My answer is easy…those instant pregnancy testers that they keep behind the register…I’ll cheap out on certain things in life, but would NEVER recommend someone cheaps out on those!
Toothpaste. I heard it can be bad.
Also, almost any kind of food.
Penny candy.
Rubbers, or as they usta be called in Worcester MA some years ago, safes.
Don’t buy yer safes at the dollah store, that’s wicked stupit.
Batteries.
I do a lot of cushy camping, which requires a lot of batteries. Too often in the past, I’ve gone cheap and gotten dollar store batteries, but they don’t actually save any money. Fer’instance: running a battery powered box fan takes 8 D batteries. The dollar store sells them in 2 packs, so that’s $4 of batteries for one installation. Dollar store batteries consistently need to be replaced before 24 hours are up, so I need 3 sets for a weekend. That’s $12. If I wait for a sale, I can get 8 name brand D batteries for $10 or less at a regular store and they last the whole weekend and then some. AND I don’t have to pack, carry and contentiously dispose of an extra 16 batteries.
I’ve found the same to be true of smaller sizes. They just don’t last long enough to be a real savings.
But it took me many weeks of camping and an actually tally sheet to admit this to myself. They look so tempting, sitting there for just a buck!
Tin foil and cling wrap. For me it’s Reynolds and Saran or nothing. Yes, there really is a difference.
Interestingly, this same topic has come up at least two times in the past, and in both cases, the thread-starting OP’s example was the same as yours.
Mrs Freshleys [Horrible God-Awful] Cereal Bars. Fruit filled? No, I think that’s colored sawdust in there.
WhyNot, what kind of batteries do you normally buy? I vaguely recall a long-ago Consumer Reports study that didn’t find much difference between different brands of the same sort, but did find major differences between different sorts of batteries (i.e. alkaline vs. zinc-carbon).
Anyway, I often stock up on the AA and AAA Sunbeam brand alkaline batteries that the dollar store sells in four-packs, and, while I don’t know how they compare to, say, Energizer or Duracell, they seem to work okay.
There’s not much I refuse to buy at the dollar store, but I’ve learned to avoid dollar store razors (and stick with the name brands, mainly Gilette) and dollar store erasers (though the ones they sell at Dollar General are okay). And I’m somewhat selective about food items. Some of it’s just fine, but I tend to avoid the weird off-brands of things that I can get almost as cheaply at the regular grocery store (at least when they’re on sale), especially where freshness is an issue.
Yeah the foil wrap is really awful.
Some of the food items are actually, if you look, past their ‘best before’ dates. Some are from China. (I try to avoid food product from a country with lead in paint, poison in dog food, and pretty lax enforcement of any food standards.) Also they seem to have foods higher in sodium and sugar than any other similar product from the grocery.
Definitely batteries, so cheap, such crap quality that even at a dollar a pack, it’s a rip off!
Most wrapping paper is actually way less paper, on a much wider roll. Purchase it once and you know right away.
I never cheap out on toothpaste. Can be vastly out of date and not conform to ADA ingredients. May have weird ingredients, too much fluoride (or no fluoride) depending on the country it was intended for. Besides, toothpaste lasts a really long time. Even if one tube of the really good stuff costs 10 bucks, it lasts me a year. It’s not worth saving $9 a year to use cheap toothpaste.
I hit the dollar store before doing my normal shopping for the week. No need to waste money. I have good luck with their batteries and toothpaste and Dollar Tree carries actual Reynolds wrap. I have had good luck with all of those.
The things I stay away from are razors and hardware. Their disposable razors are just a license to slash your face up and should be avoided at all costs. Things like screwdrivers and bungie cords may work for emergency use but they are of such low quality that you would be better off buying real ones and taking care of them.
They sell brand-name cereal, candy, toothpaste, aluminum foil and plastic wrap at dollar stores like Family Dollar or Dollar General. Those are as safe to buy there as anywhere else.
I’ve had bad luck with clothes from those stores; they’re usually cheaply made (which is to be expected I suppose) and not worth it in the long run.
ETA: Good call on razors. I learned my lesson about buying store brands. I still get them at DG but only the “real” brand.
Heh. Well, I may not be original, but at least I’m consistent!
And yes, alkaline. I do know that much. But my tally sheet don’t lie! While I believe Consumers Reports generally, and I don’t mind buying Sunbeam brand from Walgreens, the Sunbeam dollar store ones are consistently worse.
It truly wouldn’t surprise me, given the continent of origin of much of this stuff, if someone unscrupulous was taking those batteries dropped off for recycling and repacking them for dollar store sales. Either that or they’re just stored for far too long in suboptimal conditions before they’re put on the shelf for sale.
Oh, wow! Funny…I was inspired by the recent post asking people what they WOULD buy there…Good detective work!
I never had any problems with the dollar store preggo testers. They did wonders relieving my anxiety back when I had weird cycles and was prone to worry a lot. At the same time, my sister was going through fertility treatments and anxiously awaiting the opposite result and used plenty of them. Neither of us ever had a false result and while just waiting would have eventually told us the same thing, finding out sooner for a buck instead of ten was awesome.
This site reviewed pregnancy tests, and the ones from Dollar Tree did well in the reviews. I found out about Lil’ Neville from a test purchased from Dollar Tree.
Produce, frozen/refrigerated items.
Though it’s in the name, neither Family Dollar nor Dollar General are dollar stores. Dollar Tree is the one nationwide dollar store chain I can think of.
I wouldn’t buy cat food from Dollar Tree but I have found a great selection of discontinued brand name cat toys - 9 Lives, for example. I wouldn’t buy clothes I expected or needed to make through a washing but if I needed undies in a pinch (haha) I’d grab a pair and hand rinse them before wearing.
Any off-brand food item, and any item that is food or may touch food from China. I don’t trust stuff like porcelain glaze to be lead-free. I do, however, have a set of steak knives I bought over 20 years ago that are still perfectly serviceable and never tossed them after I bought nice ones as replacements. Sometimes I still prefer the dollar store ones for certain things.