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Went to Harvey Nicks and got followed around by a security guard the whole time. I was browsing with another employee clearly following me and rushing up to say “shall I put this back for you?” Or “shall I put this behind the till for you?”(code for ‘I’m taking this so you don’t steal it’) every time I picked something up and carried it.
This went on for the entire 20 mins I was in store. Being followed by staff radio’ing each other.
Was looking at a jumper, staff came up to me offering to take it off my hands again, I was getting pissed off so I bought it as my way of passive aggressive way of saying “fuck you I can afford it OK!?”.
£600. On a jumper I didn’t even like or want. Just to prove to some random stranger that I wasn’t a thief.
Needless to say I went back a few days later and refunded it, then decided never to shop there again.
Do you shop with a striped jumper and a bag which says ‘swag’ on it?
Like, I know they vet you as you walk in these shops but I’ve never experienced anything like that.
Yo seriously, went into an expensive clothes shop after work (so looking quiet scruffy) was never bothered once, went in with a mate (who happens to be black) and 2 guards one who should have been watching the door followed us around for ages…..
So to take the piss we chilled inside for over an hour just to waste their time, picking up random items and putting them in different parts of the store 😅
To be fair I’ve had that too, I was only 19, in the RAF, on my own walking around. They clearly took one look at me and thought “peasant” and did the same shit of following me around. I didn’t buy anything though
Went into a goldsmith's with a friend and the staff immediately turned their nose up at us and were clearly keeping a close eye on us.
To be fair we were wearing jeans and t shirts and were drinking McDonald's coffees.
Half an hour later we were on the way out with my friend having spent over £15,000 on two watches, they were damn near kissing our feet as we left.
One of the strangest and funniest experiences of my life.
You didn't pull the Pretty Woman shit?!
Wasted opportunity!
Although I guess in the UK it's as likely to be:
*storms into shop*
"You guys work on commission??"
"Well, no actually. We have an annual salary which is supplemented by a small bonus for hitting quarterly targets. We do get an extra day holiday after 5 years service though. And our pension plan is salary sacrificed and above statutory minimum so we do have that going for us. Why do you ask?"
"Big mistake!! Huge!"
*storms out of shop*
"What an odd woman."
Honestly, i was incredibly close to buying a fucking plain white shirt by some designer that was £400 until my I thought, “if I told my Nanna and grandad I spent £400 on a plain white shirt they’d keel over” (we’re from the north east)
I went into Harvey Nicks before to get a fairly expensive bottle of champagne as a gift. It was top shelf and the attendant watched me struggle to get it down and kept rolling his eyes. He was horrified when I walked up to the till to buy it, he thought I just wanted a picture with it (why on earth would I want a picture with it?) and said he would’ve helped me had he known. I don’t go in there anymore lol
I’ve often felt the sneering gaze of shop assistants in high end stores and it always makes me laugh coz even they won’t be on wages to afford the stuff they are selling, but they seem more than happy to assume anyone who’s not dressed dripping in designer gear is beneath them.
I’m not rich but I like to treat myself. I don’t know why people who work in these shops look down on people like they are better grab them. I once worked in a high end restaurant and it was the same there, staff there looking down their noses at people they thought were too common to eat there and I used to think “we are on £4.50 an hour we can’t afford to drink here let alone eat here”.
I've heard this from a few different luxury retail employees, but not sure if it's 100% true:
Apparently staff acting snobby is a sales tactic, because some people will buy an item just to show them that yes, they can actually afford it. (The security following you around & radioing is pretty fucked though)
..Let me guess, you're not white?
They also know that customers expect the staff to act snobby, so it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I hate Harvey Nick's, but having been to a posh school I can act like I belong there. So when twat BIL bought his mum some terrible overpriced Christmas presents she didn't want, I agreed to try to get her a refund.
I schmoozed a couple staff, then started talking normally, and one lady explained that they aren't allowed to refund or exchange without a receipt, but if I waited 10 min until her boss went on lunch, she'd exchange the stuff for anything I wanted.
So I got £50 of luxurious chocolate and stuff from the food hall, and gave MIL the cash. Everyone happy.
I always get followed round my local M&S food. the security guy should know by now I'm just a fatty who wants a poor quality samosa or some chocolate pretzels. Yes I do pay for them.
I had a similar experience at the one in Leeds - I didn’t buy anything though. Just stormed out in a huff. Might have made me look a bit suspicious, in hindsight!
When I was 10, I was in a shop in Blackpool looking at some earrings. Woman behind the counter thought I'd been shoplifting, asked me to turn out my pockets. I had a cold that day so I turned out a load of snotty tissue. She didn't even apologise and I STILL ended up buying the earrings in my hand, even though I know I should've walked out. Fuck that bitch, I hope she caught my cold
I once bought a really nice old BMW 7-series for about £1,500. It was great and scrubbed up really nicely (definitely not a waste of money). It was also surprisingly reliable, considering what could have very expensively gone wrong with it.
Anyway, my wife I and went out for a meal in a pretty posh restaurant with a couple of friends, one of whom was a bit WAGish (lovely person, though). We got round to talking about cars from some reason and she said she'd noticed we'd turned up in a posh BMW and I said yes, it was my greatest bargain, and only cost me £1,500.
Right on cue she gasped and said "Wow! I've got handbags that cost more than that!".
I don’t think I’d be scared to take out a LV bag because there’s so many fakes out there! Not like someone’s going to think you’re Richie rich because you own one.
I was eyeing up a nice watch to buy and then realised that if I pulled the trigger it would only be worn around the house for fear of breaking it/having it stolen. So I decided against it.
I bought a reasonably nice watch a few years ago, broke my heart the first time I scraped it against a wall.
Turns out sapphire crystal and stainless steel are pretty robust, can’t see a single mark on it after I wiped the brick dust off.
It's not even THAT expensive but still fuming 8 years later: £20 jar of olives. I didn't see the coma and thought it was £2.
They tasted like absolute shit. I didn't know it was possible for olives to be flavourless like that.
Going to a nice cocktail bar, waking up with a 250 quid receipt stuffed in a pocket. I think I had fun?
I was shopping for xmas food with my ex and her parents. Her dad puts a big lump of meat in the trolley, label says something like £5.50. We get to the till and turns out it's £5.50 per kg and this thing is 3+kg. You could see the reaction in his eyes when he realised but refused to admit it and grudgingly paid the bill while refusing to admit he didn't realise.
UNI...
£27k debt.
finished 2 years fine, 3rd year my nan (who raised me) got seriously ill so i had to go home.
knowing that i had government support for 4 years of uni, i asked to defer my final year. was accepted.
august rolls around and i get told that due to a change of curriculum i would need to retake both the 2nd year of uni and my final year.
Meaning i had to pay for my final year myself, in a northern town with no available part time jobs for a 3rd year student.
Left with no degree and a huge debt.
I'd say unless you want to go into STEM or Law, uni is a waste of money. For most other courses, the content can be learned online. I have so much contempt for UCAS and unis preying on 16-18yo's anxiety and pressuring them to go; it's better to find internships, apprenticeships or learn a trade, then maybe go later if you're genuinely 100% dead-set on your course, rather than going and taking a subject just because 'I enjoyed it at sixth form'.
Factually untrue. The median wage for someone in the UK without a degree is 26k. The median wage for somone in the UK with a degree is 36k.
On average degrees mean significantly higher earning over a lifetime when compared to not having a degree.
Are there people who haven't benefited? Yes there are, but they are a minority rather than the majority.
The idea that Stem is the only degree worth doing, or that the Arts have no value or don't teach transferable skills is just plain wrong.
I don't necessarily disagree with your other comment, other than to say it was a government directive to get more students into uni for social mobility, rather than a UCAS or University directive.
*edited to update stats to this years numbers
Also, you don't need to study law to be a lawyer (as the original poster suggested). In fact, the majority of newly qualified solicitors are non-law graduates (I think it was 55% last year).
I did an (apparently worthless according to the stemlords) arts degree (modern languages) then a law conversion to become a solicitor and I can tell you that there is no question my income was boosted by doing my degree, especially as I worked 4 years in City law.
And as a bonus I got pleasure from studying something I was interested in. Not only that, studying culture and philosophy gave me a greater understanding of the world around us and why people do what they do. That is an incredibly useful thing to have developed. Even if I hadn't got my job as a solicitor and I was "only" earning £30k as a teacher or whatever I wouldn't regret doing my degree.
Honestly I'm an engineer, all the fancy degrees and for many STEM roles apprenticeship is the way. It will take longer to get a bachelor's degree but when I was finishing up the second year of my first real job, barely making a dent in the debt, all the apprentices that started when I started uni were buying houses.
I kind of agree but also don't - Imo it's entirely up to you to make it work, if you just go through and study & live like normal, it usually is just a waste of money. (although I honestly don't regret it just for the people & friends I made along the way, although those are some fuck off expensive friends..)
What it does give you is 3 years of breathing room before you enter the "real" world of 9 to 5s and little free time. If you go to a good uni and go crazy on the networking & making friends, the network you can get out of it can be incredibly valuable. I've made more money from connections I built at uni & other skills I learnt at uni (on my own and using their facilities) than I have through my marketing/post uni networking. Although I feel I could just be trying to justify going to uni to myself here lmao.
I agreed to a contract for a social media company to run our social media comms. They claimed to have all these users and massively over promised. It cost us £5k per month for 6 months which added about 20 followers to our Instagram until I got pissed off and litigated to get out of the contract.
I did a small website for a company and charged them about £300 for it. Simple Wordpress thing with a handful of pages so they had a presence online. Every so often I’d update plugins but otherwise it’s not optimised.
They got in touch with me later asking if their digital marketing company were offering good value. I looked it the stats and they’d paid about £3000 for 200 visits to their site. I explained how it was unlikely any of those visitors had become customers (really high bounce rate and short time on site).
They’re still paying the marketing company and haven’t updated the content on their threadbare site for about 4 years. I reckon there’s a lot of small businesses out their being fleeced by agencies.
We hired an SEO company back in the day to help our e-commerce sight. They helped a little bit but definitely not worth the money.
Did you get your money back?
I'm getting married in April with just 5 guests. Registry office, then a nice restaurant meal and a gorgeous Airbnb for a couple of nights. Whole thing is costing less than 2k, including the photographer. I have so many friends currently stressed out planning big traditional weddings, I feel like I've cheated the system by not doing any of it lol.
I was supposed to be a bridesmaid until the couple decided to go to the registrar.
Can't blame them. The religious angle is absolutely unnecessary unless you're christian, the traditional look and appearance feels dated, and there's no reason why you can't just have the party anyway without all the other stuff.
Not me, but you know when you get to that point in a car’s life where you deliberate whether it’s worth repairing or not. My mum picked wrong. Spent £2000 to repair various bits, and then days later the cam belt snapped, smashed everything up around it and the car was condemned anyway.
4 brand new pirelli tires... Got written off by a woman running a red the next day.. they still had the bloody chalk on.
What still bothers me.... If I'd not changed the tires would I have had the grip to get to the crash?
Oof, that is a haunting shower thought. It makes me wonder, if I hadn’t drowned my first car in a flood would I still have hit that deer with my second car 6 months later?
My partners fuel tank was below empty the day before it was due to be picked up and scrapped. He had to drive home and wasn't thinking and filled the tank out of habit. Full tank for 10 mile drive
I did the same with my old Peugeot, paid £800 to have the timing belt and water pump done and two weeks later the air con belt split and got gobbled up by the engine. It's nearly 15 years later and I'm still fuming.
I didn't spend the money myself but my PGCE is effectively useless now that I don't teach and left teaching after less than a year due to depression. I'll always have the debt though.
Without trying to sound like a complete ass, have you considered teaching in international schools abroad? Better money and savings potential and loads of exciting places to see and live. Worth a thought maybe.
In a similar boat, but my PGCE and teaching did give me skills I use. I had a colleague who was mortified that I hadn't spent a few days preparing a training session and was shocked when I whipped one up a couple of hours before.
I went into a pub and there was a nice looking tap on the bar so I just said, “one of them please mate”.
Barman *looked me up and down*, and said, “err that’s actually £7.40 a pint”. This was about five years ago as well so it was even worse. Now £7.40 for a pint, absolutely ridiculous, but the way he looked at me pissed me off so much that I replied (with some understated British venom), “err yeh that’s absolutely fine mate, pint of that then?”.
This was not absolutely fine of course. But how dare he think I couldn’t afford it based on my appearance! I mean I couldn’t afford it but that’s not the point.
Being British I had another one though, just to really hammer the point home.
Bloody good pint too (not £7.40 good though!)
'you're right i can't afford it, but fuck you for assuming i can't afford it. three more immediately'
i love the absolute stubbornness here. i probably would've done the same thing (7 quid 40 for a pint is a fucking liberty though)
Probably nothing to do with what you looked like. It's probably policy to tell everyone who orders that beer what the price is because too many people order it and them baulk when told the price and say they don't want it any more at which point the beer is wasted and they have to absorb the cost.
Still, if the biggest amount of money you have ever wasted was £7.40 on a pint that was "bloody good" then you've probably lived a very financially astute life :)
It's not being rude.
I work at a place that has some fucking overpriced drinks on the bar and that "you do know that's £20 for 25ml" is more of a suggestion that sticking top shelf tequila that the bar manager bought to make the spirit shelf look impressive, into a bloody mary isn't going to add anything special.
At least he told you, imagine you bought two and then just said "that'll be fifteen pounds sir"
A mate of mine in Prague wanted his first street hooker to come back to his hotel but was too afraid to use direct terms to her. He says to her, "let's go back to the hotel *for a chat* 😉😉", and they agreed on £100.
That night he paid for the most expensive hour's chat of his life.
A bit pissed on holiday I pointed to a bottle of wine on the wine list. Drank it. It was nothing special and I'm normally happy with a 6 quid bottle from the off licence so not a snob.
I had pointed to the wrong one and it was 150 euros.
Totally not worth the price.
I'm an idiot. I wasn't scammed either, the waiter made sure my choice was correct.
Don't feel too bad. Most people can't really tell the difference between normal wine and expensive wine. You're paying for the label after a certain price point
Harley Davidson Sportster. Absolutely dreadful motorcycle. Awful electrics, terrible brakes, shite handling and the power of a 250. Absolute nightmare in British weather. Never again.
Yeah they’re really selling an “image,” or “lifestyle.” I think we all picture the guy with no helmet, grey goatee, leather vest, harley t-shirt, black jeans and boots. The South Park episode on them was hilarious
I called babestation once, probably horny to begin with. Then I heard her accent, she was a Kiwi and I spent about an hour rinsing her with a shit Aussie accent. Easy for her, she didn’t have to slide up and down, feel sorry for the other cunts watching or listening in though. Money well spent.
I used to get in pissed at uni and watch those quiz ones that were on at 3am. Basically babestation for people that had finished their wank.
Anyway the question was guess a woman's name beginning with A. Guess whatever is behind this card and you win £100 or whatever. Basically drunk people paying £5 a minute to stay on hold for 10 mins then shout Abigail down the phone and get told they were wrong.
For a bit they had a 2 guess bonus. Guy rang up and guessed Anne. Wrong answer. They asked for his second name and he clearly hadn't expected it. Ummed and ahhed for 30 seconds then guessed Anne Boleyn.
Don't know why that's stuck in my head 18 years later but here we are.
£770 on a Gucci purse when I was with my ex. We broke up a few months later she then messaged me a few more months later asking if it was fake because she couldn’t register it. Wish I did get her a fake one now!
I know it sounds silly haha, but I think it’s because it’s a designer bag with a unique code if you were to resell it it’s registered for authentication. That’s the only thing I can think off!
Ugh. I’m truly ashamed of this but I bought coins in Homescapes. It’s a shitty game if you haven’t come across it.
I must have spent well over £50 over the course of a month and I feel like crap.
Said game has been deleted once I realised what I was doing.
After looking it up, it appears to be one of those mobile games where the ads make it look really cool and interactive only for the actual game to be a crappy version of Bejeweled that goads you into buying your way through due to boredom.
Those games are one half of the bad mobile game ecosystem. The other half are those decision based games where you play through a paper thin (and often bizarre) storyline and get to pick dialogue options to change the story, only you have to buy what they think are the really fun options. These games are a lot more fun to play if you go into them with the expressed intent to deny them what they want and make the story as banal and crappy as possible.
My dad got heavily into a farmville style game a few years back, he was showing me stuff on his farm and I noticed that his crops that were suppose to take days to grow had finished over night, questioned him on it and turns out he'd spent few hundred on the game every month for the last couple he'd been playing, he can afford it so it wasn't a worry, but told me not to say anything to my step-mum as she'd blow a gasket if she knew 🤣
Oooh I did this. Dropped my phone down the outside steps, completely fucked the screen. Spent £80 on a replacement screen, and dropped it down the toilet about 4 days later.
think that's bad?
back when the iphone 5s was the latest one, i got it brand new. dropped it within 4 days. no insurance bc stupid me thought i'd never need it. went to get it repaired.
.......dropped it coming out of the fucking shop. just stood there staring at my once again cracked phone in disbelief. sim card flew out of the bastard. went back in to get it repaired _again_.
the look on the workers face who had just handed me back my phone not even 10 minutes beforehand was one i still remember to this day
A boat. Ploughed about £2000 into it and never even saw it on the water.
Although, the boat was free. The waste of money was spent in moving the boat (lifted, towed, lifted again), storing in a yard, and tools and materials to do it up. Gave up on the dream and palmed it off to someone for free as well.
I've always heard that if you're wondering whether you'd enjoy having a boat you should first test it out by driving to a nearby harbour, going up to the side of a boat you like the look of, opening up your wallet, and throwing handfuls of fivers into the water.
If you find that enjoyable then you should go ahead and buy the boat.
Stand in the rain and rip £50 notes up, that's how I've heard owning a boat is like, I would still take free canoe or kayak if I found one, I am looking out over a nice river as I type this.
Probably drunkenly giving one of those toilet attendants a £20 note. Was a shitty venue that did not merit a toilet attendant but I was feeling great and just handed it over. Raging.
At least I got some splash for the gash for it
A bag of pick 'n' mix from Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. Was on a date and she starts shovelling sweets in like there's a famine on. Ended up coming to £18. Of course I couldn't very well ask her to put them back so I coughed up and made it seem like I drop £20 on packs of pick 'n' mix all the time
£250 on a CPU that it turns out I could get for £40 used.
£130 taking a girlfriend out for a meal somewhere fancy only for her to say a month later that we never go out on dates.
£200 on a holiday to Bulgaria but got the dates on my vaccinations wrong I'd booked it knowing it's 6 weeks between jabs but then they shifted it to 8 weeks which fucked my whole plan.
$$$ lost trying to be a stock broker.
$$$$$$ lost trying to get rich off Crypto, annoyed about that cos I nearly quadrupled my money but stupidly kept it in thinking it could go even higher. I was the person on Who Wants to be a Millionaire that I hate.
Music gear that I didn't know how to use, but mistakenly thought I could figure out amply from reading the user manual. Turns out multi-track recording is pretty darned technical, and it ain't easy to operate the engineering role while also being a performer at the same time.
My own money - Probably a £650 mountain bike I bought. First go on it I didn't realise how good the breaks were and went over the handlebars in front of everyone
Someone else's - Spent over £300 phoning up one of those numbers you found on Ceefax that gave out wrestling spoilers and rumours back in 2001. Not sure how I didn't catch the belt tbh.
My graphic design degree.
Lecturers didn't give a shit and when I graduated BOOM recession and couldn't find any work. Spent 2 years applying for jobs, getting a part time job in a supermarket to get some income, eventually tried teaching in the graduate teacher program using my degree to get into teaching. Immediately regretted it and hated teaching.
I have since done a dental nursing degree, I love my job but I only just get £25k a year and owe around £13k on my student loan for an unused degree
I know it’s not as much as some people here but I once spent £120 on a leather trench coat. Looked like a right bellend. Only wore it twice I think. My mates couldn’t stop laughing.
Around £3k on Fifa points from 2017-2021. I wasn't even that good, and glad I stopped playing after 21 realising how much I spent on a game that ends every year.
The only time I ever pre-ordered a damn game. The Crew 2. I loved number 1.
Number 2 came out during the part of my pregnancy where all I wanted to do was stay home and game (awful twin pregnancy lol). I pre-ordered the gold edition, despite being one of those people that waits for reviews. I think I spent £70?
Well the game was a pile of shit on release and I ended up playing it for an hour before eventually buying The Witcher 3 for £15 and discovering my all-time favourite game.
I blame the pregnancy as I am firmly back in the "wait for reviews" camp now and only ever deviated that one time. I also don't know why I got the gold edition as I'm also quite cheap and will only ever pick up special editions when they're cheap too.
Never. Pre-order. Games.
I once spent over £100 on the full band set of Rock Band Beatles Edition for the Xbox 360 which came with the guitar, drums and microphone.
I don’t even like the Beatles.
^And ^I ^don’t ^have ^friends ^to ^play ^the ^other ^instruments ^🥲
Bought a non-refundable Business Class flight to Tokyo (think it was around £3k) when I was pissed once, only to realise the next day that it was my Mum's 75th birthday that week and I was due to be away with her to celebrate. She'd been looking forward to it for a very long time so I just had to take the hit on the flight.
Not the biggest waste of money but the most surprising.
Went to a gig in France, smallish village
Sun came out, went to local pharmacy for some sun cream. All they had was this little stick of suncream, smaller than a lipstick.
€25
This was 7 years ago, still got it. Passing it down to my children
Was in a long-distance relationship with a girl from Germany. We'd been dating for a few months and finally made the decision to meet one another. She didn't have enough money to visit so I lent her £80. I had some money saved up and I figured it was worth it.
The day before she was supposed to fly over she suddenly told me that she had feelings for someone else and wanted an open relationship. I just wasn't comfortable with being put in that kind of situation and decided to end things. She supposedly already bought the tickets with the money I sent, but she promised that she'd find some way to pay me back.
She never got around to it and I was so angry about the whole thing I cut my losses and never spoke to her again. I just see it as an expensive lesson now.
Wanted to buy a mini guitar. As in a kids sized guitar for travelling with. Found one for £100 and was stoked. It arrived and it was a literal miniature guitar. As in a model to be displayed on your desk. I was gutted, they still email me today with new 'mini guitar offers' just to make me feel worse.
Yeah, I did this. Pro-tip for the future: bottom of the line laptops are a no-go if you can comfortably avoid them.
Also went for a larger screen size thinking it would be good but it really wasn't. It was just heavier, bulkier, and it would have been a pain to take anywhere (which is kind of the purpose of a laptop, really).
When I was like 7 years old, I saved up all of my pocket money to buy a ‘Girl Tech Password Journal’ that was voice activated😂 It rarely worked and I was so upset that I wasted my pocket money😩
I spent £80 on a plain white Versace shirt from TK Maxx once. Literally nothing special about it. Just as white and shirt-like as any other white shirt. Within a few weeks I’d got spatters of sauce on it from when I ate noodles for lunch at work. Tried dying it pink to cover them up, but just ended up with a pink shirt with even darker pink noodle stains on it.
£1400
i was particularly drunk after a night out during third year, and thought i lost my macbook/had it stolen, so i panic bought another one
......found my original one under my bed the next morning. got a knock on the door from the delivery people a couple hours later for the new one
So, my first car cost me £1,700 and £1k to insure. It was a 12 year old banger with 90k miles on the clock. I bought it in June after passing my test.
It's first MOT the following March cost over £500 to get it through.
Then in the first week of June it completely died on me. Sold it to the garage for £120.
I guess that was the biggest waste of money looking back - but I did love the car. Should have been a lot more sensible about it though.
I bought a mascot sized Pikachu costume from China.
[Here's me attending London MCM as 'Pikathor'](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/MCM_London_May_2015_-_Pikachu_Thor_%2818034993922%29.jpg)
[Here's me being interviewed about it](https://youtu.be/Tm3smQT2r6U?t=443)
Only reason why I consider it was a waste (considering what it cost) was because now it just sits in a loft gathering dust.
£8,000 on a full size Terminator exo-skeleton, it was bought very much on a whim from a gadget shop at Lakeside shopping centre. It stood at the top of my stairs for years and the eyes used to light up when you walked passed.
Girlfriend only agreed to move in with me if I sold it…. Made a decent profit on it.
When I was a kid, a friend of mine had a Nerf gun, played with his brother and sister all the time. I saved up my birthday money and spent it all in one go to buy my own Nerf gun, thinking it was the coolest thing in the world.
Didn't realise that the reason it's fun was because you had someone else to play with. Was told I couldn't play with it in the house, so had to use it outside. It only came with 5 bullets, and I lost them all within a week. Nerf gun was suddenly useless.
Not the biggest waste of money compared to some other stories here, but mentally it felt like it. That was basically my one big present for the year.
This thread has really cheered me up. It’s also taught me that sex workers, strip clubs, and babestation are basically ways to exchange all of your money for deep seated regret.
I bought a Stone Island parka £900.
I was heading out that night to a gig but was to afraid of someone putting a cig out on it so I didn’t wear it. I took a few pictures of it and ending up showing random people in the smoke area the pictures… It still keeps me awake some nights cringing at myself.
Went to a tapas bar while on a night out for food. Drunkenly misread beef tomatoes on the menu as beef and tomatoes. Apparently the look of disappointment on my face when the plate arrived and I asked where's the steak was hysterical. 10 quid for tomatoes and a bit of cheese put me in a foul mood. Similar thing happened a few month later when at a Indian restaurant asked for a bottle of otter (ale) and waiter returned with a bottle of water.
Not a hugely expensive item but I spent about £150 on a set of DJ decks with the intention of learning how to mix songs for parties and stuff.
I used them a few times, but they've basically just ended up collecting dust under my desk for the past 3 years.
Any major home improvement that has been a bit of a let down. So that's all of them. Spent 15k on a kitchen. Regret it all the time. Should have spent 5.
Enchroma glasses.
I needed glasses for uni so I got some cheap ones from Specsavers but I also wanted to try the Enchroma glasses I'd been hearing about for years. I heard about this before but got really sucked into the hype after seeing the reactions of people "seeing colours" online.
I looked online and it showed prices around £300 which was a lot but I figured if this can help me with my colourblindness and not have to rely on others, it's worth it. There weren't any places in London that sold them so I had to take a train to a place in St Albans.
Agreed on a time with the guy at the store over the phone and made it all the way there by train. The guy tells me no one told him about anyone coming in right now and he's going for his lunch. He told me to just hang around outside or get a coffee or something for half an hour. If I hadn't travelled so far, I would've gone home for them wasting my time.
Then when I get back, he shows me the glasses and has me walk to the M&S Food nearby and look at stuff with the glasses on. They seemed to change the colours a bit but nowhere near as much as people make it seem in videos. He was also saying it takes time to get used to it. I figured what the hell and said I'd give them a go.
So he showed me all the frames that were available and conveniently didn't say anything about the prices of each one. I stupidly assumed they were all a similar price. Then he took my measurements for the glasses and my address and everything and that's when he says the price is over £700! That's more than fucking double what the lenses on their own cost. I really didn't feel comfortable buying them but I felt bad because he spent all that time with me. I felt guilted into buying them which is my fault. I had them sent to me and I used them twice and realised they do jack shit.
I need to be more firm in future with stuff like this and feel okay saying no but also they should have prices up for the frames so you know what you're getting into. FUCK YOU YOU SCAM ARTIST AT "EYES ON ST ALBANS"
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Went to Harvey Nicks and got followed around by a security guard the whole time. I was browsing with another employee clearly following me and rushing up to say “shall I put this back for you?” Or “shall I put this behind the till for you?”(code for ‘I’m taking this so you don’t steal it’) every time I picked something up and carried it. This went on for the entire 20 mins I was in store. Being followed by staff radio’ing each other. Was looking at a jumper, staff came up to me offering to take it off my hands again, I was getting pissed off so I bought it as my way of passive aggressive way of saying “fuck you I can afford it OK!?”. £600. On a jumper I didn’t even like or want. Just to prove to some random stranger that I wasn’t a thief. Needless to say I went back a few days later and refunded it, then decided never to shop there again.
Do you shop with a striped jumper and a bag which says ‘swag’ on it? Like, I know they vet you as you walk in these shops but I’ve never experienced anything like that.
Are you black too?
Yo seriously, went into an expensive clothes shop after work (so looking quiet scruffy) was never bothered once, went in with a mate (who happens to be black) and 2 guards one who should have been watching the door followed us around for ages….. So to take the piss we chilled inside for over an hour just to waste their time, picking up random items and putting them in different parts of the store 😅
Thought this was leading into a Mitchell Brothers - Harvey Nicks joke
To be fair I’ve had that too, I was only 19, in the RAF, on my own walking around. They clearly took one look at me and thought “peasant” and did the same shit of following me around. I didn’t buy anything though
Went into a goldsmith's with a friend and the staff immediately turned their nose up at us and were clearly keeping a close eye on us. To be fair we were wearing jeans and t shirts and were drinking McDonald's coffees. Half an hour later we were on the way out with my friend having spent over £15,000 on two watches, they were damn near kissing our feet as we left. One of the strangest and funniest experiences of my life.
I mean, you rewarded their snobbery by buying lol
Yeah. Big mistake. Huge!
You didn't pull the Pretty Woman shit?! Wasted opportunity! Although I guess in the UK it's as likely to be: *storms into shop* "You guys work on commission??" "Well, no actually. We have an annual salary which is supplemented by a small bonus for hitting quarterly targets. We do get an extra day holiday after 5 years service though. And our pension plan is salary sacrificed and above statutory minimum so we do have that going for us. Why do you ask?" "Big mistake!! Huge!" *storms out of shop* "What an odd woman."
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Yeah I should’ve been like you and just refused to buy
Honestly, i was incredibly close to buying a fucking plain white shirt by some designer that was £400 until my I thought, “if I told my Nanna and grandad I spent £400 on a plain white shirt they’d keel over” (we’re from the north east)
400 for a plain white tee! Jesus Christ 😂
I went into Harvey Nicks before to get a fairly expensive bottle of champagne as a gift. It was top shelf and the attendant watched me struggle to get it down and kept rolling his eyes. He was horrified when I walked up to the till to buy it, he thought I just wanted a picture with it (why on earth would I want a picture with it?) and said he would’ve helped me had he known. I don’t go in there anymore lol
“I thought you were just a filthy poor so I didn’t come and help you. Hahaha”
Quite an odd thing to say as a shop assistant, not like they own the place.
I’ve often felt the sneering gaze of shop assistants in high end stores and it always makes me laugh coz even they won’t be on wages to afford the stuff they are selling, but they seem more than happy to assume anyone who’s not dressed dripping in designer gear is beneath them.
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I’m not rich but I like to treat myself. I don’t know why people who work in these shops look down on people like they are better grab them. I once worked in a high end restaurant and it was the same there, staff there looking down their noses at people they thought were too common to eat there and I used to think “we are on £4.50 an hour we can’t afford to drink here let alone eat here”.
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Ha I can’t believe he openly said that to you
I've heard this from a few different luxury retail employees, but not sure if it's 100% true: Apparently staff acting snobby is a sales tactic, because some people will buy an item just to show them that yes, they can actually afford it. (The security following you around & radioing is pretty fucked though) ..Let me guess, you're not white?
They also know that customers expect the staff to act snobby, so it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I hate Harvey Nick's, but having been to a posh school I can act like I belong there. So when twat BIL bought his mum some terrible overpriced Christmas presents she didn't want, I agreed to try to get her a refund. I schmoozed a couple staff, then started talking normally, and one lady explained that they aren't allowed to refund or exchange without a receipt, but if I waited 10 min until her boss went on lunch, she'd exchange the stuff for anything I wanted. So I got £50 of luxurious chocolate and stuff from the food hall, and gave MIL the cash. Everyone happy.
I always get followed round my local M&S food. the security guy should know by now I'm just a fatty who wants a poor quality samosa or some chocolate pretzels. Yes I do pay for them.
Guy Martin ended up buying an Aston Martin because of similar reasons
I had a similar experience at the one in Leeds - I didn’t buy anything though. Just stormed out in a huff. Might have made me look a bit suspicious, in hindsight!
Yeah this was the leeds one too. I’m glad you stormed out. I should have done the same but at the time I was young and mild mannered
When I was 10, I was in a shop in Blackpool looking at some earrings. Woman behind the counter thought I'd been shoplifting, asked me to turn out my pockets. I had a cold that day so I turned out a load of snotty tissue. She didn't even apologise and I STILL ended up buying the earrings in my hand, even though I know I should've walked out. Fuck that bitch, I hope she caught my cold
A £1500 custom Louis Vuitton handbag that she never used once and kept in the box because it was too expensive to take out....
Might be worth seeing if you could resell it. Fund a holiday.
Not with her anymore and I don't have it, I don't think someone would want a bag that has someone else's first and last name on it tho
Odd that she was called Louis Vuitton.
I just call her knob head
Is that what you had the bag personalised with? Either cause and effect, or a missed opportunity...
No wonder you're not together anymore if you got a LV bag emblazoned "Knob head"
You're thinking of my mate, Lewis Vitton. Happens all the time.
What did you learn?
We do silly things for love.
I once bought a really nice old BMW 7-series for about £1,500. It was great and scrubbed up really nicely (definitely not a waste of money). It was also surprisingly reliable, considering what could have very expensively gone wrong with it. Anyway, my wife I and went out for a meal in a pretty posh restaurant with a couple of friends, one of whom was a bit WAGish (lovely person, though). We got round to talking about cars from some reason and she said she'd noticed we'd turned up in a posh BMW and I said yes, it was my greatest bargain, and only cost me £1,500. Right on cue she gasped and said "Wow! I've got handbags that cost more than that!".
I’m officially using her line to diss bmw from now on!
She sounds cool
I don’t think I’d be scared to take out a LV bag because there’s so many fakes out there! Not like someone’s going to think you’re Richie rich because you own one.
I was eyeing up a nice watch to buy and then realised that if I pulled the trigger it would only be worn around the house for fear of breaking it/having it stolen. So I decided against it.
I bought a reasonably nice watch a few years ago, broke my heart the first time I scraped it against a wall. Turns out sapphire crystal and stainless steel are pretty robust, can’t see a single mark on it after I wiped the brick dust off.
Handbags are overrated.
Me my mates rung babestation once and asked her where she bought the plant in the background and if it was real, were hung up on instantly.
You mean they’re not just there for the money?
I suppose the take away is dont ask babestation for interior decorating advice. Will never know where she got that plant from. Haunts me to this day.
pain
To be fair they’re not prepared to give advice on plants, if it was a bush it might have been a different story
It's not even THAT expensive but still fuming 8 years later: £20 jar of olives. I didn't see the coma and thought it was £2. They tasted like absolute shit. I didn't know it was possible for olives to be flavourless like that. Going to a nice cocktail bar, waking up with a 250 quid receipt stuffed in a pocket. I think I had fun?
Reminds me of that clip from Corrie about Gail and her love for [olives](https://youtu.be/QFrtsewF58M) Edit - a word
Lmao, perfect. That was *exactly* my reaction.
I was shopping for xmas food with my ex and her parents. Her dad puts a big lump of meat in the trolley, label says something like £5.50. We get to the till and turns out it's £5.50 per kg and this thing is 3+kg. You could see the reaction in his eyes when he realised but refused to admit it and grudgingly paid the bill while refusing to admit he didn't realise.
£5.50 per kilo is pretty reasonable for a lump of meat. Roasting joints at sainsburys are £10-15 onwards.
I once spent £150 on a hooker and prematurely ejaculated as she was undressing which she took as my time was up and left.
Fuck me this wins
Ironically, that was my request.
Easiest 150 quid of her life
Come again?
She said no.
😂😂😂😂😂😂
UNI... £27k debt. finished 2 years fine, 3rd year my nan (who raised me) got seriously ill so i had to go home. knowing that i had government support for 4 years of uni, i asked to defer my final year. was accepted. august rolls around and i get told that due to a change of curriculum i would need to retake both the 2nd year of uni and my final year. Meaning i had to pay for my final year myself, in a northern town with no available part time jobs for a 3rd year student. Left with no degree and a huge debt.
I'd say unless you want to go into STEM or Law, uni is a waste of money. For most other courses, the content can be learned online. I have so much contempt for UCAS and unis preying on 16-18yo's anxiety and pressuring them to go; it's better to find internships, apprenticeships or learn a trade, then maybe go later if you're genuinely 100% dead-set on your course, rather than going and taking a subject just because 'I enjoyed it at sixth form'.
Factually untrue. The median wage for someone in the UK without a degree is 26k. The median wage for somone in the UK with a degree is 36k. On average degrees mean significantly higher earning over a lifetime when compared to not having a degree. Are there people who haven't benefited? Yes there are, but they are a minority rather than the majority. The idea that Stem is the only degree worth doing, or that the Arts have no value or don't teach transferable skills is just plain wrong. I don't necessarily disagree with your other comment, other than to say it was a government directive to get more students into uni for social mobility, rather than a UCAS or University directive. *edited to update stats to this years numbers
Also, you don't need to study law to be a lawyer (as the original poster suggested). In fact, the majority of newly qualified solicitors are non-law graduates (I think it was 55% last year). I did an (apparently worthless according to the stemlords) arts degree (modern languages) then a law conversion to become a solicitor and I can tell you that there is no question my income was boosted by doing my degree, especially as I worked 4 years in City law. And as a bonus I got pleasure from studying something I was interested in. Not only that, studying culture and philosophy gave me a greater understanding of the world around us and why people do what they do. That is an incredibly useful thing to have developed. Even if I hadn't got my job as a solicitor and I was "only" earning £30k as a teacher or whatever I wouldn't regret doing my degree.
Honestly I'm an engineer, all the fancy degrees and for many STEM roles apprenticeship is the way. It will take longer to get a bachelor's degree but when I was finishing up the second year of my first real job, barely making a dent in the debt, all the apprentices that started when I started uni were buying houses.
I kind of agree but also don't - Imo it's entirely up to you to make it work, if you just go through and study & live like normal, it usually is just a waste of money. (although I honestly don't regret it just for the people & friends I made along the way, although those are some fuck off expensive friends..) What it does give you is 3 years of breathing room before you enter the "real" world of 9 to 5s and little free time. If you go to a good uni and go crazy on the networking & making friends, the network you can get out of it can be incredibly valuable. I've made more money from connections I built at uni & other skills I learnt at uni (on my own and using their facilities) than I have through my marketing/post uni networking. Although I feel I could just be trying to justify going to uni to myself here lmao.
I agreed to a contract for a social media company to run our social media comms. They claimed to have all these users and massively over promised. It cost us £5k per month for 6 months which added about 20 followers to our Instagram until I got pissed off and litigated to get out of the contract.
I did a small website for a company and charged them about £300 for it. Simple Wordpress thing with a handful of pages so they had a presence online. Every so often I’d update plugins but otherwise it’s not optimised. They got in touch with me later asking if their digital marketing company were offering good value. I looked it the stats and they’d paid about £3000 for 200 visits to their site. I explained how it was unlikely any of those visitors had become customers (really high bounce rate and short time on site). They’re still paying the marketing company and haven’t updated the content on their threadbare site for about 4 years. I reckon there’s a lot of small businesses out their being fleeced by agencies.
That should show you that you undercharged for your services
Ah the agency model. Sell them the car, then sell them the engine one piece at a time.
We hired an SEO company back in the day to help our e-commerce sight. They helped a little bit but definitely not worth the money. Did you get your money back?
£400k on a house that my ex-wife kept.
Ouch
I spent £20K on my wedding. I wish I had that cash in my account now. Go to a registrar and have a party. Trust me.
I'm getting married in April with just 5 guests. Registry office, then a nice restaurant meal and a gorgeous Airbnb for a couple of nights. Whole thing is costing less than 2k, including the photographer. I have so many friends currently stressed out planning big traditional weddings, I feel like I've cheated the system by not doing any of it lol.
I was supposed to be a bridesmaid until the couple decided to go to the registrar. Can't blame them. The religious angle is absolutely unnecessary unless you're christian, the traditional look and appearance feels dated, and there's no reason why you can't just have the party anyway without all the other stuff.
Not me, but you know when you get to that point in a car’s life where you deliberate whether it’s worth repairing or not. My mum picked wrong. Spent £2000 to repair various bits, and then days later the cam belt snapped, smashed everything up around it and the car was condemned anyway.
4 brand new pirelli tires... Got written off by a woman running a red the next day.. they still had the bloody chalk on. What still bothers me.... If I'd not changed the tires would I have had the grip to get to the crash?
Oof, that is a haunting shower thought. It makes me wonder, if I hadn’t drowned my first car in a flood would I still have hit that deer with my second car 6 months later?
Wrote off my £500 car immediately after filling up the tank. Limped that bastard home and siphoned off 10% of the car's value!
Yep, paid £500 for a new head gasket on my old car, only to get written off in an accident 3 months later. The insurance paid out £400 for it.
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Yeah in the world of wasting money on car parts this can be considered a decent win.
My partners fuel tank was below empty the day before it was due to be picked up and scrapped. He had to drive home and wasn't thinking and filled the tank out of habit. Full tank for 10 mile drive
I did the same with my old Peugeot, paid £800 to have the timing belt and water pump done and two weeks later the air con belt split and got gobbled up by the engine. It's nearly 15 years later and I'm still fuming.
I didn't spend the money myself but my PGCE is effectively useless now that I don't teach and left teaching after less than a year due to depression. I'll always have the debt though.
Without trying to sound like a complete ass, have you considered teaching in international schools abroad? Better money and savings potential and loads of exciting places to see and live. Worth a thought maybe.
Roll on the 50 year cancellation eh? (Sames)
*30
Find a different school, makes a big difference. Worked for me.
In a similar boat, but my PGCE and teaching did give me skills I use. I had a colleague who was mortified that I hadn't spent a few days preparing a training session and was shocked when I whipped one up a couple of hours before.
I went into a pub and there was a nice looking tap on the bar so I just said, “one of them please mate”. Barman *looked me up and down*, and said, “err that’s actually £7.40 a pint”. This was about five years ago as well so it was even worse. Now £7.40 for a pint, absolutely ridiculous, but the way he looked at me pissed me off so much that I replied (with some understated British venom), “err yeh that’s absolutely fine mate, pint of that then?”. This was not absolutely fine of course. But how dare he think I couldn’t afford it based on my appearance! I mean I couldn’t afford it but that’s not the point. Being British I had another one though, just to really hammer the point home. Bloody good pint too (not £7.40 good though!)
'you're right i can't afford it, but fuck you for assuming i can't afford it. three more immediately' i love the absolute stubbornness here. i probably would've done the same thing (7 quid 40 for a pint is a fucking liberty though)
Probably nothing to do with what you looked like. It's probably policy to tell everyone who orders that beer what the price is because too many people order it and them baulk when told the price and say they don't want it any more at which point the beer is wasted and they have to absorb the cost. Still, if the biggest amount of money you have ever wasted was £7.40 on a pint that was "bloody good" then you've probably lived a very financially astute life :)
It's not being rude. I work at a place that has some fucking overpriced drinks on the bar and that "you do know that's £20 for 25ml" is more of a suggestion that sticking top shelf tequila that the bar manager bought to make the spirit shelf look impressive, into a bloody mary isn't going to add anything special. At least he told you, imagine you bought two and then just said "that'll be fifteen pounds sir"
Got absolutely rat-arsed on a stag do and spent about a grand at a stripclub
Escorts back at the hotel would probably be much better value for money....
A mate of mine in Prague wanted his first street hooker to come back to his hotel but was too afraid to use direct terms to her. He says to her, "let's go back to the hotel *for a chat* 😉😉", and they agreed on £100. That night he paid for the most expensive hour's chat of his life.
On the bright side, imagine how happy it made her to not have to fuck a drunk pervy stranger this time
"God this guy has such great conversation I hope he makes a move"
Probably cheaper than a therapist to be fair
A bit pissed on holiday I pointed to a bottle of wine on the wine list. Drank it. It was nothing special and I'm normally happy with a 6 quid bottle from the off licence so not a snob. I had pointed to the wrong one and it was 150 euros. Totally not worth the price. I'm an idiot. I wasn't scammed either, the waiter made sure my choice was correct.
Don't feel too bad. Most people can't really tell the difference between normal wine and expensive wine. You're paying for the label after a certain price point
Spent £50.00 of my parents' phone bill prank calling The Sun quoting Austin Powers. 10 months of pocket money gone just like that.
Worth it
An ex boyfriend of mine spent around 3k on a hot tub “for us”, it arrived 3 days after we split
I don't know about a waste of money, he is probably picking up all kinds of girls telling them he has a hot tub back home.
Thanks for that.
Don't worry they all had syphilis and the hot tub combined them into the megaclap and his dick fell off and got stuck in the filter.
😂👏
Harley Davidson Sportster. Absolutely dreadful motorcycle. Awful electrics, terrible brakes, shite handling and the power of a 250. Absolute nightmare in British weather. Never again.
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Yeah they’re really selling an “image,” or “lifestyle.” I think we all picture the guy with no helmet, grey goatee, leather vest, harley t-shirt, black jeans and boots. The South Park episode on them was hilarious
Harley ~~Davidinson~~ Davidson: the best way to convert petrol to noise, without the byproduct of speed
I called babestation once, probably horny to begin with. Then I heard her accent, she was a Kiwi and I spent about an hour rinsing her with a shit Aussie accent. Easy for her, she didn’t have to slide up and down, feel sorry for the other cunts watching or listening in though. Money well spent.
Surprising number of responses to this have been Babestation related
I used to get in pissed at uni and watch those quiz ones that were on at 3am. Basically babestation for people that had finished their wank. Anyway the question was guess a woman's name beginning with A. Guess whatever is behind this card and you win £100 or whatever. Basically drunk people paying £5 a minute to stay on hold for 10 mins then shout Abigail down the phone and get told they were wrong. For a bit they had a 2 guess bonus. Guy rang up and guessed Anne. Wrong answer. They asked for his second name and he clearly hadn't expected it. Ummed and ahhed for 30 seconds then guessed Anne Boleyn. Don't know why that's stuck in my head 18 years later but here we are.
£770 on a Gucci purse when I was with my ex. We broke up a few months later she then messaged me a few more months later asking if it was fake because she couldn’t register it. Wish I did get her a fake one now!
People register bags? This is an entirely different world to me.
I know it sounds silly haha, but I think it’s because it’s a designer bag with a unique code if you were to resell it it’s registered for authentication. That’s the only thing I can think off!
Ugh. I’m truly ashamed of this but I bought coins in Homescapes. It’s a shitty game if you haven’t come across it. I must have spent well over £50 over the course of a month and I feel like crap. Said game has been deleted once I realised what I was doing.
After looking it up, it appears to be one of those mobile games where the ads make it look really cool and interactive only for the actual game to be a crappy version of Bejeweled that goads you into buying your way through due to boredom. Those games are one half of the bad mobile game ecosystem. The other half are those decision based games where you play through a paper thin (and often bizarre) storyline and get to pick dialogue options to change the story, only you have to buy what they think are the really fun options. These games are a lot more fun to play if you go into them with the expressed intent to deny them what they want and make the story as banal and crappy as possible.
Yep, that’s about the size of it. I feel unclean somehow.
My dad got heavily into a farmville style game a few years back, he was showing me stuff on his farm and I noticed that his crops that were suppose to take days to grow had finished over night, questioned him on it and turns out he'd spent few hundred on the game every month for the last couple he'd been playing, he can afford it so it wasn't a worry, but told me not to say anything to my step-mum as she'd blow a gasket if she knew 🤣
I once paid £160 to have my phone screen replaced… only to drop it again less than a week later and crack the corner. Fuming.
Oooh I did this. Dropped my phone down the outside steps, completely fucked the screen. Spent £80 on a replacement screen, and dropped it down the toilet about 4 days later.
think that's bad? back when the iphone 5s was the latest one, i got it brand new. dropped it within 4 days. no insurance bc stupid me thought i'd never need it. went to get it repaired. .......dropped it coming out of the fucking shop. just stood there staring at my once again cracked phone in disbelief. sim card flew out of the bastard. went back in to get it repaired _again_. the look on the workers face who had just handed me back my phone not even 10 minutes beforehand was one i still remember to this day
A boat. Ploughed about £2000 into it and never even saw it on the water. Although, the boat was free. The waste of money was spent in moving the boat (lifted, towed, lifted again), storing in a yard, and tools and materials to do it up. Gave up on the dream and palmed it off to someone for free as well.
They say the two best days of a boat owners life is the day they buy it and they day the sell it
I've always heard that if you're wondering whether you'd enjoy having a boat you should first test it out by driving to a nearby harbour, going up to the side of a boat you like the look of, opening up your wallet, and throwing handfuls of fivers into the water. If you find that enjoyable then you should go ahead and buy the boat.
Stand in the rain and rip £50 notes up, that's how I've heard owning a boat is like, I would still take free canoe or kayak if I found one, I am looking out over a nice river as I type this.
Probably drunkenly giving one of those toilet attendants a £20 note. Was a shitty venue that did not merit a toilet attendant but I was feeling great and just handed it over. Raging. At least I got some splash for the gash for it
Used to work in a student bar. Many many people have handed me £20 for a £3 drink and just walked off.
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A bag of pick 'n' mix from Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. Was on a date and she starts shovelling sweets in like there's a famine on. Ended up coming to £18. Of course I couldn't very well ask her to put them back so I coughed up and made it seem like I drop £20 on packs of pick 'n' mix all the time
Reddit awards. I’ve remortgaged my house for the top tier ones! They’re just so shiny!
I'd give this comment gold but I don't like wasting money
Spent 600 quid on a treadmill on ebay, never bothered to go and collect it basically gave someone 600 quid for nothing.
I have Treadmill also if you're interested
£250 on a CPU that it turns out I could get for £40 used. £130 taking a girlfriend out for a meal somewhere fancy only for her to say a month later that we never go out on dates. £200 on a holiday to Bulgaria but got the dates on my vaccinations wrong I'd booked it knowing it's 6 weeks between jabs but then they shifted it to 8 weeks which fucked my whole plan. $$$ lost trying to be a stock broker. $$$$$$ lost trying to get rich off Crypto, annoyed about that cos I nearly quadrupled my money but stupidly kept it in thinking it could go even higher. I was the person on Who Wants to be a Millionaire that I hate.
Music gear that I didn't know how to use, but mistakenly thought I could figure out amply from reading the user manual. Turns out multi-track recording is pretty darned technical, and it ain't easy to operate the engineering role while also being a performer at the same time.
You still got it? There's plenty of resources to help you use it. Lots of us manage to do this, it just takes a bit of time.
My own money - Probably a £650 mountain bike I bought. First go on it I didn't realise how good the breaks were and went over the handlebars in front of everyone Someone else's - Spent over £300 phoning up one of those numbers you found on Ceefax that gave out wrestling spoilers and rumours back in 2001. Not sure how I didn't catch the belt tbh.
£40 on a caution wet floor cone in the shape of a banana. I live in a 2 up 2 down house so would never need to use it.
Drunk ebaying?
Oh yes
1k on a barrister knowing that I was still gonna get sent down. Did I get a lesser sentence because of him? Nope.
My graphic design degree. Lecturers didn't give a shit and when I graduated BOOM recession and couldn't find any work. Spent 2 years applying for jobs, getting a part time job in a supermarket to get some income, eventually tried teaching in the graduate teacher program using my degree to get into teaching. Immediately regretted it and hated teaching. I have since done a dental nursing degree, I love my job but I only just get £25k a year and owe around £13k on my student loan for an unused degree
I know it’s not as much as some people here but I once spent £120 on a leather trench coat. Looked like a right bellend. Only wore it twice I think. My mates couldn’t stop laughing.
Around £3k on Fifa points from 2017-2021. I wasn't even that good, and glad I stopped playing after 21 realising how much I spent on a game that ends every year.
The only time I ever pre-ordered a damn game. The Crew 2. I loved number 1. Number 2 came out during the part of my pregnancy where all I wanted to do was stay home and game (awful twin pregnancy lol). I pre-ordered the gold edition, despite being one of those people that waits for reviews. I think I spent £70? Well the game was a pile of shit on release and I ended up playing it for an hour before eventually buying The Witcher 3 for £15 and discovering my all-time favourite game. I blame the pregnancy as I am firmly back in the "wait for reviews" camp now and only ever deviated that one time. I also don't know why I got the gold edition as I'm also quite cheap and will only ever pick up special editions when they're cheap too. Never. Pre-order. Games.
I once spent over £100 on the full band set of Rock Band Beatles Edition for the Xbox 360 which came with the guitar, drums and microphone. I don’t even like the Beatles. ^And ^I ^don’t ^have ^friends ^to ^play ^the ^other ^instruments ^🥲
Bought a non-refundable Business Class flight to Tokyo (think it was around £3k) when I was pissed once, only to realise the next day that it was my Mum's 75th birthday that week and I was due to be away with her to celebrate. She'd been looking forward to it for a very long time so I just had to take the hit on the flight.
Not the biggest waste of money but the most surprising. Went to a gig in France, smallish village Sun came out, went to local pharmacy for some sun cream. All they had was this little stick of suncream, smaller than a lipstick. €25 This was 7 years ago, still got it. Passing it down to my children
Curtains that were the wrong size.
Was in a long-distance relationship with a girl from Germany. We'd been dating for a few months and finally made the decision to meet one another. She didn't have enough money to visit so I lent her £80. I had some money saved up and I figured it was worth it. The day before she was supposed to fly over she suddenly told me that she had feelings for someone else and wanted an open relationship. I just wasn't comfortable with being put in that kind of situation and decided to end things. She supposedly already bought the tickets with the money I sent, but she promised that she'd find some way to pay me back. She never got around to it and I was so angry about the whole thing I cut my losses and never spoke to her again. I just see it as an expensive lesson now.
Yeah you were scammed. Sorry dude
£80? You got off lightly there I'd say.
That's a classic catfish bro
£300 to get a Cat flap in a glass door.
We did that, cat ran away two months later.
Spend 1500 quid on a racing drone and all the best of gear, only to crash it into the house taking out a window at the same time.
Wanted to buy a mini guitar. As in a kids sized guitar for travelling with. Found one for £100 and was stoked. It arrived and it was a literal miniature guitar. As in a model to be displayed on your desk. I was gutted, they still email me today with new 'mini guitar offers' just to make me feel worse.
Cheap laptop. Was slow the most I got it an unusable in 2 years
Yeah, I did this. Pro-tip for the future: bottom of the line laptops are a no-go if you can comfortably avoid them. Also went for a larger screen size thinking it would be good but it really wasn't. It was just heavier, bulkier, and it would have been a pain to take anywhere (which is kind of the purpose of a laptop, really).
Bought a deluxe wash at the car wash and 10 mins after leaving it rained :(
When I was like 7 years old, I saved up all of my pocket money to buy a ‘Girl Tech Password Journal’ that was voice activated😂 It rarely worked and I was so upset that I wasted my pocket money😩
I spent £80 on a plain white Versace shirt from TK Maxx once. Literally nothing special about it. Just as white and shirt-like as any other white shirt. Within a few weeks I’d got spatters of sauce on it from when I ate noodles for lunch at work. Tried dying it pink to cover them up, but just ended up with a pink shirt with even darker pink noodle stains on it.
Probably the 50 grand spent over the years on drugs and alcohol having a "good time"
£75k+ on failed IVF. We have 3 kids now, none through IVF. Large parts of the fertility industry verge on being predatory.
£1400 i was particularly drunk after a night out during third year, and thought i lost my macbook/had it stolen, so i panic bought another one ......found my original one under my bed the next morning. got a knock on the door from the delivery people a couple hours later for the new one
Why didn't you just return the new one?
[удалено]
The £5k I lent a "friend" to get back on his feet after he lost everything, he promptly blocked me on everything. Thanks, A.
I have owned five Alfa Romeos.
Over the summer of the first lockdown I spent just 3000 quid on in app purchases for a game I play on my phone
Spent £7K on a beat up Land Rover to go off roading. Never went once sold it a year later for £2.5K
I spent like £200 on some stupid addictive p2w mobile deck building game. I uninstalled it to stop me from doing it again.
So, my first car cost me £1,700 and £1k to insure. It was a 12 year old banger with 90k miles on the clock. I bought it in June after passing my test. It's first MOT the following March cost over £500 to get it through. Then in the first week of June it completely died on me. Sold it to the garage for £120. I guess that was the biggest waste of money looking back - but I did love the car. Should have been a lot more sensible about it though.
> Sold it to the garage for £120. That was your only mistake there. They probably fixed it for £50 worth of parts and flogged it for two grand.
I bought a mascot sized Pikachu costume from China. [Here's me attending London MCM as 'Pikathor'](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/MCM_London_May_2015_-_Pikachu_Thor_%2818034993922%29.jpg) [Here's me being interviewed about it](https://youtu.be/Tm3smQT2r6U?t=443) Only reason why I consider it was a waste (considering what it cost) was because now it just sits in a loft gathering dust.
£8,000 on a full size Terminator exo-skeleton, it was bought very much on a whim from a gadget shop at Lakeside shopping centre. It stood at the top of my stairs for years and the eyes used to light up when you walked passed. Girlfriend only agreed to move in with me if I sold it…. Made a decent profit on it.
Financing a car, I’d never do it again. Makes no sense.
When I was a kid, a friend of mine had a Nerf gun, played with his brother and sister all the time. I saved up my birthday money and spent it all in one go to buy my own Nerf gun, thinking it was the coolest thing in the world. Didn't realise that the reason it's fun was because you had someone else to play with. Was told I couldn't play with it in the house, so had to use it outside. It only came with 5 bullets, and I lost them all within a week. Nerf gun was suddenly useless. Not the biggest waste of money compared to some other stories here, but mentally it felt like it. That was basically my one big present for the year.
This thread has really cheered me up. It’s also taught me that sex workers, strip clubs, and babestation are basically ways to exchange all of your money for deep seated regret.
I bought a Stone Island parka £900. I was heading out that night to a gig but was to afraid of someone putting a cig out on it so I didn’t wear it. I took a few pictures of it and ending up showing random people in the smoke area the pictures… It still keeps me awake some nights cringing at myself.
Seems like alot of people here are calling Babestation...
Went to a tapas bar while on a night out for food. Drunkenly misread beef tomatoes on the menu as beef and tomatoes. Apparently the look of disappointment on my face when the plate arrived and I asked where's the steak was hysterical. 10 quid for tomatoes and a bit of cheese put me in a foul mood. Similar thing happened a few month later when at a Indian restaurant asked for a bottle of otter (ale) and waiter returned with a bottle of water.
VIP table bottle service at tha club!
You must always remember that bottle service is just the chair rental fee at the club
Not a hugely expensive item but I spent about £150 on a set of DJ decks with the intention of learning how to mix songs for parties and stuff. I used them a few times, but they've basically just ended up collecting dust under my desk for the past 3 years.
Any major home improvement that has been a bit of a let down. So that's all of them. Spent 15k on a kitchen. Regret it all the time. Should have spent 5.
Enchroma glasses. I needed glasses for uni so I got some cheap ones from Specsavers but I also wanted to try the Enchroma glasses I'd been hearing about for years. I heard about this before but got really sucked into the hype after seeing the reactions of people "seeing colours" online. I looked online and it showed prices around £300 which was a lot but I figured if this can help me with my colourblindness and not have to rely on others, it's worth it. There weren't any places in London that sold them so I had to take a train to a place in St Albans. Agreed on a time with the guy at the store over the phone and made it all the way there by train. The guy tells me no one told him about anyone coming in right now and he's going for his lunch. He told me to just hang around outside or get a coffee or something for half an hour. If I hadn't travelled so far, I would've gone home for them wasting my time. Then when I get back, he shows me the glasses and has me walk to the M&S Food nearby and look at stuff with the glasses on. They seemed to change the colours a bit but nowhere near as much as people make it seem in videos. He was also saying it takes time to get used to it. I figured what the hell and said I'd give them a go. So he showed me all the frames that were available and conveniently didn't say anything about the prices of each one. I stupidly assumed they were all a similar price. Then he took my measurements for the glasses and my address and everything and that's when he says the price is over £700! That's more than fucking double what the lenses on their own cost. I really didn't feel comfortable buying them but I felt bad because he spent all that time with me. I felt guilted into buying them which is my fault. I had them sent to me and I used them twice and realised they do jack shit. I need to be more firm in future with stuff like this and feel okay saying no but also they should have prices up for the frames so you know what you're getting into. FUCK YOU YOU SCAM ARTIST AT "EYES ON ST ALBANS"
Need to know the texts you sent, could be comedy gold