--
Evelyn C. Leeper
He who knows only his own side of the case
knows little of that. -John Stuart Mill
Watch prices carefully at Dollar General. After their
buyout, nothing but another cashcow raid by KKR, they
changed a lot of suppliers and jacked up prices by about
30%!!!
Our local Krogers now beats DG prices by about 12%, and the
quality is better.
-- larry / dallas
I don't even go to Dollar General or Family Dollar. In my opinion, they
are mis-using the word "dollar" in their names. (Heck, I don't even
like the dollar stores that have only two or three items priced more
than a dollar!)
Dollar Tree is probably the best chain, but we have mom-and-pop ones as
well around here (central NJ) that are pretty good.
> larry wrote:
>
>> Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:
>>
>>> Just another note on liquid soaps in dollar stores: Not only is it
>>> cheaper than at the grocery (even if you are buying large refill
>>> containers), but you can get "ordinary" soap (i.e., not
>>> anti-bacterial). For people who think that using anti-bacterial soap
>>> all the time is a bad time, this is useful to know.
>>
>>
>> Watch prices carefully at Dollar General. After their buyout, nothing
>> but another cashcow raid by KKR, they changed a lot of suppliers and
>> jacked up prices by about 30%!!!
>
>
> I don't even go to Dollar General or Family Dollar.
There's a lot of absolute crap in some of these stores. I'd never buy
another CF bulb from one. And I have seen dish soap that looked like
soap, but did not act like soap. Not frugal if it doesn't do the job.
Cheap products are often not. It's often hard to tell the value of
something by the packaging.
Jeff
I consider that the understatement of the month!
In my experience, dollar store CFLs:
* Consistently produce less light than claimed - sometimes 70% less.
* Usually have an icy bluish white "daylight" color. Some in packages
claiming "soft warm white light" have the icy bluish color.
* If they are warm color, they usually have low color rendering index.
Even most of the "daylight" ones have a color rendering index slightly
lower than usual for CFLs.
* Usually lack the FCC ID # that mains-powered CFLs with electronic
ballasts are required to have.
* Usually lack the UL listing that ballast-included CFLs normally have.
* In my experience, have a high rate of malfunctioning, being DOA, and
dying spectcularly.
I only get them to say that I have actual experience when I say how bad
they are.
One thing that makes me think better of Dollar Tree is that I never saw
any of these stool specimen CFLs there.
>And I have seen dish soap that looked like
>soap, but did not act like soap. Not frugal if it doesn't do the job.
> Cheap products are often not. It's often hard to tell the value of
>something by the packaging.
Also, what about the products that are obviously inferior if you read
the labels? Best example I can think of: Rubbing alcohol. The dollar
store garbage is 50%, while rubbing alcohol anywhere else is normally 70%.
Also, dollar stores are now the main place to get "heavy duty"
batteries. The battery technology that has that name got its name when it
was an improvement over an even weaker and more obsolete battery
technology. "Heavy Duty" batteries are now cheap lightweights that
underperform alkalines, and alkalines are the usual now.
- Don Klipstein (d...@misty.com)
our local hardware store has 'em for $.75
--
when you believe the only tool you have is a hammer.
All problems look like nails.
Remember when Radio Shack had its "Battery Club"?
Jeff
Actually, I suspect it was the arrival of alkaline batteries. The ones
they used to hand out were zinc-carbon ones, which are not really made
any more so far as I can tell.
Carbon batteries are still made and easily found in dollar stores and
some supermarkets. They usually say 'Heavy Duty' or something like that
and one might easily mistake them for something that they're not.
Anthony
the mom and pop ones are great, all name brand excess/overstock/
discontinued stuff, not "dollar store brand", we have one in our area,
all the chains are horrible
Well, for plastics and kitchenware, a lot of the "dollar store brand" is
fine.
You need to watch the expiration dates on food, though--a lot of the
snack stuff has expired by the time it gets to the dollar stores.
The best deal we got was a half dozen boxes of chocolate-covered matzoh,
which would cost at least $5 each in the grocery. And there was no
problem, because matzoh doesn't really go stale. (Or as some people
say, it comes "pre-staled".)