Don't. Buy. Cars. From. Ebay.
At least not without looking at them first. Our 'bargain price' Citroen Berlingo has so far had the following:

- Broken power steering pump (works, but louder than engine)
- Exhaust (fell off on drive home)
- Starter motor (died one week after purchase)
- Brakes (so bad they're funny: a choice of drifting gently across the white line, or locking up the front wheels)
- Thermostat (doesn't work, so car eternally freezing cold. Doesn't matter that much, though, because the fan stopped working today anyway.)
- Anti-roll bar (two parts missing)
- Rear axle mounts (detached)

The word 'shed' is overused these days, but I think that in this case it may be a little too gentle really.
(trumpet, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 13:47, 4 replies)

This was actually bought for me
Growing up in Fareham, there were more charity shops than anything else, but the one pound shop we DID have was MASSIVE, and what's more, it sold pretty much everything.

For my birthday one year, a mate of mine, being a fan of all things Vic and Bob, decided to get me a frying pan. Best. Present. Ever.

It was made of some flimsy alloy, akin to metallic paper, and painted red. The best bit, was that it caused absolutely no harm when you attempted to spang someone on the head with it, but it did make a lovely metal "CLANG!" noise.

This was all well and good, causing much merriment in school with even the teachers enjoying the odd spang. It all came to an end when I decided to use it for the intended purpose however.

There were no other clean pans, the parentals were away and I was hungry, so I popped some oil and an egg into my spanging pan, and put it on the stove....

Firstly the red paint began to smoke and bubble, before peeling away from the pan and falling to the bottom of the hob in a flaming mess. Then, the wafer thin pan began to warp and bend. Yup, that's right, a melting frying pan. Stunning.

(N.B. Obviously I removed it from the hob pretty damn sharpish)
( Sonic James Doom forgetting the date since... umm..., Fri 4 Jan 2008, 13:46, 3 replies)

The Mystery Toilet
The Mystery Toilet was a small plastic bog with a button. When you pressed the button a hand came out from under the lid and stroked you. I was so inspired by this that me and my friend started a band named after the item. Sadly our songs about poo never really impressed anyone.
(chakaflange, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 13:44, 2 replies)

Tat bought for me
To be fair, not all tat, and well intentioned but....

at least two 'Multitools' where the handles get sharper at the exact same rate as the blade goes blunt. Mucho ouch. Complete with the pliers that have the gripping power of an anorexic gerbil's paw, philips head screwdrivers in the shape of a swastika, and all in all guaranteed to go "Spoinnggg!" at a critical moment and drive shards of alleged steel through your eyeballs.

And the mini version that is supposed to go on your keys which cunningly unfolds in your pocket and either rips the lining to buggery and beyond or stabs/nips your tender flesh. Personally, most of my favourite bits are kept in close proximity to my trouser pockets and I prefer them non-perforated.

And then the kitchen stuff - not tat at all, lovely high quality products, but how often do you need a novelty gherkin fork? A strawberry huller? A banana slicer? A crab cracker? Authentic Thai ginger squishing thingy? Non-smelling garlic slicing thang? Honey dippers? Obscure wire thing for oh I dunno, preparing edible dormice for Roman orgies? I mean, I love my fambly to bits, and I love to cook, BUT STOP IT IN THE NAME OF SANITY. I HAVE A KNIFE!!!!

Hundreds of the things in fact, thanks to you bastards. Stop giving me ocelot-filleting blades. Or mushroom collecting knives. Or ninja sushi knives.

As for the sake set, fifteen authentic chopstick sets, those wee bowls for the soy sauce, authentic Calvados glasses, Port pipes....


(Sobs)
(osok Rebel without a clue, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 13:38, 4 replies)

8 lighters for a £1
from a cheap pikey market.

by the time you get to the car at least 3 will have lost flints, one does not burn higher than a few millimetres no matter how much you twiddle, one will be the opposite and take off your eyebrows no matter how much you twiddle, ALL of the wheelie spark making things (technical term No 17, along with the thingymajig, oodgamiwotsit, and plastic switchy light bringing object) things will fall off within a week and the metal guard will fall off whenever placed in a pocket.

Don't even get me started on the litany of cheap shit useless pieces of crap known as my car history
(Halfy By light alone, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 13:30, 4 replies)

Ethnic Peace Coffee
Yep, even the sanctity of a decent cup of coffee is under threat in these uncertain times at work.

We've run out of Nescafe and instead of simply replacing like for like, we're given "Fair Trade" coffee which might be brilliant for third world farmers, but tastes like Paula Radcliffe's Reeboks. After she's stepped in something.

Right now I'd kill for a cup of decent coffee...
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Fri 4 Jan 2008, 13:26, 13 replies)

Tesco value toaster
Unlike Penguin of death's, mine has been working perfectly well (reasonably well anyway) for over a year, but I do have one question about it. (And most other toasters in my experience)

The setting dial goes from 1 to about 6.
1 = Lightly toasted
2 = Medium brown / Well toasted
3 = Carbon - Sets off smoke alarms all over house


What the fuck are 4, 5 & 6 for???
Perhaps;
4 = Burn down your house?
5 = Cause a local blackout?
6 = Blow up the national grid?
(Greencloud Wanted to go fishing on, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 13:25, 11 replies)

I can't believe it's not chocolate
My mum proudly wheeled out a box of chocolates this Christmas. You'd have thought the Magi had come bearing gifts to our living room, so ceremoniously did she unwrap them.

"Truffles!" she exclaimed with tidings of great joy. "They only cost a pound!"

My eyes lit up. I daintily prised a cocoa-dusted delicacy from it's little papery nest and popped it into my mouth...

...and immediately spat it out again with a resounding "WAAAAAUUUUUURRRRRGGGGHHHH!"

No wonder they were only a pound. They were from sodding ASDA and the major ingredient was listed as "vegetable oil". "Cocoa flavour" was waaaaay down the list. ASDA had wasted their time and my mum's money on making replica chocolate truffles that a) didn't even contain chocolate and b) taste like the devil's oily vomit. Why? Why even bother?
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 13:24, 3 replies)

any Lidl branded item that has the word "chocolate" on it.
It may look like chocolate, it may even smell and initially taste like chocolate, but the after taste and general indigestion that follows say otherwise.
( TBL I posted this on, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 13:17, 7 replies)

I bought
a cassette in the market when I was about eleven. It cost me two quid. On taking it home and playing it I found it was blank and the sleeve insert was a poor quality photocopy (I was ELEVEN, okay?).

I deserved everything I got, mind you - it was a Bananarama album.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 13:15, Reply)

And with regards to cheap toilet roll.
I'd much rather just use my hand. It's what the muslims have been doing for years and it is perfectly clean as long as you wash your hands afterwards.
(Half of Stephen Fry's right buttock pissed on your dog on, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 13:13, 2 replies)

Cheap booze
Is the Tower in Hull still open? Student night on a Wednesday was a grim affair, but the enticement was the 20p pint. Oh, God. The women's rugby teams of two universities could be described as cheap tat, too.


On the other hand, denizens of Hull might also be familiar with Spiders, which was a heaven of cheap booze - notably, in the form of their version of the pan-galactic gargle-blaster. For the uninitiated, take a pint glass; insert one measure each of vodka, pernod, galliano and blackcurrant cordial; add a bottle of fresh orange juice; throw in a bit of ice; top up with dry cider; charge £2.30 for the lot. Falling over was inexpensive and easy :)
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 13:11, 7 replies)

Airbeds
I have an Argos double airbed that cost me about £40ish.

It's not bad, except that the non-return valve has started leaking. Which means that when I blow it up, all comfy and full of air, it deflates again in the space of 10 minutes.

I've tried putting a carrier bag over the valve before screwing the top on, which sort of helps, but it's still flat again by the morning.

Waking up on the floor NFTW.
(Half of Stephen Fry's right buttock pissed on your dog on, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 13:09, 1 reply)

Super Glue
15 tubes of super glue for a pound! What student could resist, even when they have no real need for said super glue?

It turned out to be a good thing that I didn't really need to use it, as the glue was certainly not super, and was only relatively more adhesive than air. Quite why they thought it necessary to include a tube of de-bonder I'm not sure.

There was also the toaster owned by my ex-flatmate. Costing a mere two pounds from Tesco, and capable of toasting a whole two slices at a time, it started to melt itself after a whole two uses.

Length? It lasted about a week in total, then went out the window.
(PenguinOfDeath is Scottish, and most likely angry, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 13:08, 2 replies)

Pound Shop toilet paper
Having recently moved into a new place, a lot of the initial shopping was performed in budget food and general hardware shops. Fortunately, in the local area there are a few shops that sell cheap items for a little over 99p and a little under £1.01.

Unfortunately, one of these items happens to be toilet paper, unbranded and packaged in bundles of 24.

It's pretty innocent to look at from distance, but only after initial use and close inspection do you realise that it has a texture akin to the reverse side of woodchip wallpaper. Including the woodchips.

To be fair, you can't expect much more for a quid but the downside truly was finding this out the morning after an incredibly hot curry and twelve pint session.

I expected copious amounts of blood after the initial wipe, I truly did.
( Muns, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 12:48, Reply)

mmm, cheap meat, cheap enema
When I moved house a while back, I had to blow every damn penny I had on security deposits and moving costs, so I had to last a week on £15 before my next pay packet came through. So off I trot to asda and buy all the cheap shit I can find, lots of pasta, rice and joy of joys, asda economy burgers. 8 for 99p!

Dear Lord, never again.

I've never had food poisoning before. And I'll die a happy man if I never have it again. Approx 1^1/2 hours after eating a couple of these sawdust burgers, I was being very, very, very sick into the toilet. It was spraying out so violently that I had to dip my head under the rim to keep it all in the bowl. As if that wasn't bad enough, it then started coming out the other end with just as much gusto. I had to choose between sick in toilet or shit in toilet. In the end, to save destroying the carpet, I had to puke in the toilet and shit in my pants. This went on for about 30 minutes. By the end it was just bright orange bile coming out of both ends. My throat and arsehole burned red hot for days.

I'll never forget the sensation of hot liquid shit endlessly filling the seat of my trousers and then spreading down the legs. I had to bend my legs tightly to create a seal and keep it all from spreading out onto the carpet. And to round it all off, those 99p burgers ruined a £20 pair of jeans.
( Damocles wants no part of your debauchery, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 12:42, 7 replies)

Cheapo 99p for 6 1-ply toilet roll
Society rarely has any kind of warm reception for those with shitty finger nails...
( dan j the filthy bastard, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 12:38, 3 replies)

Ace Lager
The beverage of choice for students scouring North East England backstreets looking for an all night garage that sold booze...

Cheap, but absolutely fucking horrible stuff. Put me off lager for life...
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Fri 4 Jan 2008, 12:33, 5 replies)

Asda Whisk - I embarrassed myself...
I can never believe how cheap some of the electrical stuff in Asda is - I actually got a hair drier for about £1.94 recently...

Anyway, this story concerns my little sis - she's the complete opposite to me - organised, pretty domesticated - has cookery books (and uses them!) and she'd bought an electric whisk to use for baking. Yeah, it was cheapo, she was barely out of being a student - you know how it is...

The first time she'd used it, one of the whisk attachments had sheared off somehow, twisting around the other, with part of it flying off and nearly hitting one of her cats (Henry, the other one was called Stanley - she adored her cats!)

In a tiz she rings me up, upset about the near miss, and the fact she can't make her cake! So we go to the mega huge Asda together - she wants to just buy another one, but I'm a bossy big sister (our mum died when we were young, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!) so we have a quick look, but no cheapo whisks of the same make are there, only posh ones like Kenwood, and they won't replace with a more expensive mixer.

I drag her up to the 'customer' desk brandishing the weapon of mass self-destruction and explain the situation...

You know that sketch on Little Britain? "Computer says no"...yeah it was going like that...they were refusing refund/replacement, didn't want to know...I was getting more annoyed - I start going on about how it just missed taking poor Henry's eye out - and really laying it on...this goes on for about 5 minutes (I was really seeing red, I hate Asda, I hate being made to feel like they make me feel, I was REALLY hating their cheap shit that nearly took out my cat nephew!), and my sister was looking like she's hoping the ground would swallow her up (she often looks like that when I'm with her...ahem...)

Then this supervisor type hurries up to the desk, does one of those shouty whispers like "what's going on!" and reaches over to switch their tannoy system off!!

The whole debate had been transmitted all over the store - Ha HA!!

We walked away with a much posher mixer - safe for cats and cakes!

yay
( curvylittlegoth heard the voices in your head on, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 12:32, 3 replies)

Wet and Wild
Oh, the sad world of the panicked scud video purchase.

The title promised so much: "Wet and Wild" with an enticing picture of several Wet and Wild young ladies on the cover, clearly having the time of their lives in sapphic embrace.

Alas, when I got the jazz vid home and fumbled it into the machine, it turned out to be an hour-long film of ropey young ladies hanging around some sort of casino in America being hardly sexy at all, culminating with about ten minutes of a wet T-shirt contest, everything drowned out by the sound of braying rednecks.

Flaccid, I was.

Almost made my £0.00 find of the cinematic classic Grannys Cumming 2 in a rubbish skip seem an erotic bargain. Almost
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 12:22, 3 replies)

We love BSE
I cannot have been the only student in the country whose first move, when the BSE crisis really hit in 1995/6, was to load up a trolley of suddenly-cheap beef.


Can I?


*twitches*
*grinds teeth*
*dies*
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 12:21, 3 replies)

Extendable dog leads
I bought an extendable/retractable dog lead from a pound shop (it cost £1 in case you were wondering). Next day I'm walking the dog and he sees something he wants to investigate and pelts off after it. He reaches the limit of the lead but instead of jerking sharply to a halt he simply pulls the lead straight out of its case and carries on.
He was a Yorkshire Terrier.
( P45 Sent by my Bosch 509e in the year 2000, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 12:19, 3 replies)

Poundstretcher incites vermin
No, not the customers, well, not 'just' the customers.

I do love the thrill of buying cheap shit. If you consider it disposable anyway, you're often surprised by the occasional gem of an item. Hence, I was browsing said tat trader and noticed some remarkably cheap bird feeders (fat/seed balls in net bag thingies, about 12 for £1.50 or something).

Thinking of my baby daughters love of ornithology, I snaffled the bargainous child entertainment. I hung two in my tree and they indeed had the desired bird-attracting qualities. I promptly forgot about the remaining 10 that were under the kitchen sink.

In November, I was searching for some other item in the cupboard when I noticed a collecton of detritus behind some rarely used bottles/cans. Fucking mice. The sneaky little bastards had decided that living in the surrounding fields and undergrowth was unsuitable to their refined 21st century mouse tastes and had taken up residence under my kitchen floor to gain full advantage of free central heating and a permanent lardy seed buffet. Cunts.

They must have been somewhat surprised when the chocolate dessert course of their free feed came with a sting in the tail, or rather a spring loaded steel bar across the neck. That's the impression I got each time I heard one rattling around in its death throes anyway.

Moral of the story: Shopping at Poundstretcher gives you mice.

Sincere apologies for length.
(Greencloud Wanted to go fishing on, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 12:12, 5 replies)

7p beef flavoured super noodles from Tesco
Never known "pasta" to melt in your mouth like that. And that wasnt beef. It was a salty soap flavour. I should have just eaten some salt for dinner. They went in the bin.
(Miggyman, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 12:11, 1 reply)

$.99 stores
Cheap stuff?! Damn, The only time I go out is to buy stuff at 99 cent stores.

Food, tools, toys, gifts, you name it I bought it there. Almost everything I own is under $1.00.

~You wish It was Furry~
(Leoninus "Never lick a fresh turd on a hot day.", Fri 4 Jan 2008, 12:11, Reply)

Buying in bulk.
My flatmates always buy in bulk. This is not your usual studenty type flat, no, we have hundereds of tins of food that are past their 3 year sell by date, and amusingly lots of packs of "condor brand extra large condoms"(this startled me, as when unravelling one for fun, i realised how insignificant i am. They must work though, condors are almost extinct).

The best thing we have though by far, is a bag of ONE HUNDRED or so of those little plastic "rayguns", where you pull a crappy trigger, something sparks about inside and it goes "VREEEOWM!"

I have no idea what induced them to buy all these... "Rice? Check. Tinned peaches? Check. Bulk pack of cheaply manufactured plastic rayguns? No, we still have the last bag to get through."

pfft.
(stevkay, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 12:10, 1 reply)

75p wine
csj's story reminded me...

Back in pre-Euro days circa 1997 a mate of mine and I did a 24 hour round trip from Cheshire to Calais in my shagged (but reliable) Austin Maestro. The ferry journey was a bargain 40 quid and we'd got a bit put aside to buy a load of wine and beer.

After filling the car up to near dangerous levels, we counted out our remaining shrapnel and had something like 16 francs left. We headed back into Citie Europe and spotted our prize - a bottle of "champagne" for 7.50FF. We bought two bottles and headed home.

Forgot all about them until we'd drunk all the decent stuff (sadly only about two days later if I remember right). We thought it'd be a laugh to give one a go.

We took off the metal wire holding the cork in which without any warning or input from us blew out like it had been fired from a cannon. This alone qualifies as it ripped straight through a polystyrene ceiling tile in my mate's rented lounge, providing a nice indoor nativity snowing scene and a £50 reduction in his returned deposit.

I have drunk some stupid shit in my time, including (accidentally whilst siphoning) petrol - nothing compared to this though. You couldn't physically even swallow the stuff because it made you wretch beforehand. We soon gave up and poured it down the sink.

Only to find the following morning the stainless steel sink now had a brown and totally unremoveable stain where this rancid acid based piss of satan had stuck to it. Fortunately went unnoticed by his landlord.

He gave the other bottle to his brother as a Christmas present who's chavvy wife seemed to manage it without ill effect. I guess the moral of the story is that if something seems to good a bargain to be true, then if you bought it you've no-one to blame but the dick you can see in the mirror!
( dan j the filthy bastard, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 12:07, 1 reply)

More Christmas Tat
Scaryduck has reminded me of my favourite Christmas Tat story: my rich great-aunt. She really was very rich (as in, when she died Christies held a special auction for her collection of original Picassos, Chagalls etc) but she was also a miser, and eccentric with it. (She ended up leaving all her money to Frankie Vaughn, but that's another story).

At Christmas she'd come round to our house, and her presents were legendary. My mother received a half-used box of makeup that was so old it had started to rot, and my brother got a 'raincoat' that was a bin liner with holes cut in it. One year she gave us both wallets and they had some money in them (pound notes, ar, them were the days). I counted mine and found that I had eleven pounds. When I said this, she grabbed it off me and took one out - 'I only meant to give you ten'. Class.
( flatfrog Staring vacantly into space, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 12:01, 4 replies)

Thrifty Parents
My parents were thrifty. My mother had a sewing machine, and made all our school trousers. Whilst other kids had their arses covered with the latest Farrah's, mine was feeling the static energy of handmade crimpolene's.

Anyway, a particular favourite was savings in the footwear department. And my school shoes were bought from "Dave's Discount Shoe Store" in the town - Purveyors of all kinds of obscure, unbranded foot related tat.

Now Dave didn't sell Doc Martens, he sold Majordomo's which were kind of the same, but a fraction of the price of the real thing. And yes, they did have a square toe that I find useful now as I can get closer to the bar, but aged 13 was enough to ensure the piss taking was fast and furious.

Instead of having a patented Air Sole, MajorDomo's had a layer of Rubberised Cheese that connected foot with pavement.

A standing joke in the town was that at the first sign of snow the sole from a pair of Dave's D Shoes would fall off. It was true. I had wet feet for many, many, many winters. So wet in fact, my toes became webbed (but that's just athletes foot bubbles and not a swimming aid).

Dave's D Shoes is no longer there in the town. Neither are there any Podiatrists any more. Funny that.

Just before I started work, my dad bought me a pair of proper Doc Marten shoes. They were Aceness in Shoe Form and lasted me into my late 20's.

Length: Probably size 38 at 13, but now I'm a 42 (or 8 in old money)
Width: Who knows. Couldn't afford Clarks!
( Piper Alpha is being a grumpy northerm bastard on:, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 12:00, 1 reply)