Everything in life is about moderation, which is why so many of us agonize before “splurging” on a big purchase, even if we’ve convinced ourselves we deserve a treat for one reason or another.
There’s not much worse, then, than having that thing that was supposed to delight you turn out to be crappy or a total pain in the butt, right?
These 15 people had exactly that moment, and I have to say, I don’t want to be in their shoes.
15. Lesson learned, at least.
I dropped $1000 on a gaming PC when I was a sophomore in college. Took out a credit card to put it on that and, uh, overestimated my ability to consistently make more than the minimum payments.
Ended up finally paying it off like two years later, having paid probably an extra $300 in interest. But learned a valuable lesson, and also had a better PC than all my friends!
14. That’s just insulting.
I was insanely broke as a 22yr old and just landed a new job. I was so excited about it and decided to “celebrate” by buying chicken nuggets and a caramel frappe from McDonalds.
The breading from the first damn chicken nugget managed to cut the inside of my throat and I couldn’t speak for 2 days.
13. Nothing went right.
Actually quite recent, I got 2 extra vacation days to be used in December.
Couldn’t go anywhere, so I figured I’d get a nice hotel room and try a spa day. The spa was not relaxing, the tub wasn’t big enough to relax in, the mushrooms I cake into didn’t work, and the TV had cable but no streaming or hookups, so for the first time in a decade I had to wait until the next half hour for new stuff to be on.
“I can’t wait to be disappointed by the continental breakfast” I said aloud to myself at 10pm. It was a prepackaged muffin and two yogurts in a brown bag
12. This is just awful.
I’ve been unemployed for over a year now, and hadn’t bought anything nice for myself in months.
While buying groceries, I saw some pomegranates, and I decided I deserved a treat.
I found the biggest one in the pile, looked great, and bought it.
When I cracked that f*cker open that night, it was rotten inside, with no sign it had gone bad on the outside.
I actually cried, because I felt I had wasted precious money I shouldn’t have.
11. Disaster is an understatement.
Bought myself “luxurious” body gel. I used it one time, got an allergic reaction. My left leg doubled in size because of how swollen it was, it hurt, was stinging as hell and.. it was overall a disaster. The bottle was not even 90ml.. and cost me more than 180kr.
10. I am flabbergasted.
I’m currently typing this on a 1,850 US$ phone. There is no way I can justify this. I bought it out of peer pressure.
9. It’s been a weird year.
My darling boyfriend got into streaming when the pandemic hit and we went into lockdown. He gained a small following speedrunning games, he had some fun.
During the height of all this, I thought I’d give it a try. I streamed my sims builds like once or twice, but for a multitude of reasons just thought it wasn’t for me. One of those reasons being I dont know ANYTHING about the tech, I just swapped out my laptop for my bf’s when I streamed.
My boyfriend has an el gato capture thing. When he saw that I wanted to get into it, he bought me one as well. Shit was NOT cheap as the world was shut down and everyone and their mother wanted one of these things. I didn’t qualify for unemployment and he was making only about 2/3 of his normal paycheck from pandemic relief unemployment so I was not happy at all.
His reasoning was that “we can both stream at the same time and do dual streams!”
He had such good intentions but for someone who knows so much about the technology and setup, he ought to have known that we combined simply don’t have a powerful enough computer to dual stream the way he wanted to.
I know he just wanted this to be a fun activity we could both do together, so he treated himself (and me i guess) to a second el gato… its never been used.
Now we are back to work and he doesn’t stream at all. So now we have two unused el Gatos.
8. I have felt that panic.
After years of wanting to experiment with my hair, I finally convinced myself that dying my long healthy brown hair purple was the best way to treat myself. I was originally given a price of $150 give or take depending on amount of dye used.
Anyway, when she was done styling, I was happy and it looked pretty. I got to the counter and the total comes to $500!!
Now, I’m not a confrontational person. Also, I was young and kind of stupid to not argue with them. So I just paid, left a $50 mandatory gratuity and left. I know.
For the next 2 weeks everything that came in contact with my hair was stained purple. Every time I washed my hair it bled purple. My shower was stained, the skin on my back, pillowcase, sheets, the back of my shirts, PURPLE!
The worst part was that my long beautiful healthy brown hair was a heaping faded broken pile of straw after those two weeks.
So I went out and bought a box dye similar to my own colour, dyed my hair back and swore off ever dyeing my hair ever again.
7. He’s actually very lucky.
My brother posted a picture of a Ninja motorcycle on FB with the caption “Treat yo’ self!”
I was surprised because I’m really into motorcycles and I had never heard my brother express any interest whatsoever. Didn’t even know he knew how to ride one.
Less than a week later he slammed the bike into the back of a UPS truck and broke his shoulder. Bye-bye, Ninja. Fortunately, other than the damage to his shoulder, he was fine.
6. A slap to the face.
Got a promotion that meant I would be driving most days to an office, after commuting by train for years. Bought myself a Tesla for the new ride.
Took delivery on March 14 last year. Haven’t driven to the office once. Between the down payment and the monthly payments since, I’ve spent about $7 a mile to own the thing.
5. That didn’t go as planned.
Overnight in a hotel room with a professional escort.
She got drunk and broke down in tears over the fact that she is an escort.
4. There’s a movie premise.
I caught myself, but I was about to buy a 3080 off eBay for about $800. It turns out it was just a picture of it and the goal was to get bots to buy it, but I didn’t read the description and almost bought it. Maybe I am a bot…
3. That’ll sour you on eBay.
I bought a used bass amp on eBay. It was a little pricey but after hundreds of eBay purchases I didn’t think anything could go wrong. Amp showed up broken (advertised as working condition).
Took it to a shop, turns out the seller had gutted it and poorly replaced a bunch of the parts with a guitar amp (it was a bass amp), so once I spent money to fix it it was still unusable. I got into it with the eBay seller and they threatened to come to my house and fight me.
All because I wanted to treat myself on a new amp on my birthday.
2. I’m sure you’ll use it?
Bought a laptop for $1000 a few months ago. I’ve used it like 3 times, and now it’s too late to return it
1. Maybe don’t treat yoself the next time.
Every time I’ve eaten an entire bag of dried mangoes in a day. They’re fairly small bags, but still more fiber than one day’s worth, so it all comes out at once the next morning.
I hope it’s a long time before this happens to me again, but I’m sure it will eventually.
What’s your worst story of purchase letdown? Lay it on us in the comments!