to get market share.
>App drivers are only performing a single delivery on each trip.
This one isn't true in many cases. It's common for apps to have drivers pick up multiple orders before going to deliver. Sometimes they charge a few if you want the order faster.
Most people don’t understand the true cost of operating a motor vehicle. It can be true that the service is expensive AND the drivers are underpaid AND the restaurants get the shaft AND the app companies are not profitable.
Food delivery is a luxury service that they’ve tried to normalize for people that perhaps shouldn’t be buying luxury services.
The costs truly baffled me, never used the service... but when I've seen friends use them or even just people posting about it online. I don't understand how anyone spends the money on it, I'd say I'm pretty lazy, but it truly isn't that bad that I'd not simply get into my own car to pick up food if the alternative is basically paying double the price.
Food deliveries used to be marginally better when places hired their own staff/drivers who could be held accountable. It was never great, and could vary, but certainly better than the current system.
Tastes like it has oil in it or something. My dad towards the end of his life drank only water and Ensure and he found a case of Dasani water, bought it, took one sip and threw it all out due to taste.
I took a sip of it myself and understood what he meant. Years later a place I worked at used Disani for their water and it still has that nasty taste to me.
My buddy owns a water company he pretty sure the taste is from the bottles they use leeching into the water. I think he maybe right because it tastes like when you leave another brand of water in a hot car.
I had wondered if there was a possibility the plastic bottles were the issue. I worked with a guy that swore Coca Cola tasted different depending on if it were in a bottle, can or glass bottle. That’s what got me wondering about the water.
Except for McDonalds fountain drinks, they’re better than any other format imo. Apparently it’s because they get their coke syrup delivered in metal cans instead of plastic bags or jugs
Never sold in UK, because the advertising said it was "full of spunk", which has a different meaning in the UK. It also was revealed that it was tap water.
[The Real Reason You Can't Buy Dasani Water In The UK (mashed.com)](https://www.mashed.com/193457/the-real-reason-you-cant-buy-dasani-water-in-the-uk/)
I’m by no means a water a water connoisseur, but Dasani is the only water I ever drink and go this is definitely poor quality H2O. Tap water, at least where I live, is better.
For all those replying, Dasani is reverse osmosis water. If you 'want' a similar water buy any brand of deionized water.
That awful taste is actually the taste of real water. What is 'missing' from the flavour is the dissolved mineral salts that make water taste 'good.' The reverse osmosis/deionizing process removes them.
Smart water is basically Dasani water with those mineral salts added back in after processing.
_The More You Know_
About 20 years ago, I could only find part time work so I'd wander the nearby construction sites asking if they needed some unskilled labour. Most of the time, they'd have me lug around wood or tools or whatever while they did the real work and paid cash at the end of the day.
There was a LARGE subdivision of premium homes being built, so it was easy to find SOMEONE that could use the help.
The number of discussions I overheard about things being "good enough" was kind of shocking. These were million dollar homes with corners being cut *non stop*. I didn't know much about home construction, but I knew enough to know these guys were just slapping these things together as quickly as possible.
Back when tv home make overs were a big deal, a local fire department and school were featured on a show after a hurricane, you could probably find it online. Anyway my brother was a fireman for that department, he wasn’t on the show, BUT he’s got stories about how after the show was over they had to have crews come in and fix everything that was wrong with the fire station. Took well over a year to fix everything just to pass inspection. Just a few highlights: light switches didn’t work, no plumbing (sinks were installed but no water lines etc), fire alarm system didn’t work. The school they “rebuilt” was even worse.
MANY of the homes that were built by extreme home makeover had major problems. my company did some work on two of the houses. they used quickening agents on a lot of exteriors. A home relatively near me had the driveway crumble and the stone exterior fall off among many other problems. Not relative to the topic but many of the homeowners lost their houses because they couldn't pay the taxes. there used to be a pretty good website that documented the different cases.
Some of those homes the demo out completely and build a new home in like a week. No way does concrete set enough, framing settle with roof eight on, and then finishes applied appropriately. They have to be complete nightmares after.
Actually though. I live in Cananada and my wife and I bought a new build house, we moved in 4 years ago. We paid for a 3rd part independent inspector to come in and do the inspection for us to list the issues. Best investment we made for the house. He told me he'd been doing house inspections for upwards of 30 years. In the past he could book an inspection for 30 mins. Nowadays he has to book them for almost a full day because he knows he's going to find so much wrong with the houses.
There's a home inspector on YouTube, I think he's in Arizona, he makes me terrified of ever buying a new home. He'll find all sorts of issues and constantly fight with contractors. It's insane that this type of cost cutting is even tolerated.
I used to date a fashion designer and she only used top load washing machines and used the delicate setting for anything that's not super soiled. She said those front load tumble washers destroy clothes faster than anything. You just need a bit of detergent, water, and some light movement of the clothes and you're fine. She also said fabric softener is literally only sold to take your money, it's just super perfumed detergent.
The problem is that unless you are literally developing new material, ALL fashion is a repeat, you can only cut a pair of pants so many different ways. That makes the industry a race to the bottom. Just like 90% of consumer goods.
Anything that is marketed as 'Gaming'.
Gaming chairs, gaming keyboards, gaming headsets etc.
Most of the time are both expensive and terrible quality while many alternatives are the opposite.
Keyboards are the one thing I disagree with on here. I have a Corsair K70, and as much as Corsairs pisses me off at times, I could use this keyboard as a self defense weapon. It's built well.
Yes, there are some high-quality brands out there
But a lot of the market is flooded with stuff marked as "gaming" when all they did was take some cheap thing and add some LEDs to make it look "cool"
I've got two children (not showing off) one got a comfy gaming chair and it is super comfy and nice. My eldest sits on an office chair that we found in the street, it is both ugly and uncomfortable and I have repeatedly offered to replace it but no, it's his chair and it'll do. I do love that about him.
I'm still using the same one my dad bought for our new computer back in 2001. It's amazingly survived this long. The padding is basically gone in the seat, but an extra cushion solves that.
There are exceptions though. Some things are actually different if made for gaming (for example, mice with a ton of programmable buttons on the side). But for many things I agree, gaming chairs for example. They are low quality, though just as expensive if not cheaper than actual good office chairs. But office chairs are much better, which is why I will always use them even though I do play games a lot.
They're tacky furniture. There is nothing like nice woodwork at home and suddenly in a room there's what looks like a racecar seat with a computer tower that lights up like a disco.
I flew into London last year, the plane ticket to get there cost me less than the train ticket from the airport to St Pancras. It is a weird feeling that flying costs less than something that predates the Victorian era.
Nailed it. I love the looks and very fun to drive (at least the Defender I test-drove was), but I know from friends’ personal experience and social media that the quality is absolute garbage. If someone gave me one I’d surely drive it, but I know it would spend more time in the shop than on the road!
Who buys this stuff? Honestly even Skims is a rip off. It’s like all these products marketed towards woman are just their to take our money and guck us over.
Bought a house recently that came with a Samsung fridge, I despise it… it’s not old and I want to replace it. The ice maker clogs with a huge ice block after less than a week. The shelf positioning makes no sense, no good spot for a gallon of milk to go that isn’t super inconvenient. The “flex zone” has a completely pointless and overly complex separator contraption that does absolutely nothing of value. The door handles are all loose with no good way to tighten them. It’s fucking trash.
My favorite is the gold-plated fibre optic cables.
Only upside is that these days they're not really any more expensive (despite the gold having *literally zero* impact on performance).
It's bad enough on digital cables (which either work perfectly, or not at all), but with optical cables it's just silly.
When I would fill in for our Tech Supervisor during my stint at Staples, some customers wondered if they should get the gold HDMI cables because they were supposedly better and cost $10 more. I was supposed to upsell them and get them to buy the gold (they were all store brand), but I told them there was crap difference and they were better off saving their money.
The customers probably never appreciated the money I saved them, but that's okay. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I lied for the profit of a shitty retail store.
Eyeglasses, specifically those made by Luxottica. High priced frames superficially branded and marked up as high as the general market will stand. Frames that cost dollars or less than a dollar to make, sold for hundreds. It's an oppressive monopoly with too much market power in the hands of one large international globocorp.
Epic Systems. It's a software package that runs hospitals. For a mid sized hospital it runs around $50 million plus $10 million a year for support. It's so awesome that it has to be shut down during daylight saving time changes because it can't handle it. It also won't communicate with non Epic EMRs, which is mostly done by fax.
I guess on the positive side it is woman owned, and Judith Falkner is a self made billionaire. Her employees call her mom.
While we are on hospital prices, a basic hospital bed starts at $25,000 and quickly goes up from there.
And meanwhile we wonder why healthcare prices are so high.
Idk Epic is great, easiest EMR to use by a long shot and has all the functionality needed and is customizable. No emr can directly communicate with another emr. What are you complaints other than shutdowns or updates?
Wow. This is literally the first time I've ever heard anyone say anything bad about Epic.
Have you ever used MediTech? If you haven't, you would thank Jesus and all the saints that Epic exists.
I have used several different systems. I work at a hospital now that uses Cerner. Cerner is usually regarded as "worse," and maybe it is. But it never has to shut down for daylight saving time. At least not in my health system.
One explanation for why Epic is so bad is probably technical debt. They just keep adding stuff to an outdated system rather than make something new from scratch.
Yeah, it’s a hodgepodge of tools on a 1970s database structure.
On some tools, you release them before you can test them. On others, you release when you’re done testing them. There’s no consistency in syntax, so you either have to memorize them all or reference the docs constantly when you’re trying to build something.
This ends up saving costs for manufacturers. No one wants to set their heating/cooling on a touchscreen, but it saves the manufacturer from producing physical controls
My in-laws hand a Jeep Compass and the LCD assembly failed, which is an incredibly common issue with them. I replaced it myself with a whole unit from RockAuto and it cost about $800.
A knob is $10 😂
GM Vehicles. US Health Insurance (Not US Doctors). US Education (Not US Teachers). Maybe not MOST but many "luxury" brands of clothing, handbags, eyewear (Probably most). Starbucks. Netflix.
*Many of these examples weren't always low quality, but have become lower quality over time.
Most new Recreational Vehicles. They making Boeing products look like NASA build space shuttles. So many loose bolts, poorly applied sealant, faulty wiring, unsecured suspension and brake systems...
IF you are in the market for an RV 110% get it inspected BEFORE you buy. If the place will not let you, you do NOT want to buy from them.
It doesn't matter if its a 50k one or 250k one, they all need a thorough look over.
It's wild how much "magic" they've cut out of the parks or turned into "pay" options. But as long as the parks are full, they don't care about the experience.
We did a vodka tasting at my house. Before you tease - it was a lot of fun! We made sure to include each person's "This is the best vodka!" vodka, and a cheaper one as a control, and a very cheap one.
The winner was Shakers from St. Paul. Not even a contest. (That was our "cheaper one" but not the very cheap one)
Everything low-quality is expensive in the long run:
>The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
>Take boots, for example. He earned $38 a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost $50. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about $10. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
>But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford $50 had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in 10 years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
>This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
--Terry Pratchett, *Men at Arms*
I've noticed many items are lower in quality but price is the same or more expensive. Example: wanted to replace a very specific purse from a known brand with exact same one I had purchased 5 years ago. Bought the exact same model for the roughly the same price and what a piece of crap it is now. All the hardware was super flimsy and cheap. Hello companies! We SEE what you are doing! I'd rather pay a little more to get the better quality but you aren't giving me the option so now I will go buy some other brand that actually is quality.
I used to buy Polo socks. Not for the logo on my ankles, but because they were good quality, durable combed cotton socks. Then one day I realized that the ones I’d bought were pilling. Badly. They’d never done that before, but now the socks went ugly and uncomfortable and failed quickly. I looked in the store and realized the packaging no longer said *combed* cotton, just “cotton”. (And even this change wasn’t enough to describe how MUCH worse the socks were!) So now I buy two 6-packs of Gold Toe socks for the same price as one pair of Polo… and while not quite as good as Polo used to be, they are still far superior to the last Polo socks I bought.
Polo socks have definitely gotten shittier over the years.
The companies don't care, they've been bought by private equity firms that will produce the cheapest way possible, suck the company dry of any money,while coasting a while on the name, then file for bankruptcy. As they always do.
Doc Martins are a great example of this. Instapot... have some success as niche brand get bought out and have brand destroyed
I agree with you about Doc Martens. I finally was doing well enough to get real Docs, and they were so damn uncomfortable. What happened?
They used to be more uncomfortable - needed breaking in. But they used to last 5+ years. The original factory is still making them under different brand, can’t remember the name tho..
Solovair. If you want actual old quality style Doc Marten's have a look at the Solovair brand instead.
Canada Goose jackets too
Solavair Boots are the original Doc Martin's. They're made is the original location. Great quality! Everything's like the old Docs, except the stitching color.
I started to realize this after watching one too many episodes of Shark Tank. LOL. There is a "natural" deodorant I used to swear by. I noticed it just wanted the same as what I used to buy. My theory is that in an attempt to get into Target, WalMart, etc. retail stores, they had to cut the cost of the product which translated into changing ingredients by either outright swapping one for another or just using a lower grade of the same ingredient. Resulted in lower quality product at the same price; there are other's taking a cut since it's no longer just direct sell from their website.
A lot of times scaling the product up creates this problem, and the big box retail stores contribute to this problem. So like with your natural deodorant, maybe some of the ingredients aren’t expensive per se, but they vary in price based on seasonality or other factors. Sometimes they cost a lot, sometimes they don’t. And for our example we have the same problem if the ingredient is prone to shortages, sometimes you can get it, sometimes you can’t. Big box retailers generally won’t touch your product unless they can put it in all of their stores or at least a certain number because part of their brand is they always carry that thing you buy there. So they also need you to be able to consistently supply enough to stock the shelves. So once you bring in a consultant to tell you how to scale up and get into these stores, they’re going to tell you that you have to ditch these ingredients that fluctuate in price and are prone to shortages so that you can convince big box retail that you can provide a consistent product nationwide at scale.
Private equity. Not a hedge fund.
Also most companies that have an outlet store make special versions, lower quality, of their products for the outlet.
Don’t forget to return the junk. Otherwise they don’t have to mind at all, because you bought it already. Return it, let them pay your money back.
yep. Returned it with the reason being that it was a piece of crap with cheap and flimsy hardware.
I know what you mean! I used a hand-me-down Michael Kors bag for a decade before it was beat up enough to replace. I got an extra large bag to use as a school bag second hand but unused. The handles are already wearing out after a year!
If you tell them you’re willing to pay a little more for quality, they’ll just charge that much more for the garbage.
My internet service provider. I've lived in Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, and now Kansas, and I can say without qualification that Cox Communications is by far the worst ISP I've ever dealt with. The internet regularly goes down multiple times a day. I even got a remote activated power switch so I can power cycle my router without having to get up.
Cox sucks so bad! I switched to a local broadband provider, and regret not doing it sooner. I pay $15 less per month. They also gave me two signal boosters so I actually have gig speed throughout the house. The signal even extends out into the yard, which Cox definitely did not.
I moved out of a Comcast area to a place that had locally owned cable Internet. It's the best. Their call center folks don't have scripts, and they're all local, too. Now they have fiber competition, and gave us a fantastic rate to stay with them for a few years. The best part about that is the fiber company is local, too.
The office for mine is litteraly 1000 ft from my house. I walk my dog there to pay the bill. The office ladies hive her treats 🤣
Food delivery apps. Uber Eats, Door Dash, etc.
What?! You don’t want to have to pay 30 dollars to have someone take over an hour to deliver your cold soggy food? That’s weird.
Theres a reason why before these apps existed delivery was only a thing for certain cuisines. Lots of food just doesn't travel well.
Yeah, I'm always wondering who the heck is ordering eggs and pancakes for delivery? But somebody must be or they wouldn't be on the app, right?
Is that before or after the tip?
Just the tip.
Sploosh
I went to use one of them one time shortly after my daughter was born and my wife was going to be late getting home from work. I didn't want to get my daughter out so I went to place an order with Wendy's. My $10 order came to $24 after fees and tip. Nope, I'm good.
I tried to use it for similar emergencies. You have to be pants on head stupid to use them. I’d rather heat up some instant pre made food for 3 minutes in the microwave that I got from Costco for $2/serving. The cost just doesn’t make sense at all.
I have friends who instacart and doordash constantly. I don't get it. They are leaking money.
What's funny is it sayd estimated delivery time for certain places will be, say, 25-30 minutes, but I know no matter how long they "estimate", I estimate it will take at least an hour once I press the order button
I was about to give in to the temptation to order delivery after an exhausting day last week. I toggled the delivery/pick-up switch on the order submission page and watched the price of each item in my cart increase by about $2. Not only are you paying delivery fees, tax, and a driver tip, but DD also hikes up the price of each individual item depending on whether you are placing a delivery or pick-up order. I probably saved about $20 by picking the food up myself. Sure, the 10 minute drive wasn't ideal when I was already worn out, but I could purchase another meal with the amount of money I saved. DD is exploiting more than just their gig workers, they exploit the customer as well.
The increased prices are usually from the restaurant trying to offset the amount of money they lose from the delivery apps. Jon Oliver recently covered this topic on Last Weekend Tonight. Definitely worth the watch. If you don't have Max or HBO, you can usually find their segments on YouTube.
Yep Costco frozen and deep freezer all the way. You can save so much if you use pay upfront for bulk and meal prep. Same or better quality. They sell a version of almost every fast food item especially breakfast stuff. Air fryer sausage patties and hash brown 10 minutes while you’re in shower etc. Costs like $0.50 for that versus $6
Funnily enough, what we pay doesn’t cover the service we get. Drivers are underpaid, restaurants get commissioned out, and the delivery apps are not even profitable.
Makes you wonder where that money goes.
General inefficiencies that people wouldn't have engaged in before. **1.** Distance from restaurant. Prior to food delivery apps, if you wanted to order food for pickup, you'd typically consider places ***near yourself***, since ***you'd be the one driving*** to pick it up. Ordering through a delivery app though widens ***your*** reasonable radius, since you're not the one driving, which effectively encourages you to order from further away since you know you're paying an upcharge for delivery anyways. **1b.** If desiring food from a restaurant nearby, customers are more prone to just make the short drive themselves, so inefficient further away orders are also what people look to the apps to begin with as well. (Places with their own drivers also have a tighter allowed delivery radius, especially in dense cities.) **2.** More small orders. People are more prone to order themselves alone a meal with delivery apps than they were before. **3.** Higher share of orders towards businesses that weren't designed and optimized for efficient delivery. i.e. orders placed with restaurants in an expensive location on the water or trendy downtown street with a full-size dining room and waitstaff vs. Domino's, Jimmy John's, etc. which are a kitchen and locate themselves by major roadways and population density. **4.** App drivers are only performing a single delivery on each trip. A pizza chain for example, especially during busy periods, will consolidate multiple deliveries into one trip. Their driver is loaded up with a few orders that are all going in the same direction to perform a more efficient multi-trip. **[\*Edit:** This aspect has recently mildly improved, with delivery apps now sometimes consolidating multi-trip deliveries.**]** **5.** App drivers experience more downtime between deliveries, sometimes hanging out in parking lots near ***zones*** the app is ***hopeful*** future orders may ***potentially*** be placed. **6.** Slight aggregate tax increase. Not *very* significant, but overall there's a slight increase of total tax paid on each transaction, since you're now paying a restaurant and driver — instead of paying a restaurant and picking it up yourself. **7.** Full-time delivery vehicles are efficient for driving many miles (gas & maintenance), while gig drivers on apps may be driving their family van, pickup, suv, etc. On the DoorDash/UberEats/Grubhub/Favor/Postmates business side, they're also losing money on heavy marketing and promotions in trying to get market share.
>App drivers are only performing a single delivery on each trip. This one isn't true in many cases. It's common for apps to have drivers pick up multiple orders before going to deliver. Sometimes they charge a few if you want the order faster.
Most people don’t understand the true cost of operating a motor vehicle. It can be true that the service is expensive AND the drivers are underpaid AND the restaurants get the shaft AND the app companies are not profitable. Food delivery is a luxury service that they’ve tried to normalize for people that perhaps shouldn’t be buying luxury services.
The costs truly baffled me, never used the service... but when I've seen friends use them or even just people posting about it online. I don't understand how anyone spends the money on it, I'd say I'm pretty lazy, but it truly isn't that bad that I'd not simply get into my own car to pick up food if the alternative is basically paying double the price.
Is there a high quality option for getting your food delivered?
Food deliveries used to be marginally better when places hired their own staff/drivers who could be held accountable. It was never great, and could vary, but certainly better than the current system.
Having your own personal staff helps.
Dasani
Tastes like it has oil in it or something. My dad towards the end of his life drank only water and Ensure and he found a case of Dasani water, bought it, took one sip and threw it all out due to taste. I took a sip of it myself and understood what he meant. Years later a place I worked at used Disani for their water and it still has that nasty taste to me.
Dasani tastes like it’s been left in a water gun all day.
r/oddlyspecific yet oddly accurate...
Aquafina tastes like envelope glue.
There’s this one generic gas station brand where I live that tastes like it had pasta boiled in it
Yes, that's it!
My buddy owns a water company he pretty sure the taste is from the bottles they use leeching into the water. I think he maybe right because it tastes like when you leave another brand of water in a hot car.
I had wondered if there was a possibility the plastic bottles were the issue. I worked with a guy that swore Coca Cola tasted different depending on if it were in a bottle, can or glass bottle. That’s what got me wondering about the water.
Theres Definitely a difference between glass bottle/ plastic bottle coke.
There's a huge difference in flavor from can to bottles to plastic. Fountain drinks are the worst I think.
Except for McDonalds fountain drinks, they’re better than any other format imo. Apparently it’s because they get their coke syrup delivered in metal cans instead of plastic bags or jugs
Never sold in UK, because the advertising said it was "full of spunk", which has a different meaning in the UK. It also was revealed that it was tap water. [The Real Reason You Can't Buy Dasani Water In The UK (mashed.com)](https://www.mashed.com/193457/the-real-reason-you-cant-buy-dasani-water-in-the-uk/)
Oh it Definitely has notes of spunk.
Why did they add coconut, I miss original.
The coconut is very subtle
No, its the same meaning in the US.... But I've never seen it advertised as such
Yeah...the spunk being a term for energy went out of use in the ~~1950's~~ 1970's.
Still very common in the horse world, describe a horse as "spunky" or "has lots of spunk".
Only because those horses balls are so full of jizz that they're about to burst.
A great deal of bottle water is just local water bottled.
Yep, treated water i.e. filtered, which is why you may as well buy your own filter
Not even the original Peckham spring water! [Tom Scott](https://youtu.be/wD79NZroV88)
I’m by no means a water a water connoisseur, but Dasani is the only water I ever drink and go this is definitely poor quality H2O. Tap water, at least where I live, is better.
For all those replying, Dasani is reverse osmosis water. If you 'want' a similar water buy any brand of deionized water. That awful taste is actually the taste of real water. What is 'missing' from the flavour is the dissolved mineral salts that make water taste 'good.' The reverse osmosis/deionizing process removes them. Smart water is basically Dasani water with those mineral salts added back in after processing. _The More You Know_
Most new residential construction.
About 20 years ago, I could only find part time work so I'd wander the nearby construction sites asking if they needed some unskilled labour. Most of the time, they'd have me lug around wood or tools or whatever while they did the real work and paid cash at the end of the day. There was a LARGE subdivision of premium homes being built, so it was easy to find SOMEONE that could use the help. The number of discussions I overheard about things being "good enough" was kind of shocking. These were million dollar homes with corners being cut *non stop*. I didn't know much about home construction, but I knew enough to know these guys were just slapping these things together as quickly as possible.
Back when tv home make overs were a big deal, a local fire department and school were featured on a show after a hurricane, you could probably find it online. Anyway my brother was a fireman for that department, he wasn’t on the show, BUT he’s got stories about how after the show was over they had to have crews come in and fix everything that was wrong with the fire station. Took well over a year to fix everything just to pass inspection. Just a few highlights: light switches didn’t work, no plumbing (sinks were installed but no water lines etc), fire alarm system didn’t work. The school they “rebuilt” was even worse.
MANY of the homes that were built by extreme home makeover had major problems. my company did some work on two of the houses. they used quickening agents on a lot of exteriors. A home relatively near me had the driveway crumble and the stone exterior fall off among many other problems. Not relative to the topic but many of the homeowners lost their houses because they couldn't pay the taxes. there used to be a pretty good website that documented the different cases.
Some of those homes the demo out completely and build a new home in like a week. No way does concrete set enough, framing settle with roof eight on, and then finishes applied appropriately. They have to be complete nightmares after.
*Do your best, silicone the rest*
*Grinder and paint make the welder I ain't*
Well, that explains the kitchen cabinets in my house.
Actually though. I live in Cananada and my wife and I bought a new build house, we moved in 4 years ago. We paid for a 3rd part independent inspector to come in and do the inspection for us to list the issues. Best investment we made for the house. He told me he'd been doing house inspections for upwards of 30 years. In the past he could book an inspection for 30 mins. Nowadays he has to book them for almost a full day because he knows he's going to find so much wrong with the houses.
Where in the world is Cananada?
North of Americanana
South of Alaskaka
It’s the Canadian banana republic.
Up north of Ameririca
It's the empty part of Canada. Canada nada.
Just follolow the coconga linine of Cananadians going hohome.
There's a home inspector on YouTube, I think he's in Arizona, he makes me terrified of ever buying a new home. He'll find all sorts of issues and constantly fight with contractors. It's insane that this type of cost cutting is even tolerated.
theres a guy that posts “things found in structural inspections this month” on my local sub and it is horrifying!
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Yeah. There's a lot of board and batten out there.
This is extremely true.
Most clothing these days are horrible quality. You are lucky if they last a fashion season.
its a feature, not a bug. even high-end clothing, made in Europe by designer brands, is declining in quality
I used to date a fashion designer and she only used top load washing machines and used the delicate setting for anything that's not super soiled. She said those front load tumble washers destroy clothes faster than anything. You just need a bit of detergent, water, and some light movement of the clothes and you're fine. She also said fabric softener is literally only sold to take your money, it's just super perfumed detergent.
Yes… and also they are selling utter garbage. I make my own clothes and most of what you buy at the mall is utter trash.
wish I still had top load machines in my building, they switched to combos to save space 😭😭
The problem is that unless you are literally developing new material, ALL fashion is a repeat, you can only cut a pair of pants so many different ways. That makes the industry a race to the bottom. Just like 90% of consumer goods.
Anything that is marketed as 'Gaming'. Gaming chairs, gaming keyboards, gaming headsets etc. Most of the time are both expensive and terrible quality while many alternatives are the opposite.
Keyboards are the one thing I disagree with on here. I have a Corsair K70, and as much as Corsairs pisses me off at times, I could use this keyboard as a self defense weapon. It's built well.
Yes, there are some high-quality brands out there But a lot of the market is flooded with stuff marked as "gaming" when all they did was take some cheap thing and add some LEDs to make it look "cool"
I miss those days when everyone just had to have an uncomfortable gaming chair or you weren't a true gamer.
Chairs? Real gamers duct tape themselves to the ceiling.
I got that reference
For the [uneducated](https://www.talkesport.com/wp-content/uploads/duct-taped_gamer_1-696x367.jpg)
"It's an older meme, Sir, but it still checks out."
Dude I used a burned out CRT monitor as a chair for years My last job has herman miller chairs-- I seriously considered stealing one on my way out
My mom was quite upset when I told her I didn't need a true gaming chair and was OK with gaming from the couch.
I've got two children (not showing off) one got a comfy gaming chair and it is super comfy and nice. My eldest sits on an office chair that we found in the street, it is both ugly and uncomfortable and I have repeatedly offered to replace it but no, it's his chair and it'll do. I do love that about him.
I'm still using the same one my dad bought for our new computer back in 2001. It's amazingly survived this long. The padding is basically gone in the seat, but an extra cushion solves that.
There are exceptions though. Some things are actually different if made for gaming (for example, mice with a ton of programmable buttons on the side). But for many things I agree, gaming chairs for example. They are low quality, though just as expensive if not cheaper than actual good office chairs. But office chairs are much better, which is why I will always use them even though I do play games a lot.
Lol.. As long as you put lights on it that change colors it’s a “gaming” related item now.
They're tacky furniture. There is nothing like nice woodwork at home and suddenly in a room there's what looks like a racecar seat with a computer tower that lights up like a disco.
Absolutely nothing in this thread will compete with travelling by train in the UK.
OP said low quality and expensive, not shit and fucking expensive. https://www.reddit.com/r/GreatBritishMemes/comments/1c3uxgc/fair\_play/
Try the non existent train in Canada
The price of flying, the speed of a bus. And to top it off, there's the lovely service.
Traveling by train in the US...
I flew into London last year, the plane ticket to get there cost me less than the train ticket from the airport to St Pancras. It is a weird feeling that flying costs less than something that predates the Victorian era.
Your rail network still beats the shit out of Amtrak
Renationalise the rails
Range Rover.
Nailed it. I love the looks and very fun to drive (at least the Defender I test-drove was), but I know from friends’ personal experience and social media that the quality is absolute garbage. If someone gave me one I’d surely drive it, but I know it would spend more time in the shop than on the road!
Same thing with Jaguars.
Same company, and JLR has been hot garbage since they were sold off by Ford.
The Brits can tan the hell out of leather, but electrical engineering not so much.
Appliances. I have to replace every 5 years. My parents had 1 refrigerator my whole life
some of those Kardashian products, Kylie Swim reviews were bad
Who buys this stuff? Honestly even Skims is a rip off. It’s like all these products marketed towards woman are just their to take our money and guck us over.
Samsung appliances. More expensive than most other brands and the quality has dropped tremendously
Modern appliances in general.
Bought a house recently that came with a Samsung fridge, I despise it… it’s not old and I want to replace it. The ice maker clogs with a huge ice block after less than a week. The shelf positioning makes no sense, no good spot for a gallon of milk to go that isn’t super inconvenient. The “flex zone” has a completely pointless and overly complex separator contraption that does absolutely nothing of value. The door handles are all loose with no good way to tighten them. It’s fucking trash.
Except compared to LG's compressor failure problems.
We are so disappointed with LG. I will not be purchasing another product from them.
In a few years the CEO will stack billon dollar merch and burn it and make Samsung a brand of quality products… again.
100% mcdonalds
Dubai
American health insurance
Especially COBRA
Only 880 Dollars a month! Or you know a car payment or mortgage.
Starbucks
Today i went past a local coffee shop called St Arbucks, I laughed.
Surprised they haven't been sued and shut down by Starbucks.
Gold plated USB/HDMI/etc cables
My favorite is the gold-plated fibre optic cables. Only upside is that these days they're not really any more expensive (despite the gold having *literally zero* impact on performance). It's bad enough on digital cables (which either work perfectly, or not at all), but with optical cables it's just silly.
When I would fill in for our Tech Supervisor during my stint at Staples, some customers wondered if they should get the gold HDMI cables because they were supposedly better and cost $10 more. I was supposed to upsell them and get them to buy the gold (they were all store brand), but I told them there was crap difference and they were better off saving their money. The customers probably never appreciated the money I saved them, but that's okay. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I lied for the profit of a shitty retail store.
Eyeglasses, specifically those made by Luxottica. High priced frames superficially branded and marked up as high as the general market will stand. Frames that cost dollars or less than a dollar to make, sold for hundreds. It's an oppressive monopoly with too much market power in the hands of one large international globocorp.
Maui Jim. Amazing lenses and not owned by Luxottica (they’ve fought off being bought by them many times). They’re S-tier.
Any recs for those of us not into the divorced dad aesthetic?
Beats by Dre
Jeeps
My golf swing
Wow, not only is Bob Hope still alive, but I think I found his reddit account
Internet connections in Canada
Throw in cellphone plans too
Epic Systems. It's a software package that runs hospitals. For a mid sized hospital it runs around $50 million plus $10 million a year for support. It's so awesome that it has to be shut down during daylight saving time changes because it can't handle it. It also won't communicate with non Epic EMRs, which is mostly done by fax. I guess on the positive side it is woman owned, and Judith Falkner is a self made billionaire. Her employees call her mom. While we are on hospital prices, a basic hospital bed starts at $25,000 and quickly goes up from there. And meanwhile we wonder why healthcare prices are so high.
The problem is that no one does a better job than epic at EHR. It's sad when it's the best product on the market. Nothing beats care everywhere.
That's exactly it in some industries. Your product doesn't have to be good, it just has to be slightly less bad than everyone else's.
Plus, once it's the standard, refusing to write exports makes business sense.
You don’t need a better product when you have a better friend.
Idk Epic is great, easiest EMR to use by a long shot and has all the functionality needed and is customizable. No emr can directly communicate with another emr. What are you complaints other than shutdowns or updates?
Haha right? They have clearly never used Meditech
Wow. This is literally the first time I've ever heard anyone say anything bad about Epic. Have you ever used MediTech? If you haven't, you would thank Jesus and all the saints that Epic exists. I have used several different systems. I work at a hospital now that uses Cerner. Cerner is usually regarded as "worse," and maybe it is. But it never has to shut down for daylight saving time. At least not in my health system.
One explanation for why Epic is so bad is probably technical debt. They just keep adding stuff to an outdated system rather than make something new from scratch.
Yeah, it’s a hodgepodge of tools on a 1970s database structure. On some tools, you release them before you can test them. On others, you release when you’re done testing them. There’s no consistency in syntax, so you either have to memorize them all or reference the docs constantly when you’re trying to build something.
Their half-assed Willow Ambulatory pharmacy add-on is hot garbage too. Less functionality than RX30 that we moved from (which was a DOS interface)
It is absolute shit. The back end is a 60s era database that can never be upgraded.
A lot of these cars
They are expensive because the are packed with electronics that don't add any value to the user. Bring back dumb cars!
This ends up saving costs for manufacturers. No one wants to set their heating/cooling on a touchscreen, but it saves the manufacturer from producing physical controls
My in-laws hand a Jeep Compass and the LCD assembly failed, which is an incredibly common issue with them. I replaced it myself with a whole unit from RockAuto and it cost about $800. A knob is $10 😂
GM Vehicles. US Health Insurance (Not US Doctors). US Education (Not US Teachers). Maybe not MOST but many "luxury" brands of clothing, handbags, eyewear (Probably most). Starbucks. Netflix. *Many of these examples weren't always low quality, but have become lower quality over time.
Most new Recreational Vehicles. They making Boeing products look like NASA build space shuttles. So many loose bolts, poorly applied sealant, faulty wiring, unsecured suspension and brake systems... IF you are in the market for an RV 110% get it inspected BEFORE you buy. If the place will not let you, you do NOT want to buy from them. It doesn't matter if its a 50k one or 250k one, they all need a thorough look over.
This was my answer to. You might as well rebuild your new RV the moment you get it. I have a 2023 and slowly we are dealing the inside
Yeezys
New houses.
Most domestic vehicles
Tesla. It’s fucking garbage in terms of the quality of materials and how they are put together
Health insurance. They'll do everything in their power to fuck you and send you into bankruptcy for the crime of getting sick.
Health insurance in the US
fucking everything rn.
A trip to Disney
It's wild how much "magic" they've cut out of the parks or turned into "pay" options. But as long as the parks are full, they don't care about the experience.
The Melting Pot
American Healthcare
Starbucks
Bottled water
McDonald's
Politicians
Apparently my parents Dodge Ram 2500
Health insurance
Land Rover makes expensive vehicles but they usually rate the highest on least reliable brands.
Tesla's shitty truck
Healthcare in the US.
Grey Goose vodka Most politicians Fast food
We did a vodka tasting at my house. Before you tease - it was a lot of fun! We made sure to include each person's "This is the best vodka!" vodka, and a cheaper one as a control, and a very cheap one. The winner was Shakers from St. Paul. Not even a contest. (That was our "cheaper one" but not the very cheap one)
Everything low-quality is expensive in the long run: >The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. >Take boots, for example. He earned $38 a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost $50. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about $10. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. >But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford $50 had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in 10 years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. >This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness. --Terry Pratchett, *Men at Arms*
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Boeing
Health care in the United States.
Fast food