You get what you pay for...?

[AceBoogie]

Do you guys and gals believe that you generally get what you pay for? Or that most, if not all, expensive things are overpriced? Obviously the concept of something being overpriced can be completely subjective here... but I'm just talking in a general sense.

Or do you fall somewhere in the middle? That you get what you pay for to an extent... but that there's a point when the price of something simply becomes about novelty or status?

I'm interested to hear what people think.

[Whateverist]

Cheaper price is better unless the drop off in quality is too great.  Sometimes you really do need to pay more to get more.

[Regina]

Depends on what the item is tbh

Food and clothes, definitely, but I'll scrimp and save on everything else.

[robvalue]

Option 3.

[vorlon13]

No, you can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometime you find
You get what you need

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Yeah I would say option 3. Everything has a price. I tend to buy things based on reviews rather than looks or other aesthetics. Sometimes I'll treat myself to something I 'want' regardless of price (to a point), though. Working for a big corporation it is fascinating to see how we market our products though, and how we tailor them for specific segments and demographics in the market.

An example would be earphones. I've never bought into the super expensive headsets. I've had a pair of Sennheiser's which were not expensive but not cheap, and they've lasted me years. I also have never bought into the wireless earphone thing either. I'm not a sound expert but even I can notice a drop in quality of the output, and for £250+ for the cheapest pair, it's daylight robbery.

[rado84]

In principle it's somewhere in between. However, with my new video card (GTX 1050 Ti) I got more than I paid for. I've never expected that a 128-bit video card can work so well without any bottlenecking - something the old R7 370 did quite often, even when it was new.
It's pretty much the same with my monitor I got in the summer (BENQ GW2270) - paid only $100 for it but once again I got more than I expected. Normally I would have to pay 3 times more for a monitor that cares for the user's eyes but this one does that at a much lower price.
But most often it's quite the opposite - take any Android smartphone, for example. They're all expensive piece of shit. Too gentle, suck up on RAM like crazy to the point you can't make any video with it because there's not enough RAM left for that action. Galaxy S7 here costs a truck load of money (about $300) and it's practically useless because of the things I just listed.
While the best smartphone costs a little less than $50 and it's made by Microsoft.

[Jesster]

Definitely option 3. Anyone who studies marketing should know that playing with the price can influence customers one way or another regardless of the quality of the product. Otherwise, yes, you do get what you pay for.

[paulpablo]

Do you guys and gals believe that you generally get what you pay for? Or that most, if not all, expensive things are overpriced? Obviously the concept of something being overpriced can be completely subjective here... but I'm just talking in a general sense.

Or do you fall somewhere in the middle? That you get what you pay for to an extent... but that there's a point when the price of something simply becomes about novelty or status?

I'm interested to hear what people think.

Definitely option 3.  There's someone in my work who's the epitome of a person who spends money purely for status, I have a theory he's some sort of sociopath for various other reasons aswell.

He used to come in work wearing an expensive hat, because of the brand they put goggles on every brand of theirs.  Like even if it's a pair of jeans it will have goggles sewn into it for reasons that baffle me completely.  It cost around 15 times what a normal hat would cost here in the UK.  I think he said it was about 150 pounds.

Everytime I saw him the hat would just get me angry, I'd think of great I have to talk to goggle hat wanker now.  A few other people have told him he looks like a twat wearing it.

But everything with him is shoes worth 1000 pounds, jewelry and watches and all sorts.

I do buy relatively expensive clothes but I like to think I buy at the range before the cut off point where it's just for status.

The brands I buy are fred perry, superdry, no religion, vans, dc, addidas.  They're pretty decent brands but not show off brands.

[Tonus]

It's relative, IMO. A $50,000 car is a purchase that I cannot justify, so I could say that it isn't worth the money. But someone wealthier and who owns a similar vehicle might judge it to be a bargain. But that doesn't mean that every car is reasonably priced. For some people, the main concern for a purchase may be its utility (ie, that bookshelf looks awful but it's sturdy and the price is low) and for other people there may be an aesthetic requirement (ie, I'm not putting that hideous bookshelf in the living room-- get the one that looks nice and matches the decor even though it's a bit pricey).

Now, I do think that there are things that are overpriced. If the main reason (or the only reason) a person is buying an item is because it's so expensive that you'd need to be ultra rich just to consider it --in other words, the ultimate status symbol that proves that you're rich enough to do stupid things-- then I think an argument can be made that it's objectively overpriced. :p