You get what you pay for…

There’s a lesson I’ve re-learnt many times in my life. My father tried to teach me this lesson a long time ago but I was stubborn and persisted in learning the lesson myself, again and again and again.

I have a general tendency to always look for a bargain. Whenever I make a purchase, especially high ticket items or services, I’m the type that tends to do research so that I make an informed decision. I do this more so I feel good about the decision to buy, that I have exhausted all my options and I’m not missing out. More often than not I make a decision to go for the cheapest option which on the surface appears like the smart option.

Unfortunately it’s usually not the case and more often than not, I get what I pay for.

I used to look at my dad’s spending habits and cringe at how quickly he could make a decision to buy a new computer, new video player, even a new car without spending a lot of time shopping around or researching his options. My dad doesn’t have a lot of patience; he’s an instant gratification kind of guy. For some reason though he seems to walk away with a good buy. It could be just luck, but perhaps there is more to it.

My dad generally buys good quality over cheapest. He usually spends more to get a premium brand. On the other hand I tend to look for the cheapest option and while perhaps it felt good at the time, usually shortly after I’m berating myself for buying poor quality while looking at my broken product or shoddy output.

For example, a few years ago I wanted to get a content management system built for a website I manually updated. I looked around and realised that a professional software firm would cost thousands to get this done. I was determined to save cash so I went to a local university in search of some cheap student labour. A couple of undergrads stuck their hands up and said “no problem, we can do that”.

Unfortunately the students had never worked on a commercial software product before and I’d never worked with software developers before. It was a disaster. My hired team went to work by trying to modify phpnuke so it would mimic the design of my site. However it didn’t come close to meeting my needs. The students got tired of trying to implement all the custom features I wanted and I got tired of having a shoddy product that didn’t do anything I needed it to do. We had no formalised contract agreement but since the students had done work I paid the originally agreed upon $500 and walked away having learnt a lesson.

My shopping behaviour is smarter now, but I still occasionally fall victim to the bargain hunter within me. Now I rely more heavily on reputations, word of mouth, portfolios and look for indicators and “warning flags” that show a product or service might not be up to scratch. I may be spending more money but I’m getting higher quality results.

However, just last week my dad’s lesson played over in my head again. I’m currently looking to have some new business cards made and this time I want something a little more special than usual. I tried to play it cheap by designing a card myself like I have done in the past. I took the card to the printery and asked for a plastic “shiny” coating on one side. Now this printer has always been nice to me and produced my cards at good prices, but unfortunately this time I got what I paid for. It turned out my card design looked terrible in real life on the card and the plastic finish is causing my cards to warp. I simply can’t use them.

I’ve learnt the lesson again. Now does anyone have a contact for a good business card designer?

Yaro Starak