Forgive me if I come across as a salesperson for high-end LASIK, but…well…I am one.
More expensive doesn’t automatically equate to better; you’re absolutely right. However, up-to-date equipment and more experienced surgeons do increase the chances of a favorable outcome, and reduce the chances of bad side effects like halos, and the quality of equipment and surgeons is at least loosely tied to price. I won’t bore the thread with exactly what it is that causes halos (maybe another thread) or why the newest generation of lasers reduces their occurrence, but there is a direct relationship.
(D)jembes. Oh, sure, you can overpay, too. But there are some crap cheap drums out there at World Market and the like that are just unforgivably bad. (says the girl who finally bought her first one - a gorgeously homely Côte d’Ivoire mama drum.)
Jarred pasta sauce. I’ll go cheap on a lot of canned and jarred food items, but pasta sauce isn’t one of them. Has to be high end, and even then it takes a lot of doctoring to be edible. The low end stuff just isn’t fixable.
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Toilet paper**, of course. That’s the gimme whenever this topic comes up.
Pens. I like gel roller ball pens, and the offbrand are horrid. I don’t need a $50 pen, but I won’t get the 3 for $5 ones anymore.
My particular favorite example of this was the Indian surplus 7.62 NATO that hit the US market a couple years ago. This stuff was HORRID! Even if it had been properly stored, it was badly manufactured. It was dirty. It was inconsistent. It had problems with cases splitting and separating. The only good thing you could say about it was that it was cheap. So you have guys with hundreds of dollars sunk into FAL’s and M1-A’s and other pricey 7.62 autorifles buying this crap and then complaining when they have problems. These are the same dufuses you see buying no-name reloaded ammo sold in baggies. Whatever the additional cost of good quality ammo may be over shit ammo, it is more than worth in terms of safety and good performance.
Another vote here for knives and tools. (Which are actually the same thing: knives are a subset of the set tools, after all.)
Recording media - I know it’s obsolete, now, but remember how often those cheap packs of 3.5" floppies would have useless discs in them?
Insurance. Usually the difference between being well-covered by one’s insurance company and being barely covered is a fraction of the difference between being covered and being not covered. If one ever needs to use one’s insurance, one will want the better coverage. Unfortunately this was learned in our family through harsh experience.
Not that a cheap chainsaw is particularly bad, it’s just that they don’t last as long. A good chainsaw will last as long as 3 cheap ones. Three cheap chainsaws cost more than one good one.
Mac n’ cheese.
Food in general, the cheap stuff is always loaded with corn syrup and crap.
Car repairs. (why set yourself up to pay more later?)
Laundry detergent.
Haircuts.
Um, that’s all I can think of. I do love expensive shoes, purses, and handbags and generally spend more for quality but I think it’s OK to cheap out on 'em occasionally.
While I agree with you, I always wonder about the people who show off these things so easily! My friend got his nipples pierced and he was so excited to show me. I didn’t need to see your red puffy nipples - eww!
In answer to the OP, most of mine have already been stated.
