Bargain or False Economy ?
After years of observation I have come to the conclusion that bargains are not always bargains.
Yes sometimes you can find real bargains, like the summer dresses I brought last year, after searching many high street shops to no avail I found three stunning dresses in the charity shop and together they cost less than one in a high street store, bargain.
But like many of you I have brought things thinking it was a Bargain, just to find that it was false economy and it has cost me more in the long run. A prime example is when I brought my iPad, a friend of ours had a mobile phone shop and said he could get me a second hand iPad, only used for three weeks at a good price, has it got a slot for the Internet, I asked, yes was the answer, so I brought it. What did I find no Internet, unable to take it back that was that, but I had payed more than a new non Internet iPad for it, great. You see this Bargainturned out to be false economy, as it didn’t do the job I wanted, although it works on wi-fi which is just as good and I love it.
We all make these sort of errors of judgement and to be fair they don’t have a huge impact on our lives, they really don’t matter, for £20 or so, most of us can live with the mistake.
However then you get the major errors, lets take our landlord. Antonio has built a nice little house next to a huge shed, in a beautiful little Spanish village. We moved in a year and a half ago, and everything has been great, he is a brilliant landlord. However his false economy is now showing. The house has no solid foundations, so now huge cracks are appearing in almost every room. This is not a problem to us, but at some point in the future it maybe to him. With time and the tiny earthquakes we get here, he could find it just starts to fall down.
By far the most outrageous Bargain hunter I have ever seen is an older gentleman we will call him Pound Coin (PC for short), moved to Spain from England, his story is totally incredible and his false economy in the four years our paths have crossed has cost him thousands.
Bargain
PC brought a plot of land, with a ruin on it, in a tiny Hamlet a 20 minute drive to the nearest shop or bar. Then this 70 year man decided he would live in a caravan until he builds his log cabin, ok ambitious but nothing wrong with that. What he did next was the start of a string of false economies, which are hard to believe.
The caravan, PC managed to get the agreement of the locals to put his caravan on a communal area, well done PC. But he didn’t go down the road and buy a nice little caravan, put it on the agreed spot and crack on with the building, oh no.
PC brought the largest mobile home you can, and in England. False economy. You can buy them in Spain, but this one was a good price. Really ? After shipping it to Spain for a serious amount of money, this bargain ended up costing a lot more than buying on here.
Think the neighbours where shocked when the little caravan turned out to be a 28ft mobile home.
PC makes regular trips back to the UK, to collect things like a 10ft canoe, why? we are miles from the sea and there are no running rivers here large enough for it. On these trips he also stocks up with groceries from Lidls, again why ? We have Lidls here and they sell the same thing, for near as dam it the same price. Mad but not really false economy.
PC’s biggest bargain turned into false economy on a grand scale. His car, he had been having trouble with it and being so isolated had to arrange for friends to collect him to go shopping when it was in the garage. The garage told him it was more than likely the head gasket(I am told this is a major job), but to know for sure they would have to replace it, because getting it out of the car would break it. Not prepared to pay the price the professionals charge, in his wisdom he decided to get the local Jack of all trades, master of none to do it. The result was PC being left without a car for a long period of time, relying on other people’s good will to chauffeur him about. The garage would have taken a week and lent him a car. More than a month without said car and Jack had finished, or so he said. PC got his car back just, after having fallen out with Jack, who to be fair does not like being told he is wrong, slow or anything else really. Jack had threaten to leave it in bits as he had had to wait for a part for PC’s in England, because it was cheaper.
Guess what the car, now complete with a new head gasket was making different noises and other things where not working. Surprise surprise it is always false economy to get major work done on a car by someone that hasn’t got a clue.
PC ended up limping back to the UK and getting a garage there to replace the engine. Now would it not have been easier to just get it done by a professional in the first place and it would have been an awful lot cheaper.
So next time you are on the look out for a bargain, think twice, is it really a bargain or is it just false economy ?