Good Quality But Expensive Or Poor Quality But Dirt-Cheap? A Story About How You Get What You Pay For

This last summer I had just bought a pair of gorgeous new high-heeled boots. They cost $73 brand-new. While that definitely is pricy by all means, I still thought of that as a bargain buy, since these kinds of boots often range in the $110-180 price spectrum. So happily, I bought these boots and took them home.

A week or so later I was going out to a party. I put on my brand new sexy boots, walked out the door and down the street to catch the bus.

It wasn’t more than a few minutes of walking when suddenly one of the heels of my gorgeous new boots had fallen off(!) I was mortified. With broken heel in one hand and bruised pride in the other I had to wobble all the way back home to my apartment again to change my boots. I entered my apartment door, quickly changed my boots, swore a little (maybe, a lot), and made a mental note of taking the boots to the repair on Monday. I couldn’t return them because I bought them at a market, so the vendors where long gone by now. Maybe that should have been a warning sign to me to begin with, not to buy boots at a market. But I’m frugal, so I’ll do anything to save a buck or two. So off I went to get my boots repaired on Monday after work. The cost of this, you ask? It totalled at $27.

Ok, so there I was, newly repaired shoes and all. Happy as pie. So I had plans to go out again the next weekend…

So the next weekend I got ready to go out. I put on my new boots and walked out the door. And sure enough a few minutes down the road – my other heel broke. Yet again I had to wobble home down the busy street, cursing and swearing, back to my apartment. The following Monday (you know the drill…) I went to get my boots repaired again. This time I had a lengthy argument with the shoe repair man, because he wanted to charge me $27 for the other heel. I thought that he was ripping me off, so I argued tooth and nail to get a discount. But no go, unfortunately. His prices (meaning price pr. heel) were fixed.

So there I was forking out another $27 on top of the original $27 for the first heel and on top of the original $73 dollars that the boots cost originally.

So all in all I ended up paying $127 for my pair of boots.

Yes, you heard me, $127, I could have bought myself a good pair of quality boots to begin with and spared myself all of the hassle. In this case, I really did get what I paid for. Poor quality boots. At a cheap price, sure, but what good are they if they have no heels. So in order to get “fully functional” boots, I had to fork out the extra $54. So sometimes it really does pay to buy good quality. I know the 3 dvd-players (the latest one is on the fritz by the way, so it’ll probably be 4 very soon) that I’ve owned during the last 8 years  are a solid testament to that. Making electronics that don’t last more than 2 years is very normal nowadays, as long as it’s priced at a bargain, then we accept it. But I guess, if I had bought good quality from the get-go (both in terms of the dvd-players and the boots) then they would probably last me longer.

What’s your take on all of this? Better to buy good quality products but that are more expensive or buy poor quality products at a cheaper rate? I’d like to hear your thoughts on this, so do leave a comment in the comments section. I’m interested in hearing other people’s experience with this.

By the way, if you knew me in real life, you’d know that I’m a very frugal person and that these boots were in fact the only pair of shoes I’ve bought in the past 2 years. So maybe that’s why it angered me so much, when they broke (twice!) So normally I would say that buying cheap and compromising on quality is okay with me. But after that experience, it made me wonder. In fact I was so pissed of that I talked to my dad on the phone complaining to him about boots, hahaha, can you imagine. :) What dad’s have to go through with their daughters.

 

Photo credits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.