As readers of Consumerist, we’re sure many of you are fairly rigorous when researching a purchase — checking out reviews and ratings, asking your pals, and getting the general idea of what you’re buying before you spend money on it. But no one is perfect, and sometimes a blind buy can lead to a pretty hilarious result.
Over on Reddit, a poster reveals a recent mistake in ordering Fifty Shades of Grey for a grandmother, based on its position on the book charts, and not realizing that it’s erotic fiction and not say, a book about window dressings. Oops.
“We have a serious problem now as I need to somehow remove this book from the possession of my conservative 80 year old grandma.”
Kind of like the time I, a finicky 11-year-old at the time, may or may not have bought lox just because Stacy from the Babysitters Clubbooks liked it. I had no idea it was going to be fish.
So we want to know — when have you slipped up and bought something popular, only to find out later that it was all a horrible, horrible mistake that could’ve been prevented by a little research? Let it all out and cleanse yourself of your secret shame.
Ask Reddit [Reddit]
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I got Fifty Shades of Grey because a bunch of my friends thought it was a good book. I can’t finish it. It’s so awful. The writing style reminds me of something a hormonal, melodramatic teenage girl would write.
If other people love it, that’s how I know it’s gonna suck.
Considering that the series started out as Twilight fanfic, it’s entirely plausible that it was written by a hormonal, melodramatic teenage girl. Too bad I can’t get any of my kinky friends to take one for the team and read it to actually demonstrate how little it has to do with BDSM… I guess there’s some kinds of punishment that no one finds pleasurable.
My wife stopped me from spending $1600 on a Macbook Air. She’s a good woman.
VCR Plus+ to record TV shows. Snappy device to snap a picture of anything on the TV with my PC.
Today, I refuse to buy a Blue-Ray player, since everything will be an electronic file anyway, why waste my money. Done trying to “keep up with the Jones”.
@Rick, get a Blu-Ray player, now!
In 1974 I bought a pair of Earth Shoes. I wanted them so bad!
I don’t remember the price but it was higher than a “normal” pair would have costed.
I remember the shoes and leaning forwards whenever I was in a standing position.
Absolutely horrible.
Nintendo Wii, I shouldn’t be complaining because technically I didn’t buy it outright, I won it in a contest, but I would be mad if I paid full price for this thing. It doesn’t have any of the big name games on the other consoles and the motion controls are a gimmick that do not work well. A lot of games don’t support traditional controls alongside motion controls so you can fall back in case the motion controls don’t work making many games completely unplayable. Also there are only a handful of games on the console worth playing despite Nintendo promising more support than ever for the console. The console also requires a whole bunch of peripherals for games, which take up more space in your house, thankfully I didn’t buy into this fad, or else I would have a ton of useless and space wasting video game accessories around.
Nintendo DS, original fat model. I was really stupid to buy a system that had almost no games out for it at the time. At least it could play GBA games so I used it some but by the time all the good games were out the Nintendo DS Lite was out, an upgraded model with screens 100 times better than the original and a cheaper price. I could have just waited for the DS Lite and saved money. Played the crap out of the DS Lite though!
At least it was only $149, I refused to buy into the 3DS ($250 at launch) because of this and I was right, there still isn’t even one 3DS game I want to play and it has been over a year since launch, and I can’t see 3D either, so why even buy it!
I have learned my lesson, no more Nintendo or video game products at launch again, ever. No first model portable systems ever again either, I will wait for redesigns, even if it takes 4 years for the first redesign to come out.
A 10.1″ netbook. It seemed really cool, but it wasn’t practical for anything and I found I was just using my smartphone instead, which I didn’t think would ever happen.
This.
I bought a 10.1 netbook and love it like a friend. It’s just right for reading digital textbooks and taking notes in bed. I also have an 8.9 Acer Aspire One from 2008 that I painstakingly repaired myself when the power cord socket went bad and I’m about to buy an 11.2 with the same problem for super-cheap, just so I can have spares in case they stop making them. I’ve even sewed purses for myself with special little waterproof netbook pockets that zip and have soft padding.
That said, I might be the world’s only big netbook fan. God, I love those bitty laptops.
Fellow netbook fan here! I have a Samsung NC10 (I think that’s the model #) and I love it. I don’t use it often (since I have a 15″ laptop at home and a desktop w/ 2 monitors at work), but I love that it’s lightweight and I can bring it with me when traveling. I also love that there are USB ports and a card reader, so I can transfer photos onto my netbook when I’m still on vacation.
My boss saw my netbook and liked it so much that he bought a Dell netbook. He wasn’t as enthralled. It was running Windows 7 (as opposed to my XP), the keys were not backlit, and going from XP to 7 (without having used Vista) was a bit of a learning curve for him. He ended up buying a MacBook Air shortly thereafter.
I’ve regretted purchases, but I’ve never bought crap just because it was popular. I always do my research and often times end up with lesser-known but infinitely better products (like a WebOS smartphone instead of iPhone or Android)
Does asking Grandma to buy me an orange leisure suit I saw at Jefferson-Ward for part of my 1978 birthday present count?
How about telling grandma what it is about and that you made a mistake. Let her get rid of it if she doesn’t want it. She’s not a child. She may actually want to read it. Conservative people like porn too.
They just almost never admit to it. Goes against their whole often-religious image.