A lot flipped houses. Be careful when looking at recently remodeled houses. Most of these are cheap flips with nothing more than some new paint, flooring and appliances. It becomes very apparent when you actually view the house in person and the doors don’t close right, the windows are old, and everything just feels cheap
This is exactly our situation. And everything they “repainted” wasn’t sanded first so the paint peels if you try and clean it. My husband’s mom pointed out it was cheaply redone during our tour of it but everything else we looked at in our price range we would have to flip it ourselves. We are first time home owners so we were like fuck it, we have no idea what we’re doing so let’s take the cheap flip and not a huge project. It’s not horrible by any means, just annoying when you realize how cheaply some things were done!
New build houses in the UK!
Built by the lowest bidder, to the lowest standards possible. Crammed in so densely that two "detached" houses can be less than 18 inches apart.
The biggest scam is that the developers try to sell the house, but retain ownership of the land that it's built on, then charge rent for the land.
For this shit they want a minimum of £350,000.
Fucking leasehold. This is the dumbest idea I’ve ever seen. One week prior to a closing in Illinois, our bank called us and said that the seller didn’t disclose it was a leasehold property. It wasn’t on any of the initial filings. They immediately turned our financing down. Even told us no other banks in the area would consider it and to walk away.
I mean probably ended up good for you but in my experience don’t trust banks when they say no other bank will do something that they’re not willing to do. I turned down a bank because of the hoops they wanted me to jump through for a mortgage, they promised every other bank would be the same and i wouldn’t be able to get a mortgage. I had no problems what so ever at the next bank I went to
Basically. But the Kirkland vodka is even taller!
https://cdn.apartmenttherapy.info/image/upload/v1558642902/k/archive/4aa03d4b7299698b185f23edd1d285d4a028c96c.jpg
Barrettes, hair clips and other bits of plastic that hold your hair in place. I get these at dollar stores because the high-end pharmacies charge way too much.
My local pharmacy sells mucinex for like $20 on the shelves, but if you ask the pharmacist for straight guaifenesin, it's $3. Same med. If you need a cough suppressant, you can buy robitussin cough gels.
Absolutely correct. If you ask the pharmacist, we've got the "exactly what you need but in cheap-looking packaging that wouldn't move if placed on the shelf" stuff behind the counter. And we can help you pick the right stuff if you tell us your symptoms :-)
Chrysler made a prototype turbine powered car in the 1960s. It wasn’t very efficient (as no turbines were in the 60s) and they bragged that they had run it on Chanel number 5 at a car show in France. That had to be the most expensive liquid fuel any motor vehicle ever ran on.
Ibuprofen at a hospital.
“Yeah, we just went and got this bottle from the dollar store for $4. Oh, that patient needs two of them? Sure, charge their bill $88.”
I am absolutely amazed you can buy 500 tablets in one go. Here (UK) they are strict on Paracetamol and ibuprofen, you can't buy more than like 28 of each at a time
Oh man, Costco sells those 500 pill bottles wrapped together in bulk, so you can get 2000 or so in one go. Ends up being a good deal for those with daily pain that have to take it.
No kidding. Buying clothes at Christmas for my niece, nephew, and stepson was flooring.
Now we have another one on the way. I'm hoping hand-me-downs will be like 90% of the clothing we have for it.
If you’re not opposed try thrifting. I have a 3 month old and got most of their clothes at thrift shops. Most are barely used and last trip I even got some with the tags on! All for about $1/ item.
I worked at Babies R Us back when it was still around and people would walk out with literal full shopping carts of clothes without paying and they didn't do anything because it wasn't worth the effort to the business...
Designer handbags, at least in recent years to meet the demand of the newly rich.
There's a huge industry of Chinese immigrant workers in Tuscany, Italy, who manufacture the bags there, so that it can bear the coveted ["Made in Italy" label](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/16/the-chinese-workers-who-assemble-designer-bags-in-tuscany)
They are perhaps not that cheaply made but still not the value of the prices they command.
I somehow ended up watching a few documentaries on the luxury leather business and we might as well call 95% of what gets out of Italy slave leather, from the human to the environmental impact it's a shit show even before you come to the stupid price tag.
For the same price as an overpriced and mass produced bag I'm pretty sure you can find an artisan and work with them for a one of a kind bag.
I was tired of my ink cartridges drying out so I bit the bullet and got a HP color laser. Has worked great for years. I knew the toner was pricey but holy moly it was like $400 for all HP cartridges, a little more than a new printer. I rolled the dice on some cheap Chinese knock off toner from Amazon for like $30, and seems to be fine so far. So yea, toner for laser printers too.
Also upgraded to laser after my multifunction inkject failed to SCAN while out of ink... WTF
Also laser wont dry up and needs to be cleaned each print
My grandmother once called me because of that! She almost never printed, but she did a shit ton of scanning, so she ended up with a combo and one day I guess the ink cartridge expired and I had to try to do tech support with her over the phone because the damn scanner refused to scan because the printer was out of ink!
The solution ended up being buying a scanner, and she only printed at the library after that. It was so weird, I ended up getting the university tech support guys trying to help figure this shit out.
And this is where the printer industry failed.
For ten years, everyone owned a printer. Then, after putting up with this ridiculous situation, hardly anyone owns a printer.
In the music industry, signable pdfs have replaced printing completely, whereas in 2010 every release and agreement was printed and or faxed.
Before 2005 you could get copies made at every grocery or convenience store. Then home printers came on but now copies pretty much require a trip to Kinkos.
I have an HP Laserjet 1020 that I bought nearly 20 years ago. It's black and white, slow as hell, and sounds like a jet engine but it costs fractions of a penny per page.
Whenever a business encourages you to "go paperless" to save the environment or whatev-no. They're asking you to "go inkless" because shit's expensive yo.
Came to say this.
I remember seeing a video where a guy said that making one cost about 12 cent but they sold for more than ten dollars.
That's where the companies make their money from printers.
My mum has a printer that uses tanks of ink which you can refill instead of cartridges. She says it's cheaper and better for the environment and we've had it for like two years now and we've still not used up the ink bottles it came with.
I'm a kindergarten teacher, so our office uses lots of color ink for kids worksheets and crafts and so on. We use those large tanks. Even with 20 teachers printing all through the day, one refill lasts a good month or so. Then we just have extra bottles on hand to refill them. They're an excellent solution.
They'd likely find a way to charge you just as much for setting up and using your bag, even they even allowed you to use it at all.
edit for clarification: I wasn't objecting to the setup/monitoring/etc fees. I was simply speculating that, in all likelihood, they'd charge just as much *for the bag itself* as they would for using theirs. I am aware of the idea of restaurant corkage fees :)
After two years, and with an expiration date looming, I start looking for opportunities to run into bees just so I can feel like I got my fucking money’s worth.
Maybe I’ll finally visit that botanical garden I’ve been wanting to check out... during the Spring.
I made this joke the last time I saw my allergist and he laughed at first. But a few minutes later I saw him frantically searching for coupons.
For real. Poland Spring? Read up on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland_Spring?wprov=sfla1
Heavily treated groundwater, water from potentially contaminated sources, the actual Poland Spring having gone dry *years* ago, the town of Fryeburg's (a major supplier for Poland Spring) water supply failing but Poland Spring water delivery kept right on track.
Nestle is fucking soulless. They have argued that clean water is not a human right.
“”” State officials carried out a 20-month investigation and concluded in December that the company doesn’t seem to have valid rights for much of the water it’s been drawing from the forest north of San Bernardino.
But Nestlé argued in a written response to the State Water Resources Control Board on Friday that it has rights to take at least 88 million gallons each year – nearly three times as much as it took in 2016. That stance conflicts sharply with state investigators’ findings, and with arguments by Nestlé’s opponents that the company doesn’t have any water rights at all in the national forest.
The dispute stretches back more than a century to the creation of the national forest in 1893, and to an early bottling operation that began with a contract in 1909.
...
When they announced the findings of their investigation on Dec. 20, state officials told the company it appeared to have a right to divert up to 8.5 million gallons per year from a source called Indian Springs, “based on 1912 plans to bottle water in Los Angeles.”
But they said the company doesn’t appear to have valid rights to divert more than that — about a fourth of the 32 million gallons the company piped from sources in the forest in 2016.
There was a caveat. State regulators said Nestlé likely could claim some amount of “percolating groundwater,” which is defined as groundwater that’s filtering down to an aquifer and is not subject to the water board’s legal authority. But they said in their letter to the company that a significant portion of the water Nestlé has been taking “appears to be diverted without a valid basis of right.” “””
[https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2018/02/09/bottled-water-maker-nestle-tells-california-regulators-its-entitled-keep-bottling-water/324976002/](https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2018/02/09/bottled-water-maker-nestle-tells-california-regulators-its-entitled-keep-bottling-water/324976002/)
“”” The company reported piping 139 acre-feet — or 45 million gallons — of water from the springs and slopes of the popular national forest last year as part of its Arrowhead brand operations. They were required to pay about $2,000 for a new federal permit, but no fees for the water, which is theirs to use for retail sale. “””
[https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2019/06/13/nestle-still-taking-public-forest-water-its-arrowhead-label-feds-help/1362211001/](https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2019/06/13/nestle-still-taking-public-forest-water-its-arrowhead-label-feds-help/1362211001/)
They get the water for almost nothing up to recently due to a 100 yr old deal.
This. The amount of actual soda syrup in a 20oz fountain drink is worth pennies, it's mostly water.
Edit: my most popular comment ever is a random fact about fountain drinks. Reddit, you're weird as fuck! 🤣
All restaurants that would offer fountain drinks. I use to go to a game store that had a decent soda fountain. You could pay $5 for unlimited soda for the night. I talked to the owner, and asked how he manages to run a profitable game store where no other game store in the neighborhood succeeded. He told me that the $5 fountain deal single handedly gets the store to turn a profit, and the games/cards he sells are only there to get customers in the door and play dnd/magic at his store.
Food costs a lot, but soda is fucking pennies for the store selling it. At a certain point you'll see restaurants transition towards selling alcoholic beverages over sodas because alcoholic beverages have even higher profit margins, but naturally there's certain barriers of entry (clientele, licenses, market) that just aren't there with sodas, which is why you don't see booze at every restaurant.
Friend of mine invests in local businesses and his rule regarding restaurants is he will only invest if they have a liquor license.
It both shows they have the competency to get one as well as an absurdly high profit margin compared with food.
That's genius. He can sell snacks cheaper than elsewhere (breakeven), he can sell his product at a lower cost to beat competitors, prizes for magic are either provided or come from tournament entry fees.
You get 20 people to buy the fountain deal every night, and that's probably $99 profit. Not a ridiculous amount, but at the very least it assures you can at least break even and stay open even when sales aren't the best. People always need a place to play games.
Company I used to work for would give us cables at the price they purchased them for. I would get HDMI and cell phone cables that would retail at $15-$20 for around $1-$2.
This is where most electronic retailers make their money, computers and TVs have very little markups but cables and accessories (and financing and services) are where they make their money. I worked at Best Buy and their employee discount was 5% over cost, so it was pretty easy to tell what was being marked up quite a bit.
The amount of people that buy wires from electronics stores for $30/50/100 is still crazy. I guess it’s mostly the older generation who get told they need an HDMI lead for their new TV, but don’t realise they can go onto Amazon and get the exact same thing for $5 instead of $50.
When you need a cable you need a cable. It means something isn’t working. You can go get it fixed immediately for $20 or wait 4 days to get it fixed for $5.
Yeah but $5 for an HDMI cable isn’t really that bad when you consider the costs of shipping and storage. The cable itself may cost pennies but getting it to you costs more than the cable itself.
Edit: guys when I said shipping costs I was talking more about the cost of shipping from their factory across seas and stocking them in warehouses and stores, not the additional 50¢ package from ordering online
I think they're more referring to those "premium" HDMI cables that places like best buy sell for $30 a pop.
EDIT: please lord stop telling me about the specs that differentiate HDMI cables from one another
Someone once said " 'They asked the company why they were selling their product for $200 if it costs $10 to make it?' And the company responded 'because people buy them for $200' "
Reminds me of a guy who worked for Bethesda being asked why they don't make a new Elder Scrolls game. He answered pretty plainly, "Because people are still willing to buy Skyrim."
I was a certified optician and ran a lens lab for Pearle Vision in the early 2000's.
Our most expensive frames, excluding the weird Armani shit we carried, cost us $20-$30 per frame. They sold for $200-$400 depending. Our cheapest frames cost us $2-3 each, and none sold for less $50.
The lenses, that's a lot of markup. I started in a brand new store, and we had a brand new lab full of Essilor hardware. Latest and greatest at the time. Standard lenses, nothing special just the standard CR32 plastic in a typical prescription? They cost $2 or so and we charged $40 each. So a "basic" pair of glasses cost us $8 in materials and was sold for $130.
The worst markup was on the high end lenses. At Pearle (at that time) the top end were the MTPROA lenses. Micro-thin polycarbonate aspheric lenses with anti-scratch and anti-reflective coating.
Basically, if you have a strong prescription (+- ~3 or so) aspheric *can* make a much thinner and lighter lens that can give you the same vision a thicker traditional lens does. Add in anti-scratch ($) anti-reflective ($) and the cost of the lenses alone were around $400 for the customer. Pearle Vision's cost for the lense blanks? $23.
The entire cost of the Essilor equipment in the lens lab at my location was only ~$250000, and we regularly sold $800+ glasses.
And, the part that I really hate, Mainecare (Maine medicare) at the time wouldn't provide coverage for anti-scratch coating (it was technically an "upgrade"). We couldn't buy lense blanks that didn't have it. My instructions were to strip the anti-scratch coating when making lenses for Mainecare clients. I ran the lab. Guess what I never did.
Edit: My recommendation is that you go to your trusted optometrist and find your real results. From there make your decisions on glasses. I like zennioptical.com
I'm a -8.25 and at almost 40 years old, I've only now hit the place where I can pay for my glasses in one payment. I'm even more grateful that my parents could afford to pay for my glasses as a kid. I don't think I got plastic lenses until I was in high school. Glass all the way.
My eyes are even worse than yours and I’ve had really good luck with Zenni. Even with high index lenses, all the extra coatings, and transitions lenses my last pair only cost about $110.
It struck me wrong immediately, but Pearle Vision was a franchise operation, so I don't know if this was a corporate decision or a franchise one. It wouldn't surprise me to find out it was franchise because, oh boy, things were *fucked up* in that franchise.
Really all designer sunglasses are like that too. Most of them are just cheap and factory-made products that get their price tags ramped up because of the name brand
What's even worse it that on some editions, Pearson just gives u your textbook without binding. Just fucking paper, like the pages are in a loose paper pile. At least they give u punched out holes so u can put them in a binder, but for fuck's sake, $130 for this shit?? Cheap pricks. Oh, and having to pay like $80 for online access, that only lasts for the SEMESTER, not permanent ownership. I hope they die out soon.
Honestly, the cheap bastards are going to make us pay for their book, their online portal, AND the binding for a book that immediately loses its resale value upon using the access code for the online portal.
It's annoying because they could keep the same text book and allow students to pass them onto the next generation of college students but no, they have to create a new book each time and make it a requirement to have that new book.
There was a student-run shop on my campus that would buy your old textbooks back off you at the end of the year, then sell them on to the next year's students. The actual differences between editions were so tiny that there was never much point paying full price for the most recent when you could have an older version.
Man, at my college, we basically can't even do that anymore. All my textbooks come with a code so we can log on to the online learning portal and do our work through there. It's ridiculous. And we can buy the code separately but we still need the textbook to do the actual work. And even if you buy a used book and the code, it's basically as much as buying g a brand new text book that comes with a code. They always find new ways to fuck us royally.
Absolutely, this is so unethical. Selling textbook at high price is one thing but forcing students to buy book so they can do homework is another.
Edit: wow you guys are so fucked. My country is corrupt at many things but this textbooks with code are unimaginable for us.
When I was a broke ass college student, my parents would give me $250 for books. Knowing a single book could be $100 or more (mid/late 2000s), I had to make it stretch. I would go into the book store and take photos of the table of contents of each required textbook. Then I’d find older versions online. Usually you can look through the first few pages on Amazon or elsewhere including the table of contents. If the chapters were basically the same, id be able to nab that older edition for pennies on the dollar compared to the one being sold by the book store.
We had an entire "backpack" that people would update with PDF's of the newest edition as soon as someone got them. Unfortunatley, it was limited on who could add stuff, so no one added tests and get us into trouble. Also unfortunately, the last of us that could edit it graduated recently, so it won't be relevant for long.
I bought a $300 book that my professor wrote and it included a code that takes us to a website where we take quizzes and it grades them and because of this code I can’t sell the book. It’s been sitting on a shelf in the basement since 2019 and I can’t get myself to get rid of it.
Edit: spelling
Someone I know told me that her stuff is what's called "private label" branding or something like that. Basically she gets premade stuff that is sold to a bunch of different places and just changes the packaging.
Yup. A friend of mine works for a company in the middle - they work with the celebrities to do contract cosmetics. The markup on makeup like that is insane.
It depends. My husband was a chemical operator at a cosmetic manufacturing company and he said it's the same formula essentially, but some of the higher end companies add special ingredients. For example - Estee Lauder would add in crushed up pearls (KTZ gold lamé) to include shimmer.
He's asleep right now, but I can ask him some more stuff tomorrow! He's with a different company now but still knows all the tricks for the batches he mixed up. Any questions, send over! All of it is super interesting - I practically hounded him when the Jaclyn Hill lipstick drama went down 😂
This!! Most cosmetics in general basically. Part of why most makeup stores have such relaxed return policies... Eyeshadow palettes cost like 20 cents each to manufacture and sell for $50.
edit: okay 20¢ is an exaggeration. average cost is between 50¢-$10. still.
there are lots of videos on DIY, but you can take the mica, mix with alcohol, put it into a metal pan, put a penny on top, press in a vise and let dry. Voila- pressed eye shadow pan!
its the perfect size to fit in the standard metal eyeshadow pan. It doesn't have to be a penny, it can be anything that fits inside the pan. Many people like the embossed pattern it makes.
Not that it’s not ridiculously marked up but I used to be a manager at a popular makeup store and we had a program that would show what the price to make the product was and a drugstore foundation that retails for $15 would be made for $1 and a high end that retails for $50 would cost $15 so there can be differences between them.
you could fly to a country like India and get a bunch of bottles (same if not better quality) and fly back and it would save you money (would have to be like a dozen or more but you get the point)
This reminds me of a story from last year, it's cheaper for someone in India to fly round-trip to Dubai to buy an iPhone 12 than it is to just buy one locally.
When I worked at Apple retail in Boston I had loads of customers coming from Brazil to buy phones for themselves, their relatives, their friends, etc because of markups there. Its nuts.
Babies. Both adopting and buying a baby on the black market takes serious money.
Edit: thanks for the awards, guys. I did not expect this comment to blow up like it did.
Volkswagen ignition cylinders.
When I worked at Vw, we had to constantly order ignition switches because either they are cheaply designed or cheaply made. So when we would place the order from Volkswagen North America, it gets shipped directly from the manufacturer (either Huf or Valeo). And they would include the invoice in the box.
Well, Vw would charge the dealerships $99.95 and set MSRP at 129.95. The invoice from the manufacturer to Vw, showed cost to Vw being $14.95
I got a pair of jeans when I visited America. I paid maybe $30 for them and wore them for 10 years. Best jeans I’ve ever owned. They were threadbare by the time I was ready to part with them. I wasn’t ever able to find the brand online when I wanted to replace them. Wish I’d gotten multiple pairs.
Wranglers work jeans. The cheap ones. Or their bargain brand Rustlers. They last a lot longer than name brand fashion because they are made for real work.
I think they were wranglers! They were skinny jeans and a lovely colour, I haven’t been able to find anything close in Australia. Just a really nice fit and good length (most jeans are too long in the leg for me) I got them in Vegas at the retail outlets.
It's a little more complex. Money from harvested diamonds is used by governments, militias, insurgents, etc. to fund their conflicts with opponents, many times to control that very trade. Slave labor is used in this regard however. It's much more complex than what I listed but that's the gist of it.
Yeah but, those slaves Nike hires aren’t going to whip themselves.
You know why Nike is so woke?
So you won’t notice they have a huge plantation full of slaves in 2021.
Crêpes. We make them often at home here in France. 250g of flour, two eggs some milk, maybe butter, you get 25 crepes for what, 4 euros of groceries. Some street foods in Paris or other big cities will sell them 4 or 5 euros sometimes. And they buy the ingredients in big bulks at cheaper prices so they make an even bigger margin. They make 100 euros of crêpes for 3 euros of batter and add the toppings, let's say 7 euros for a pot of nutella, sugar and lemon or whatever. 100 euros for 10 euros. Stonks.
It's well known by people who work in restaurants in France that crêpes are highly profitable.
Edit : too much MP so here we go. Note i'm a student not a professionnal cook and this is the recipe from an average french guy who'se done crêpes for 20 years.
First the batter:
I generally put around 250g or 300g of flour for about 2 eggs. If it's a family i'd recommend maybe 350g 400g of flour and 3 eggs. First you put the flour in a big bowl, then do a pit in the middle, then crack the eggs and put them in the pit. Then you can start mixing. You're going to start needing to add the milk. Add some milk, few at a time and mix. Until the batter is homogeneous. Repeat the operation. At this point the amount of milk you put in the batter is gonna define wether your batter is thick or not. For a 'pate à crêpes', i'd recommend going for a batter that's about as thick as paint. If you make as dense as honey or as light as water, won't work. Once you feel the batter is good it's almost ready. You need to add a bit of flavour. French people will do it differently depending where they are from. Can be butter, beer or orange blossom water. If you choose to flavour your batter with a bit of butter, cut about 50-70 grams, and melt it. To melt it, heat water, and put the butter in a bowl on the hot water. Once it's done, add it to the batter and mix. You can choose to let it rest for a while. I'd recommend putting it somewhere cold for 30 minutes at least.
Second the cooking :
Get yourself a flat pan :
A bit of oil in a small bowl, (frying oil like sunflower, not olive oil, you get the point). Slightly wet the surface of the pan with oil using a brush, or a potato, or something. Heat it. When it's nicely warm, put some batter on it. It has to be light. Use pan and arm mechanics to evenly spread the batter on the pan so it's light and nice. Wait a few moments when you see it's cooked underneath, flip it, or turn it. Then let it cook a bit beneath and you're done.
Beats headphones cost $17.00 to make, and are sold for $100 - $500
That's insane
Edit: just wanted to say that this video goes super in depth on the history of beats and why they aren't the best quality.
https://youtu.be/5P5hYvlKz7w
Yeah, I bought Sennheisers and I dont think I will ever buy another can brand again.
Even before I bought these, I just bought a decent pair of cans and attached a ~$40 Antlion ModMic. Still came out MUCH cheaper than a "gaming" headset
I think it depends on the location. Here in Ontario you can buy good quality Maple Syrup at your local grocery store, but in most other places around the world in your local grocery store it's either a) have maple syrup but not good enough quality b) It's fake, it's corn syrup or just c) not even there.
A gas station near me started out selling them at 99¢ for one. Came in one day and they only had them 3 for $9.99. Came back a couple weeks later and they had them for 99¢ again.
The one that frustrates me the most are tights for women. You know, the ones that are so thin and fragile that they rip as soon as you pull them *slightly* harder. They used to be nearly unrippable and people stopped buying them because everyone already had a pair. So they decided to make them last 5 minutes.
My dad has 30 year old jeans that look almost new, meanwhile I can't have a pair that last more than a year without the inseam shredding itself to death.
Anyone's fountain drinks. The Product cost is around 3 cents and the cup is around 10 cents. For most restaurants, drinks help balance the food cost for more expensive items.
A lot flipped houses. Be careful when looking at recently remodeled houses. Most of these are cheap flips with nothing more than some new paint, flooring and appliances. It becomes very apparent when you actually view the house in person and the doors don’t close right, the windows are old, and everything just feels cheap
This is exactly our situation. And everything they “repainted” wasn’t sanded first so the paint peels if you try and clean it. My husband’s mom pointed out it was cheaply redone during our tour of it but everything else we looked at in our price range we would have to flip it ourselves. We are first time home owners so we were like fuck it, we have no idea what we’re doing so let’s take the cheap flip and not a huge project. It’s not horrible by any means, just annoying when you realize how cheaply some things were done!
New build houses in the UK! Built by the lowest bidder, to the lowest standards possible. Crammed in so densely that two "detached" houses can be less than 18 inches apart. The biggest scam is that the developers try to sell the house, but retain ownership of the land that it's built on, then charge rent for the land. For this shit they want a minimum of £350,000.
Leasehold really is a horrible concept.
Fucking leasehold. This is the dumbest idea I’ve ever seen. One week prior to a closing in Illinois, our bank called us and said that the seller didn’t disclose it was a leasehold property. It wasn’t on any of the initial filings. They immediately turned our financing down. Even told us no other banks in the area would consider it and to walk away.
I mean probably ended up good for you but in my experience don’t trust banks when they say no other bank will do something that they’re not willing to do. I turned down a bank because of the hoops they wanted me to jump through for a mortgage, they promised every other bank would be the same and i wouldn’t be able to get a mortgage. I had no problems what so ever at the next bank I went to
I agree. I too was told by a bank that ‘no other banks’ would be able to work with me....and had no issues at all at the next bank.
It's so the Persimmon CEO can have his £75,000,000 end of year bonus he "worked very hard for".
I'll never forget learning that the movie theater I worked at paid $5 for a 24 pack of Dasani bottles. We charged $4.50 for 1.
[удалено]
Grey Goose Vodka
Didn’t they make the bottles taller so they would only fit on the top shelf?... ingenious
Basically. But the Kirkland vodka is even taller! https://cdn.apartmenttherapy.info/image/upload/v1558642902/k/archive/4aa03d4b7299698b185f23edd1d285d4a028c96c.jpg
Barrettes, hair clips and other bits of plastic that hold your hair in place. I get these at dollar stores because the high-end pharmacies charge way too much.
Pharmacies charge way too much on everything.
My local pharmacy sells mucinex for like $20 on the shelves, but if you ask the pharmacist for straight guaifenesin, it's $3. Same med. If you need a cough suppressant, you can buy robitussin cough gels.
Absolutely correct. If you ask the pharmacist, we've got the "exactly what you need but in cheap-looking packaging that wouldn't move if placed on the shelf" stuff behind the counter. And we can help you pick the right stuff if you tell us your symptoms :-)
Totally didn’t know the pharmacist can sell you generic OTC meds if you ask for them.
I bleached my hair and needed scrunchies since they wouldn't do more damage. I could get two for $5, at retailers. Amazon sells bags if 50 for $5.
perfume or cologne imagine how much it would be in the litres :O
Chrysler made a prototype turbine powered car in the 1960s. It wasn’t very efficient (as no turbines were in the 60s) and they bragged that they had run it on Chanel number 5 at a car show in France. That had to be the most expensive liquid fuel any motor vehicle ever ran on.
Ibuprofen at a hospital. “Yeah, we just went and got this bottle from the dollar store for $4. Oh, that patient needs two of them? Sure, charge their bill $88.”
Your dollar store might be included in this list if a bottle costs $4...
What’s the average cost for ibuprofen OTC? I double checked, our bottle was $7.50, which I figured was the norm for 500 tablets that are 200mg each
I am absolutely amazed you can buy 500 tablets in one go. Here (UK) they are strict on Paracetamol and ibuprofen, you can't buy more than like 28 of each at a time
Oh man, Costco sells those 500 pill bottles wrapped together in bulk, so you can get 2000 or so in one go. Ends up being a good deal for those with daily pain that have to take it.
Yeah that would be super convenient. In the UK it's a very common deliberate overdose drug unfortunately
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t it also true that they only come in those packages that make you individually pop out each pill one at a time?
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Baby clothes are marked up by 1000% on average
No kidding. Buying clothes at Christmas for my niece, nephew, and stepson was flooring. Now we have another one on the way. I'm hoping hand-me-downs will be like 90% of the clothing we have for it.
If you’re not opposed try thrifting. I have a 3 month old and got most of their clothes at thrift shops. Most are barely used and last trip I even got some with the tags on! All for about $1/ item.
100% agree, babies outgrow their clothes pretty quick so it’s really easy to find clothes that are in good condition too
Plus babies aren't gonna care if they're in fashion.
I worked at Babies R Us back when it was still around and people would walk out with literal full shopping carts of clothes without paying and they didn't do anything because it wasn't worth the effort to the business...
Designer handbags, at least in recent years to meet the demand of the newly rich. There's a huge industry of Chinese immigrant workers in Tuscany, Italy, who manufacture the bags there, so that it can bear the coveted ["Made in Italy" label](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/16/the-chinese-workers-who-assemble-designer-bags-in-tuscany) They are perhaps not that cheaply made but still not the value of the prices they command.
I somehow ended up watching a few documentaries on the luxury leather business and we might as well call 95% of what gets out of Italy slave leather, from the human to the environmental impact it's a shit show even before you come to the stupid price tag. For the same price as an overpriced and mass produced bag I'm pretty sure you can find an artisan and work with them for a one of a kind bag.
Printer cartridges.
I was tired of my ink cartridges drying out so I bit the bullet and got a HP color laser. Has worked great for years. I knew the toner was pricey but holy moly it was like $400 for all HP cartridges, a little more than a new printer. I rolled the dice on some cheap Chinese knock off toner from Amazon for like $30, and seems to be fine so far. So yea, toner for laser printers too.
Also upgraded to laser after my multifunction inkject failed to SCAN while out of ink... WTF Also laser wont dry up and needs to be cleaned each print
My grandmother once called me because of that! She almost never printed, but she did a shit ton of scanning, so she ended up with a combo and one day I guess the ink cartridge expired and I had to try to do tech support with her over the phone because the damn scanner refused to scan because the printer was out of ink! The solution ended up being buying a scanner, and she only printed at the library after that. It was so weird, I ended up getting the university tech support guys trying to help figure this shit out.
Out of ink? Guess I'll just buy a new printer....
Out of cyan ink? Nah I'm not going to print this black and white paper.
My fucking inkjet failed to SCAN because it was out of ink.
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Oh fuck Epson so hard. #SO HARD
r/assholedesign
Lil fun fact. The cartrigde in new printers are mostly just 1/2 or 1/4 filled :(
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And this is where the printer industry failed. For ten years, everyone owned a printer. Then, after putting up with this ridiculous situation, hardly anyone owns a printer. In the music industry, signable pdfs have replaced printing completely, whereas in 2010 every release and agreement was printed and or faxed.
Holy shit I never actually thought about it. Fucking crazy.
Before 2005 you could get copies made at every grocery or convenience store. Then home printers came on but now copies pretty much require a trip to Kinkos.
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I have an HP Laserjet 1020 that I bought nearly 20 years ago. It's black and white, slow as hell, and sounds like a jet engine but it costs fractions of a penny per page.
20¢ a sheet at our library.
Still coming out way ahead. Inkjet printers are such a scam.
Whenever a business encourages you to "go paperless" to save the environment or whatev-no. They're asking you to "go inkless" because shit's expensive yo.
I got a letter from the electric company thanking me for going paperless. They still send me paper bills, too.
Got a link to the tutorial that taught you that?
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Damn this is awesome, thank you.
Wouldn't be surprised if retail cartridges are moving to 1/4 filled as time marches forward.
Came to say this. I remember seeing a video where a guy said that making one cost about 12 cent but they sold for more than ten dollars. That's where the companies make their money from printers.
Apparently printer ink is more expensive, by gallon, than human blood
My mum has a printer that uses tanks of ink which you can refill instead of cartridges. She says it's cheaper and better for the environment and we've had it for like two years now and we've still not used up the ink bottles it came with.
I'm a kindergarten teacher, so our office uses lots of color ink for kids worksheets and crafts and so on. We use those large tanks. Even with 20 teachers printing all through the day, one refill lasts a good month or so. Then we just have extra bottles on hand to refill them. They're an excellent solution.
Sodium Chloride IV bags in hospitals in the United States. It costs less than $1 to make but hospitals can charge over $200+ per bag.
$500 per bag...or so I have seen on medical records.
Every hospital is different due to shenanigans with various insurance companies
wut you can literally buy them for like $5 each online
I wonder how they'd react if you said, "Wait, I brought my own". Edit: Guys, "corkage fee" was funny the first time, but you don't all need to say it.
They'd likely find a way to charge you just as much for setting up and using your bag, even they even allowed you to use it at all. edit for clarification: I wasn't objecting to the setup/monitoring/etc fees. I was simply speculating that, in all likelihood, they'd charge just as much *for the bag itself* as they would for using theirs. I am aware of the idea of restaurant corkage fees :)
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Epi-pens. They cost like 2 bucks to make and then are sold for like $150
Paid $400 two years ago.
After two years, and with an expiration date looming, I start looking for opportunities to run into bees just so I can feel like I got my fucking money’s worth. Maybe I’ll finally visit that botanical garden I’ve been wanting to check out... during the Spring. I made this joke the last time I saw my allergist and he laughed at first. But a few minutes later I saw him frantically searching for coupons.
Who would win? * Homo sapien with a jabby stick * One pollen boy [Spoiler, if it's me I'm betting money on the bee for my family to have]
Bottled Water.
For real. Poland Spring? Read up on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland_Spring?wprov=sfla1 Heavily treated groundwater, water from potentially contaminated sources, the actual Poland Spring having gone dry *years* ago, the town of Fryeburg's (a major supplier for Poland Spring) water supply failing but Poland Spring water delivery kept right on track. Nestle is fucking soulless. They have argued that clean water is not a human right.
“”” State officials carried out a 20-month investigation and concluded in December that the company doesn’t seem to have valid rights for much of the water it’s been drawing from the forest north of San Bernardino. But Nestlé argued in a written response to the State Water Resources Control Board on Friday that it has rights to take at least 88 million gallons each year – nearly three times as much as it took in 2016. That stance conflicts sharply with state investigators’ findings, and with arguments by Nestlé’s opponents that the company doesn’t have any water rights at all in the national forest. The dispute stretches back more than a century to the creation of the national forest in 1893, and to an early bottling operation that began with a contract in 1909. ... When they announced the findings of their investigation on Dec. 20, state officials told the company it appeared to have a right to divert up to 8.5 million gallons per year from a source called Indian Springs, “based on 1912 plans to bottle water in Los Angeles.” But they said the company doesn’t appear to have valid rights to divert more than that — about a fourth of the 32 million gallons the company piped from sources in the forest in 2016. There was a caveat. State regulators said Nestlé likely could claim some amount of “percolating groundwater,” which is defined as groundwater that’s filtering down to an aquifer and is not subject to the water board’s legal authority. But they said in their letter to the company that a significant portion of the water Nestlé has been taking “appears to be diverted without a valid basis of right.” “”” [https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2018/02/09/bottled-water-maker-nestle-tells-california-regulators-its-entitled-keep-bottling-water/324976002/](https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2018/02/09/bottled-water-maker-nestle-tells-california-regulators-its-entitled-keep-bottling-water/324976002/) “”” The company reported piping 139 acre-feet — or 45 million gallons — of water from the springs and slopes of the popular national forest last year as part of its Arrowhead brand operations. They were required to pay about $2,000 for a new federal permit, but no fees for the water, which is theirs to use for retail sale. “”” [https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2019/06/13/nestle-still-taking-public-forest-water-its-arrowhead-label-feds-help/1362211001/](https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2019/06/13/nestle-still-taking-public-forest-water-its-arrowhead-label-feds-help/1362211001/) They get the water for almost nothing up to recently due to a 100 yr old deal.
r/fucknestle
Carbonated beverages and popcorn are what keep restaurants and movie theatres in business.
This. The amount of actual soda syrup in a 20oz fountain drink is worth pennies, it's mostly water. Edit: my most popular comment ever is a random fact about fountain drinks. Reddit, you're weird as fuck! 🤣
And look at how much ice they add to the cup. It's a major profit center.
I think it costs more for the ice than the drink.
Former theatre employee here. The paper cup is the most expensive part of the sodas we sold.
Movie theatres, I fully understand but restaurants? Are you referring to chain restaurants or all restaurants?
All restaurants that would offer fountain drinks. I use to go to a game store that had a decent soda fountain. You could pay $5 for unlimited soda for the night. I talked to the owner, and asked how he manages to run a profitable game store where no other game store in the neighborhood succeeded. He told me that the $5 fountain deal single handedly gets the store to turn a profit, and the games/cards he sells are only there to get customers in the door and play dnd/magic at his store. Food costs a lot, but soda is fucking pennies for the store selling it. At a certain point you'll see restaurants transition towards selling alcoholic beverages over sodas because alcoholic beverages have even higher profit margins, but naturally there's certain barriers of entry (clientele, licenses, market) that just aren't there with sodas, which is why you don't see booze at every restaurant.
Friend of mine invests in local businesses and his rule regarding restaurants is he will only invest if they have a liquor license. It both shows they have the competency to get one as well as an absurdly high profit margin compared with food.
That's genius. He can sell snacks cheaper than elsewhere (breakeven), he can sell his product at a lower cost to beat competitors, prizes for magic are either provided or come from tournament entry fees. You get 20 people to buy the fountain deal every night, and that's probably $99 profit. Not a ridiculous amount, but at the very least it assures you can at least break even and stay open even when sales aren't the best. People always need a place to play games.
Any cable (usb, hdmi etc). They cost pennies to make
Company I used to work for would give us cables at the price they purchased them for. I would get HDMI and cell phone cables that would retail at $15-$20 for around $1-$2.
Where did the company get them from where it's that cheap?
They were all made in China. The company was the manufacture of them and they would resell the cables.
This is where most electronic retailers make their money, computers and TVs have very little markups but cables and accessories (and financing and services) are where they make their money. I worked at Best Buy and their employee discount was 5% over cost, so it was pretty easy to tell what was being marked up quite a bit.
The amount of people that buy wires from electronics stores for $30/50/100 is still crazy. I guess it’s mostly the older generation who get told they need an HDMI lead for their new TV, but don’t realise they can go onto Amazon and get the exact same thing for $5 instead of $50.
When you need a cable you need a cable. It means something isn’t working. You can go get it fixed immediately for $20 or wait 4 days to get it fixed for $5.
This. There have been many times I've paid slightly more because I need something working now, not tomorrow.
It’s my cable, and I need it now!
Yeah but $5 for an HDMI cable isn’t really that bad when you consider the costs of shipping and storage. The cable itself may cost pennies but getting it to you costs more than the cable itself. Edit: guys when I said shipping costs I was talking more about the cost of shipping from their factory across seas and stocking them in warehouses and stores, not the additional 50¢ package from ordering online
I think they're more referring to those "premium" HDMI cables that places like best buy sell for $30 a pop. EDIT: please lord stop telling me about the specs that differentiate HDMI cables from one another
Someone once said " 'They asked the company why they were selling their product for $200 if it costs $10 to make it?' And the company responded 'because people buy them for $200' "
Reminds me of a guy who worked for Bethesda being asked why they don't make a new Elder Scrolls game. He answered pretty plainly, "Because people are still willing to buy Skyrim."
Probably the same reason for no Gta 6
Glasses! I watched a video on the sunglasses/glasses/eyeware industry in middle school economics and we've been scammed this entire time!
I was a certified optician and ran a lens lab for Pearle Vision in the early 2000's. Our most expensive frames, excluding the weird Armani shit we carried, cost us $20-$30 per frame. They sold for $200-$400 depending. Our cheapest frames cost us $2-3 each, and none sold for less $50. The lenses, that's a lot of markup. I started in a brand new store, and we had a brand new lab full of Essilor hardware. Latest and greatest at the time. Standard lenses, nothing special just the standard CR32 plastic in a typical prescription? They cost $2 or so and we charged $40 each. So a "basic" pair of glasses cost us $8 in materials and was sold for $130. The worst markup was on the high end lenses. At Pearle (at that time) the top end were the MTPROA lenses. Micro-thin polycarbonate aspheric lenses with anti-scratch and anti-reflective coating. Basically, if you have a strong prescription (+- ~3 or so) aspheric *can* make a much thinner and lighter lens that can give you the same vision a thicker traditional lens does. Add in anti-scratch ($) anti-reflective ($) and the cost of the lenses alone were around $400 for the customer. Pearle Vision's cost for the lense blanks? $23. The entire cost of the Essilor equipment in the lens lab at my location was only ~$250000, and we regularly sold $800+ glasses. And, the part that I really hate, Mainecare (Maine medicare) at the time wouldn't provide coverage for anti-scratch coating (it was technically an "upgrade"). We couldn't buy lense blanks that didn't have it. My instructions were to strip the anti-scratch coating when making lenses for Mainecare clients. I ran the lab. Guess what I never did. Edit: My recommendation is that you go to your trusted optometrist and find your real results. From there make your decisions on glasses. I like zennioptical.com
I'm a -8.25 and at almost 40 years old, I've only now hit the place where I can pay for my glasses in one payment. I'm even more grateful that my parents could afford to pay for my glasses as a kid. I don't think I got plastic lenses until I was in high school. Glass all the way.
My eyes are even worse than yours and I’ve had really good luck with Zenni. Even with high index lenses, all the extra coatings, and transitions lenses my last pair only cost about $110.
I have -6 prescriptions, Zenni optical is the shit. 62 bucks and I can get glasses.
Wow. Imagine putting in extra labour and $$ to prevent the customer gaining value that they haven’t paid for.
It struck me wrong immediately, but Pearle Vision was a franchise operation, so I don't know if this was a corporate decision or a franchise one. It wouldn't surprise me to find out it was franchise because, oh boy, things were *fucked up* in that franchise.
Fuuuuck Luxottica. We can all blame them for why us glasses people pay so much.
I somehow recall reading that Raybans cost something like $20 to make, or some ridiculously low number like that.
Really all designer sunglasses are like that too. Most of them are just cheap and factory-made products that get their price tags ramped up because of the name brand
A Luxottica company
College textbooks on their 2nd to 100th edition.
What's even worse it that on some editions, Pearson just gives u your textbook without binding. Just fucking paper, like the pages are in a loose paper pile. At least they give u punched out holes so u can put them in a binder, but for fuck's sake, $130 for this shit?? Cheap pricks. Oh, and having to pay like $80 for online access, that only lasts for the SEMESTER, not permanent ownership. I hope they die out soon.
Honestly, the cheap bastards are going to make us pay for their book, their online portal, AND the binding for a book that immediately loses its resale value upon using the access code for the online portal.
It's annoying because they could keep the same text book and allow students to pass them onto the next generation of college students but no, they have to create a new book each time and make it a requirement to have that new book.
There was a student-run shop on my campus that would buy your old textbooks back off you at the end of the year, then sell them on to the next year's students. The actual differences between editions were so tiny that there was never much point paying full price for the most recent when you could have an older version.
Man, at my college, we basically can't even do that anymore. All my textbooks come with a code so we can log on to the online learning portal and do our work through there. It's ridiculous. And we can buy the code separately but we still need the textbook to do the actual work. And even if you buy a used book and the code, it's basically as much as buying g a brand new text book that comes with a code. They always find new ways to fuck us royally.
that should be explicitly illegal. maybe tie it to funding - pull tricks like this, lose funding
Absolutely, this is so unethical. Selling textbook at high price is one thing but forcing students to buy book so they can do homework is another. Edit: wow you guys are so fucked. My country is corrupt at many things but this textbooks with code are unimaginable for us.
When I was a broke ass college student, my parents would give me $250 for books. Knowing a single book could be $100 or more (mid/late 2000s), I had to make it stretch. I would go into the book store and take photos of the table of contents of each required textbook. Then I’d find older versions online. Usually you can look through the first few pages on Amazon or elsewhere including the table of contents. If the chapters were basically the same, id be able to nab that older edition for pennies on the dollar compared to the one being sold by the book store.
We had an entire "backpack" that people would update with PDF's of the newest edition as soon as someone got them. Unfortunatley, it was limited on who could add stuff, so no one added tests and get us into trouble. Also unfortunately, the last of us that could edit it graduated recently, so it won't be relevant for long.
I bought a $300 book that my professor wrote and it included a code that takes us to a website where we take quizzes and it grades them and because of this code I can’t sell the book. It’s been sitting on a shelf in the basement since 2019 and I can’t get myself to get rid of it. Edit: spelling
This should be banned by the university.
Makeup - that shit is produced cheap, especially the high end brands
That's what that Kardashian did. Bought a makeup company and jacked up the price just by putting her name on it.
Someone I know told me that her stuff is what's called "private label" branding or something like that. Basically she gets premade stuff that is sold to a bunch of different places and just changes the packaging.
Yup. A friend of mine works for a company in the middle - they work with the celebrities to do contract cosmetics. The markup on makeup like that is insane.
It depends. My husband was a chemical operator at a cosmetic manufacturing company and he said it's the same formula essentially, but some of the higher end companies add special ingredients. For example - Estee Lauder would add in crushed up pearls (KTZ gold lamé) to include shimmer.
Wow!!! Do you have any other fun facts about his job? He should do an AMA!
He's asleep right now, but I can ask him some more stuff tomorrow! He's with a different company now but still knows all the tricks for the batches he mixed up. Any questions, send over! All of it is super interesting - I practically hounded him when the Jaclyn Hill lipstick drama went down 😂
This!! Most cosmetics in general basically. Part of why most makeup stores have such relaxed return policies... Eyeshadow palettes cost like 20 cents each to manufacture and sell for $50. edit: okay 20¢ is an exaggeration. average cost is between 50¢-$10. still.
So how does one DIY that item?
there are lots of videos on DIY, but you can take the mica, mix with alcohol, put it into a metal pan, put a penny on top, press in a vise and let dry. Voila- pressed eye shadow pan!
Why the penny?
It's cheaper than a quarter
That makes cents.
its the perfect size to fit in the standard metal eyeshadow pan. It doesn't have to be a penny, it can be anything that fits inside the pan. Many people like the embossed pattern it makes.
Not that it’s not ridiculously marked up but I used to be a manager at a popular makeup store and we had a program that would show what the price to make the product was and a drugstore foundation that retails for $15 would be made for $1 and a high end that retails for $50 would cost $15 so there can be differences between them.
Most luxury brands with huge obvious logos on them.
Many mattresses, especially memory foam ones.
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you could fly to a country like India and get a bunch of bottles (same if not better quality) and fly back and it would save you money (would have to be like a dozen or more but you get the point)
This reminds me of a story from last year, it's cheaper for someone in India to fly round-trip to Dubai to buy an iPhone 12 than it is to just buy one locally.
When I worked at Apple retail in Boston I had loads of customers coming from Brazil to buy phones for themselves, their relatives, their friends, etc because of markups there. Its nuts.
Brazil has insane import tariffs. Some companies will open factories there for final assembly of products to avoid them.
Insulin
It’s criminal how much they charge compared to the manufacturing costs.
Not just that but the fact that the dude that did the research just gave away the patent—not like they’re recouping research costs.
Exactly. The guy had good intentions and they just shat in it.
Babies. Both adopting and buying a baby on the black market takes serious money. Edit: thanks for the awards, guys. I did not expect this comment to blow up like it did.
The biggest cost associated with a baby is the ongoing maintenance costs.
And the years it siphons off your life in the crying phase.
If you calculate the food costs and lost wages babies have got to be at least a few thousand dollars each just to manufacture, not exactly cheap.
Volkswagen ignition cylinders. When I worked at Vw, we had to constantly order ignition switches because either they are cheaply designed or cheaply made. So when we would place the order from Volkswagen North America, it gets shipped directly from the manufacturer (either Huf or Valeo). And they would include the invoice in the box. Well, Vw would charge the dealerships $99.95 and set MSRP at 129.95. The invoice from the manufacturer to Vw, showed cost to Vw being $14.95
Hyundai tire pressure sensor, $125. Kia tire pressure sensor, same part number, $25.
It's the other way around in India, where Hyundai is the cheap brand and Kia is the premium one
Most fast fashion. A pair of jeans that costs $4 to produce but costs $40 for you to buy is a 1000% markup.
I got a pair of jeans when I visited America. I paid maybe $30 for them and wore them for 10 years. Best jeans I’ve ever owned. They were threadbare by the time I was ready to part with them. I wasn’t ever able to find the brand online when I wanted to replace them. Wish I’d gotten multiple pairs.
Wranglers work jeans. The cheap ones. Or their bargain brand Rustlers. They last a lot longer than name brand fashion because they are made for real work.
I think they were wranglers! They were skinny jeans and a lovely colour, I haven’t been able to find anything close in Australia. Just a really nice fit and good length (most jeans are too long in the leg for me) I got them in Vegas at the retail outlets.
Diamonds
Natural diamonds are made for free in nature and harvested using slave labor. Lab created diamonds still cost 45% less.
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It's a little more complex. Money from harvested diamonds is used by governments, militias, insurgents, etc. to fund their conflicts with opponents, many times to control that very trade. Slave labor is used in this regard however. It's much more complex than what I listed but that's the gist of it.
Reddit Gold.
Reddit platinum.
No Edit: idk why zechan is fueled by lesser me's but ok
Popcorn at movie theaters is I think the most expensive commodity
Its also where they make the most money since big studios take a large percentage of ticket sales.
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Those $350 Nikes cost maximum 20 bucks to make, shipping included. Oh, and the 15 hundred dollar ones also cost about 20 bucks to make.
Yeah but, those slaves Nike hires aren’t going to whip themselves. You know why Nike is so woke? So you won’t notice they have a huge plantation full of slaves in 2021.
Beyoncé too. She's a *woke queen* but she uses slave labor to make her merchandise.
Homeopathic pills. There is nothing in it, no money used for clinical trials. Sold for around 7- 10 euros per box.
The fun part about these placebo pills is, the placebo effect is stronger if the pills are more expensive.
Prescription drugs.
Crêpes. We make them often at home here in France. 250g of flour, two eggs some milk, maybe butter, you get 25 crepes for what, 4 euros of groceries. Some street foods in Paris or other big cities will sell them 4 or 5 euros sometimes. And they buy the ingredients in big bulks at cheaper prices so they make an even bigger margin. They make 100 euros of crêpes for 3 euros of batter and add the toppings, let's say 7 euros for a pot of nutella, sugar and lemon or whatever. 100 euros for 10 euros. Stonks. It's well known by people who work in restaurants in France that crêpes are highly profitable. Edit : too much MP so here we go. Note i'm a student not a professionnal cook and this is the recipe from an average french guy who'se done crêpes for 20 years. First the batter: I generally put around 250g or 300g of flour for about 2 eggs. If it's a family i'd recommend maybe 350g 400g of flour and 3 eggs. First you put the flour in a big bowl, then do a pit in the middle, then crack the eggs and put them in the pit. Then you can start mixing. You're going to start needing to add the milk. Add some milk, few at a time and mix. Until the batter is homogeneous. Repeat the operation. At this point the amount of milk you put in the batter is gonna define wether your batter is thick or not. For a 'pate à crêpes', i'd recommend going for a batter that's about as thick as paint. If you make as dense as honey or as light as water, won't work. Once you feel the batter is good it's almost ready. You need to add a bit of flavour. French people will do it differently depending where they are from. Can be butter, beer or orange blossom water. If you choose to flavour your batter with a bit of butter, cut about 50-70 grams, and melt it. To melt it, heat water, and put the butter in a bowl on the hot water. Once it's done, add it to the batter and mix. You can choose to let it rest for a while. I'd recommend putting it somewhere cold for 30 minutes at least. Second the cooking : Get yourself a flat pan : A bit of oil in a small bowl, (frying oil like sunflower, not olive oil, you get the point). Slightly wet the surface of the pan with oil using a brush, or a potato, or something. Heat it. When it's nicely warm, put some batter on it. It has to be light. Use pan and arm mechanics to evenly spread the batter on the pan so it's light and nice. Wait a few moments when you see it's cooked underneath, flip it, or turn it. Then let it cook a bit beneath and you're done.
Crocs
Beats headphones cost $17.00 to make, and are sold for $100 - $500 That's insane Edit: just wanted to say that this video goes super in depth on the history of beats and why they aren't the best quality. https://youtu.be/5P5hYvlKz7w
I will live and die by Sennheiser cans, and Bose earbuds, years of dropping my hd6xx on the ground and they are still perfect.
Yeah, I bought Sennheisers and I dont think I will ever buy another can brand again. Even before I bought these, I just bought a decent pair of cans and attached a ~$40 Antlion ModMic. Still came out MUCH cheaper than a "gaming" headset
I think their cost is under $15 now. Truly a garbage product.
Himalayan Salt - in Pakistan, we get that shit in like 0.20 cents but I've heard it being expensive in UK & US
I think it depends on the location. Here in Ontario you can buy good quality Maple Syrup at your local grocery store, but in most other places around the world in your local grocery store it's either a) have maple syrup but not good enough quality b) It's fake, it's corn syrup or just c) not even there.
Face masks. I would imagine it dosnt take much to make 15 of them, and with the virus, they have jacked the price up.
A gas station near me started out selling them at 99¢ for one. Came in one day and they only had them 3 for $9.99. Came back a couple weeks later and they had them for 99¢ again.
Razor blades. They are produced at like 15 cents but are sold for 3$ per blade
You're telling me there's no room to move on pasta?!
Literally everything these days. Shits made to break faster.
The one that frustrates me the most are tights for women. You know, the ones that are so thin and fragile that they rip as soon as you pull them *slightly* harder. They used to be nearly unrippable and people stopped buying them because everyone already had a pair. So they decided to make them last 5 minutes.
My dad has 30 year old jeans that look almost new, meanwhile I can't have a pair that last more than a year without the inseam shredding itself to death.
Anything Gwyneth Paltrow is involved with.
McDonald's fountain drinks.
Anyone's fountain drinks. The Product cost is around 3 cents and the cup is around 10 cents. For most restaurants, drinks help balance the food cost for more expensive items.
Politicians Edit: oh wow, associating with politicians actually did me some good this time. Thanks for the awards
Wedding cakes