Price or quality?

[El Cid]

I think they'll be opting to buy cheap from the Far East.

 

Most of us buy online, when searching is it just me that opts to display items, "cheapest first"?

 

I have just been trying to purchase a garden strimmer, its very difficult to decide which one is the best value. I ended up buying second hand from a relative.

I know wealthy people are sometimes tighter than the rest of us, so who and why do people buy the more costly items.

Councils and large organisations, should they buy a branded item, or is a own brand better value.

When are they allowed to buy British, regardless, and should they?

I have a preference to buy local, more so with food, but electrical goods - do we make any?

My washing machine is a Holme, cheap Asda brand - Vestel products with some that may have come from China.

[tinfoilhat]

Most of us buy online, when searching is it just me that opts to display items, "cheapest first"?

 

I have just been trying to purchase a garden strimmer, its very difficult to decide which one is the best value. I ended up buying second hand from a relative.

I know wealthy people are sometimes tighter than the rest of us, so who and why do people buy the more costly items.

Councils and large organisations, should they buy a branded item, or is a own brand better value.

When are they allowed to buy British, regardless, and should they?

I have a preference to buy local, more so with food, but electrical goods - do we make any?

My washing machine is a Holme, cheap Asda brand - Vestel products with some that may have come from China.

 

Certain things are very hard to "buy British". Some things, certainly in the past, you'd be better of buying German or Japanese (cars in years gone by for sure) but things have changed a bit in that regard.

 

There are websites available to assist you now though.

[El Cid]

Certain things are very hard to "buy British". Some things, certainly in the past, you'd be better of buying German or Japanese (cars in years gone by for sure) but things have changed a bit in that regard.

 

There are websites available to assist you now though.

 

I remember in my younger days buying a Austin Metro, with some of the reason being that it was British made, I think these days cars made in the UK are not fully 100% British.

[Cyclone]

It depends on why I want the item. I bought a USB stick recently, it's only to go in the car for music, I would have bought the cheapest off Amazon, but for convenience I bought the cheapest (of the capacity I wanted) from Tesco.

If I were buying a monitor for the computer though, I'd choose the specs I wanted, then research it, then buy the best one, unless it was twice the price of the 2nd best one or something silly.

 

When shopping on amazon I often restrict the search to 4* customer ratings or above, buy cheap, buy twice is an adage that's often true if you're buying cheap imported electronics.

[Scozzie]

Buy cheap, buy twice.

[spilldig]

Buy cheap, buy twice.

 

I do sometimes think that you can pay a lot more for just a name though.

[geared]

Very much depends on what you're buying and probably more importantly what it is you want from the item.

[Cyclone]

I do sometimes think that you can pay a lot more for just a name though.

 

For some things the risk of failure is low.

 

I just bought some hosepipe splitters from amazon, £1.99, at BnQ where I first looked, something ridiculous like £9.99. The chance of the bit of plastic failing is very low.

 

On the other hand, I've had a batch of cheap LED bulbs which pretty much all blew after a number of hours of use. I wouldn't expect that with Phillips bulbs that cost 5 times as much.

[alchresearch]

It can vary from product to product.

 

Branded products have a brand name to protect, so quality is (or should be) a little better. If you've had a bad experience of a product, people are more likely to remember you having a problem with, say Samsung rather than Foo Yung Products Concern Limited.

 

But sometimes you do pay for just the same. I remember when internal DVD writers for PCs were becoming popular and the Sony one was just a rebranded Optowrite make.

[handypandy]

Horses for courses I think. It all depends for what you intend to use the goods. A while back, I purchased a cheap, large breaker from Screwfix (as used on roadworks etc) to take up a concrete floor. Its not something I would use on a regular basis. I've probably used it about three times in the last 18 months but for the price I paid. I guess its already paid for itself against hiring one. I certainly could not have warranted paying 4 or 5 times as much for a branded item.

On the other hand, other tools that I use daily, I do pay the premium for a good brand, as the cheap ones are not up to the job and wouldn't last five minutes.

 

Conversely. a few months ago, I scrapped my old PC tower and bought a new one that does everything I need and a lot more besides, for under four hundred quid. Clearly it would be as much use as a bag of spanners to someone like Cyclone who uses them to make his living. Horses for courses.