H.O.T.S
In a moment of hormone induced madness I bought a £3 copy of this 70s "comedy" from a cheapo shop. (Look, I was 19 and it looked like there were going to be boobs in it, OK?)
Not only was the film shit but it was a dodgy pirate copy that had apparently been re-edited by a spastic chimpanzee. (The end credits actually arrived halfway though the film, then there was a gap then the middle of the film turned up.)
Being broke I was sad enough to demand my money back.

Still a better deal than a mate of mine who bought a "Mystery" goodie-bag at an auction run by large, shaven-headed cockneys. His £10 got him a (broken) walkman and a pair of earrings that turned his fingers green just by touching them.
(Big D, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 10:18, 1 reply)

Poundshop Inkjet Cartridges
My Dad, ever on the lookout for a bargain bought some compatible inkjet cartridges from a poundshop.

I was then called to clean out his printer when all of his photos came out with a green tint, then the black cartridge cracked and leaked.

There was no hope, and the printer had to be junked and a replacement bought...

..and guess what he did when the ink in the replacement ran out...
( HSDriver was probably still at work on, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 10:18, 1 reply)

I always buy cheap stuff.
But just for the lulz.

Cheap plastic guns that break within an hour, pirate sets (Pirate hat, Pistol and cutlass)

Just for the sense of crapness about them. Me and friends always find them hilarious.
(Maccy Divided by 0 on, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 10:16, 2 replies)

Paint is paint right?
Or so I thought a couple of years ago. At the tender age of 29 I had finally managed to save enough to move into my own house. A minor problem (or so I thought at the time) was that a colour-blind mentalist had painted every room; it was all dark maroon and lilac with lime green gloss.

So off I troop to Homebase. Never having bought paint in my life I didn't realise how expensive it was, £15 for a 5ltr tin of magnolia? Fuck off! So I did what any other self respecting skinflint would do and started loading my trolley with Homebase own brand paint (£5 for 20ltrs, get in!).

Then something strange happened. Suddenly there was an old bloke stood next to me, he fixed me with a beady eye and said "Don't do it lad, 'tis like painting with milk".....Needless to say I ignored the old mans warning, hell, I had council tax to pay and beer to buy. What do old people know anyway?

As it turns out they know quite a lot about paint. The white emulsion was so thin it barely clung to the brush and took 4 coats to cover an already white ceiling. So the next time you are in Homebase, don't just ignore the wise old man and go and look at the chainsaws, heed his advice and buy the decent stuff, and then go and look at the chainsaws.

Does anybody want approx 30 litres of the cheapest shittiest ‘paint’ known to man? “Homebase value paint: It doesn’t do what it says on the tin”
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 10:16, 5 replies)

CZ
When I was 14 I bought a knackered old CZ (the bike with the coffin tank) for a tenner. It was fucked. Engine seized, wheel seized and rusted to fuck. Over the course of that summer I lovingly stripped down, repaired and rebuilt the thing with only an old manual for reference. Unbounded was my joy when the engine at last coughed into life.

So I took it for a quick spin in the back street. Then I let my brother take it for a spin. Then me again.

Then these two guys in a car pulled over, got out and shouted me over. So off I went.

"We're from the Durham Police and we want to know what you're doing riding that shed"

"Oh aye?" "I said "Pull the other bollock - it's got bells on." (I may have mentioned before my inbuilt mistrust of authority figures.)

"Show me your fucking warrant card then - copper!"

I was convinced that they were just two randoms trying it on. Then he pulled out his card. DC Jones. I was fucked.

To cut a long story short they threw the book at me.

No tax
No insurance
No MOT
No helmet
Riding under age
Riding on the pavement
No license
Possession of an offensive girlfriend - you name it, they charged me with it. And, to put the capper on it, they charged me with aiding and abetting *exactly* the same charges for my younger brother, effectively doubling what they'd already charged me with.

So now you know why I think all coppers are bastards.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 10:14, 49 replies)

Edited
for failing at the internet
( Kroney, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 10:11, Reply)

Dvds
off a Chinese lady. They were obviously going to be bad quality but i didn’t expect the Chinese man filming it to take the camera with him to the toilet.
(NuffMuff fucks shrubbery, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 10:07, 3 replies)

Once I bought a cheap set of batteries.
But they weren't included...
( Mr. Chickenuts Now we know., Fri 4 Jan 2008, 10:03, 1 reply)

Cheap Bike
In my financially challenged youth, I once bought a bike from a classified ad in the local freesheet. After a few days the back brake stopped working, but since the front brake still worked fine I wasn't too bothered (Can you guess where this is going?).

I used to use this bike to get to and from work, and to go home at lunchtime since the dysentery on offer from the work canteen didn't appeal. I lived in a quiet village, and there was rarely any traffic in the middle of the day. I'd got into the habit of barely slowing down at a blind t-junction en-route (You can definitely guess where this is going!).

Anyway, one day late as usual, I was heading back to work as fast as my hairy little legs could carry me. I approached the junction, gave a feather-light touch to the brakes and casually glanced left.

There was a car coming.

I slammed on both brakes so hard I probably left finger marks in the brake levers. The back break did nothing, the front brake gripped the wheel harder than a pikey gripping his dole cheque.

Over the handlebars I go. Amazingly I managed to execute a perfect somersault and land on my feet. Had there been judges watching, all would have held up cards with 10 written on them.

"Well, that's didn't go too badly," thinks I, "That was actually kind of cool".

I didn't guess where it was going.

The bike saddle hit me on the back of the head, and the cheap cast iron bike frame came crashing down on me, propelling me into the path of the oncoming car. Thankfully the driver had decent reflexes, so my only injuries were grazed palms and bruised dignity.

Length? Just over a metre and made of cast iron.
(drunkenfud, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 10:01, 3 replies)

A mop
... one of those with a side handle that folds the head in half to squeeze out the water from the sponge head.

Except that the hollow metal shaft was weaker than the sponge, so on the first squeeze, the whole thing neatly folded itself in half.

At least that made it easier to put in the bin.
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 10:00, 2 replies)

Bought rubiks cubes...
...for an 80s theme party, as kind of props.


I offered prizes if people gave them back solved.


Problem was, they were so cheap and naff, some decided to fall apart, so people were putting them back together in the right order.
( Kittenpants, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 9:58, Reply)

My MIL
Always buys "bargins", anything that is on offer she'll buy. This stuff is not necessarily cheap or tat but it is certainly not needed. There are 2 of them, her and her husband, they live in a 2 bedroomed terraced house, so why do they need 6 duvets? We've banned her buying anymore things for our daughter.
(mrsfluffles Bitter & twisted? Probably., Fri 4 Jan 2008, 9:52, Reply)

Electric toothbrush
I bought an electric toothbrush from one of those "too good to be true/fell off the back of a lorry" auctions a few years ago.
The friction from putting the vibrating brush on my teeth burnt out the motor.

Luckily it only cost me 2p.
( scoshi pretending to diet since, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 9:48, Reply)

Drunken ebay shopping
A couple of years back, in an attempt to brighten up our dank student house for Christmas, i bought a plastic see-through nativity set for 6p.

It stayed up in the lounge for the rest of the year although it unfortunately had glitter on it which got absolutely everywhere. We ended up using it as fuel for the barbeque at the end of the year and half of us went down with food poisoning.

Divine retribution? I like to think so.
(Milo Minderbinder, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 9:44, 1 reply)

Hair we go
I bought a wig for 50p and it tangled straight away.

That was certainly cheap tat
(three inches of snarling death, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 9:34, Reply)

China
I needed an alarm clock so I was taken to the local department store by my translator. Bear in mind that this was a village in the middle of nowhere whose main contribution to the local economy was mud and deformity (numerous chemical factories nearby).

The shelves - in the best communist tradition - were mostly empty, with the odd opened box or clearly broken plastic knick-knack sitting forlornly upon them. And these were not Chinese-made goods - they were made in places like Chad or Somalia and imported into China as cheap goods.

An alarm clock was clearly too much of a specialised item to appear on the shelves, so we had to ask for it. The shop assistant - a kind of animated scarecrow with cat-licked hair and dishevelled clothing - took a candy pink plastic alarm clock out of the paper (not cardboard) box and fiddled with it for a while as if it were Swiss watch mechanism. And it began to beep.

And beep and beep and beep. No matter what he pressed, it would not stop and his face was a mask of idiotic consternation. So he put it back into the box and handed it to me. Still beeping. "That'll be 10 yuan please sir."

I held the still ringing alarm in my hand. "It's broken."
"No it isn't. Listen, it's ringing happily away."
"All the time. It won't stop. Am I supposed to set it to become quiet when I want to wake up?"

No use arguing with the Chinese. The box had been opened and that meant I had to buy it. Like it was a jar of truffles or something. So I had to fork out just to stop him screaming and simply tossed the clock into a bin as I exited the store. It cost about 7p.

Ultimately, I was woken up about 5.30 am sharp each day by the outdoor indoctrination aerobics the students were forced to perform under the red flag.
(frankspencer, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 9:29, 3 replies)

Windows.
Nuf sed.
( Andy_Control can't be held responsible for his actions., Fri 4 Jan 2008, 9:29, 5 replies)

My dad is a sucker for this kind of thing
and often buys "bargains" which are rubbish, eg food/drink items where the sell by dates are suspiciously blurred and the item itself turns out to be inedible.

Similarly little electrical gizmos which have no instruction manuals so are unuseable...
(Glen Moranjie, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 9:23, 1 reply)

I've always been more of a "you get what you pay for" kind of guy
...but Big Dave, with whom I shared a house for a couple of years, just couldn't resist a bargain, such as:

- the screwdriver set made of metal so soft that they simply disintegrated when confronted with a screw
- a set of 'non-stick' saucepans coated not with Teflon, but rather a thin coat of dark grey paint. And 'comedy' handles that weren't actually attached at all -- great for those hilarious "oh shit I've just poured boiling hot water all over myself!" moments
- Toiletries (soap, shower gel etc.) that genuinely smelled like a toilet, and which, if you were so unwise as to bring them into contact with bare skin, invariably resulted in something akin to leprosy
- Leaky pens
- Video tapes that unspooled inside the VCR

...the list could go on.

Pound shops: because you're life isn't quite shit enough already.
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 9:12, Reply)

my housemate
has a laptop he bought from aldi its spent more time being repaired than it has been used by him
( Reme Philips laid an epic dump on, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 8:51, 4 replies)

Shoddy pliers
There's a reason tools are a certain price. Quality.

Popped into Poundland a while ago, saw what looked to be a nice hefty, solid pair of pliers. £1, a single quid - BARGAIN - no decision had ever been made faster, I bought 'em.

Two days afterwards I'd lost my socket set, so set about undoing a bolt on my car with the new pliers.

On the second twist the things sheared in two, leaving the grips still clamped around the bolt head, and me looking like a twat holding two separate bits of metal that used to be the handles. Rubbish.

I encourage everyone to burn down their local 'pound shop', as nothing that comes from these places is ever any use. *lights torch* *organises rabble* *marches with a purpose*
( kitaro is all, like, "Nifty Biscuits" 'n that..., Fri 4 Jan 2008, 8:46, 1 reply)

I Bought An Apple Mac Once
.






Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 8:16, 7 replies)

Two words

Packard Bell.




(Kip, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 8:11, 2 replies)

Charity pens
When I was a poor(ish) student, I'd often nick the pens from the charity envelopes stuck through the door every day.

Bloody things only lasted about 2 lectures of doodles and scrawls. The quality of charities nowadays...
( TechImp is trying to be nice (with great difficulty)., Fri 4 Jan 2008, 8:11, Reply)

Drillage
A cheap hammer drill from an allegedly quality manufacturer. Shook itself to pieces (irreparably)whilst trying to drill a small hole in concrete. Arses. God bless China and the greedy people making money out of their crud.
(John Rooter, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 8:09, 1 reply)

Non-brand condoms...
... now I have teh aidz lolz

That'll learn me, eh?









(Disclaimer: not true)
(Mr.T Stopped licking the lid of life on, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 8:08, Reply)

4th !
a shredder. it would only shred one piece of paper at a time. Then after about 10 sheets it gave up completely.
utter crap
(toadrunner, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 7:52, 1 reply)

Argos strikes again
Mrs. Coops went out and bought a garden shredder - you know - you feed bits of tree in one end and it chops it up into delightful little piece and spits it out the other end - seeing some excellent potential for shredding fun, I switched it on and fed a branch no thicker than my little finger into it. It jammed, then started to vibrate and finally went pop accompanied by some blue smoke.

Moral of the story - don't buy anything from Argos.

Length - about 1m, with some leaves still attached.
( HSDriver was probably still at work on, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 7:48, 1 reply)

a box of matches
none of them matched
(sir swear a lot yes., Fri 4 Jan 2008, 7:38, Reply)

There was this discount hooker downtown...
Oh wait, Cheap TAT. My mistake.
(Zigmund can't think of anything good., Fri 4 Jan 2008, 7:32, 1 reply)