[Closed] Price, Cost and Value for Money....

Nah- convenience counts. It's just trying to work out how much your time is worth.

ill gladly pay extra not to play yodel roulette.

halfords price matching Rutland Cycles for Thule roof stuff is the answer - price and convenience!

I recently added a significant sum to a car purchase to avoid having to deal with Arnold Shark - it's about priorities innit.

just seems like price is the only judge of VFM these days

I spend my life trying to convince clients otherwise 😕

Know what you mean -- it's at what point you are prepared to pay for better service / support / quality; and/or extra time spent chasing those extra 50p of savings. No-one likes being ripped off but must be an 80:20 or 85:15 rule in operation somewhere.

It's at what point you call it a day; decide what you'll do and stick to that plan that is the issue.

A related example of this is that sometimes I get dragged in to helping out at a jumble sale organised by my MIL. She spends about 3 weeks driving around picking up jumble from all over town. About a dozen people help for five to six hours on the day and when its all finished and a dozen trips to the tip later to get rid of the 90% that is left it normally raises about a hundred quid. My suggestion that we all just donate a tenner to avoid all the hassle goes unaccepted every time.

well i went to evans cycles yesterday because it was handy from work, and get this they were the cheapest i could find 🙂

There is also the aspect of how quick you need something.

Accelerator cable on berlingo went on tuesday.

Could get one online fir 25 quid or 40 quid same day in town

Guess which won.

(Not my car)

I'd pay much more than £20 not to go to Coventry.

it normally raises about a hundred quid.

That's not too bad!

I worked at a place where somebody collected plastic milk bottle tops for charity.

I googled it and it turned out they were virtually worthless. £50 per tonne. The paper and ink used to make the numerous signs for each kitchen area probably would of cost more than any money she ever raised.

I recently added a significant sum to a car purchase to avoid having to deal with Arnold Shark

Money well spent, my friend. Money well spent.

I'd pay £20 to drive around the Coventry ring road, not at rush hour obvs.

Yeah I've come round to the fact that my time is worth more than a few quid. I'll also pay a couple of quid to avoid potential hassle with bad sellers etc.

We bought LittleMissMC a new bike this week. Whilst on holiday in Scotland. With no means of getting it home as the car is already full!

So we paid £12 to hire one for her to try out. On two separate days, to make sure. Plus £30 postage. For a bike I can get from an LBS at home.

All this decided by a wife who regularly queries the cost of me going through inner tubes!

Still, if both the ladies in my life are happy......

Still, if both the ladies in my life are happy......

A lot of the time, this is the value in a purchase. Or what makes you happy. Not price.

I stopped buying cheap tonic water a while ago, once I worked out that the cheapest g&t wasn't something I wanted to drink anymore.

I don't buy cheap power tools anymore for the same reason. They taste shit.

The internet is my saviour. I cannot bear shopping and the time it takes so a bit of online research and purchase and everyone's happy. Some enquiries this week led me to a very good copy of D'Terre Hermes aftershave (£85) for a fiver. I couldn't have done that driving somewhere and paying for parking and walking around shops surrounded by miserable people scolding their kids and blowing smoke in their faces.

In this case I think the internet can be the worst thing as you can spend hours on hunting down the best version of a product where in reality just about any version would do if it came from a shop that had already filtered out the garbage.

My exception to the convenience thing is diy as I quite like seeing if u can do something rather than always paying someone

'Buy cheap, buy twice' applies to many purchases.

All this decided by a wife who regularly queries the cost of me going through inner tubes!

Quite right! Why do so few people repair them? Save £££ for **** all work/effort

Quite right! Why don't [s]so few people repair them?[/s] people just go Tubeless

Quite right! Why do so few people repair them? Save £££ for **** all work/effort

I don't think I've ever thrown an innertube away until the cost of the patches on it exceeded the cost of the tube 🙂

Some enquiries this week led me to a very good copy of D'Terre Hermes aftershave (£85) for a fiver.

Isn't that illegal?

I'm having that conversation with myself at the moment; custom frame build v off the peg. £2-3,000 hand made in the UK, or as low as £500 or so made in a Chinese factory. Trying to quantify the difference between the two ends of the scale is silly, because it ignores all sorts of other factors, such as supporting UK industry and economy, lowering carbon foot print of product, and the 'value' of having something totally unique to you. Obviously, a more restricted budget would play a bigger factor here, but the 'value' here for me goes beyond just the money.

"I don't buy cheap power tools anymore for the same reason. They taste shit."

A cheap tool used seldom, is poorer value than an expensive one used often. The 'expensive' Festool plunge saw I bought recently is so much better than the quite frankly scary Makita one I'd been using, to the extent that I'll be using it a lot more often. So, much better 'value'.

"I don't think I've ever thrown an innertube away until the cost of the patches on it exceeded the cost of the tube"

I throw them away when there's more patch than tube!

Quite right! Why do so few people repair them? Save £££ for **** all work/effort

I used to be like that, now I just use a new one every time (road bike). MTBs are all tubeless.

Makita are "cheap"? Tell that to my loft full of borrowed Protool and Power Devil shite. I think that was what Smudger was getting at.

What makes me laugh is the folk who go to each and every supermarket as they each have the cheapest bread/beans/foie gras/whatever. And spend more than the amount they save on petrol in doing so.

Similarly folk who drive miles across town to save a penny a litre on fuel...

[quote=bartyp ]A cheap tool used seldom, is poorer value than an expensive one used often.

But not quite as bad value as an expensive one used seldom...

True, but I always seem to want to use good tools more often. I need to replace a couple of wood planes; they are fairly cheap and not that great, but 'good' ones are very expensive, and I'm wondering if I can justify the outlay really. It's not so much the money, but I don't want them sitting there unused.

"What makes me laugh is the folk who go to each and every supermarket as they each have the cheapest bread/beans/foie gras/whatever. And spend more than the amount they save on petrol in doing so.

Similarly folk who drive miles across town to save a penny a litre on fuel..."

We try to shop as locally as possible. Whilst this may (arguably) cost a little more, we find that developing good relations with local businesses results in getting a better quality of service. We can 'phone our butcher or fishmonger to order anything specific if necessary, and most of the shops often give us discounts/deals, so it works out much better in the long run. We believe this helps make for a better local community, and the 'value' of that is unquantifiable.

It was in a recent post when somebody said that it was cheaper to buy from CRC than shops in Oz, unless you shop locally and get a relationship with the LBS in which case I'm glad not to be reliant on the internet for my bike bits

reality just about any version would do if it came from a shop that had already filtered out the garbage.

It would be great if this was what shops did. Essentially curating a range of products across a range of prices that are the best you can get for that price. Someone you can trust.

Unfortunately they don't do this. What they actually do is try to figure out how they can sell you the cheapest POS for the most money without you having to return it. They do this while also making a significant chunk of their profits from their suppliers paying for space on their shelves, from doing exclusive deals to keep prices high or simply try to sell everything they can to corner the market.

I think John Lewis are the closest to just filtering out the garbage for you, hence why they are sucessful. But it's not that hard to out curate JL with a bit of internet research. There aren't any shops where you can just go safe in the knowlegde you are getting the best value for money you can. Even your LBS is trying their hardest to empty your wallet as efficiently as they can.

just seems like price is the only judge of VFM these days

Nope, not in my World. I'm up for a bargain but I'm more than happy to pay extra for convenience or time-saving, especially if it means supporting local business.

out curate

We try to shop as locally as possible. Whilst this may (arguably) cost a little more, we find that developing good relations with local businesses results in getting a better quality of service. We can 'phone our butcher or fishmonger to order anything specific if necessary, and most of the shops often give us discounts/deals, so it works out much better in the long run. We believe this helps make for a better local community, and the 'value' of that is unquantifiable.

And that's fine, to go to a butcher, grocer, fishmonger etc. what I don't get is the people who value price over service/quality/all else, going to different indistinguishable faceless national chains, to save pence on a tin of beans (from the same maker), spending more than they have saved to do so.

[i]There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey.[/i]

In this case I think the internet can be the worst thing as you can spend hours on hunting down the best version of a product where in reality just about any version would do if it came from a shop that had already filtered out the garbage.

Of course a lot of shops will just sell you any old tosh, offer you little in the way of support and charge you a lot more for the privilege. (looking at you PC World!) By researching a purchase online first you've actually leaned something and saved some money, and probably avoided having to deal with an odious salesman too.

"what I don't get is the people who value price over service/quality/all else, going to different indistinguishable faceless national chains, to save pence on a tin of beans (from the same maker), spending more than they have saved to do so."

The improvement in quality of life in being able to manly shop locally is something you can't put a price on. We shop when we need to, buy only what we will consume, get stuff fresher and better quality , and save a load of time by not travelling further afield. Our snobby (quite high-earning) neighbours won't shop locally (I think it's a bit too 'ethnic' for them), so travel to a Sainsburys and/or use delivery services. They spend an absolute fortune, buy loads of shit they don't need/consume, and generate more than 3 times the waste we do. They don't enjoy good relations with hardly anyone else in the local community, then complain they feel 'isolated'. We leave them to it. They've recently been using Uber for taxis, instead of the very reliable and inexpensive local firms, and have been let down several times.

And for some reason, despite all their penny-pinching, they are always moaning about not having any money. They still owe us for covering them for some recent external works!

Cost of everything, value of nothing....