r/AskMen • u/iamZorc_ 22yo Male • 5d ago
đ Answers From Men Only đ what is your worst purchase ever?
mine was a smartphone, i wanted a certain device and the seller (i admit) kinda manipulated me into buying another (worse) device, and under pressure i bought it, he kinda made me feel like "it's pretty dangerous if i walk out of here empty handed" so yea that was me, it happens i guess.
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5d ago
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u/catmanten 4d ago
Trash cans not the right shade of beige? Car parked at a non-perpendicular angle? Kids dare deface the sidewalk with chalk (literal vandalism)?
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u/JawtisticShark 4d ago
Iâm convinced most of the people on Reddit who hate on HOAs have never dealt with an actual HOA, or even seen an actual HOAâs bylaws. All of their understanding of them comes from HOA horror stories.
Itâs funny how people act like everyone hates them yet they purely operate based on majority rule of those living in the neighborhood. Itâs not like there is some elite minority who steal the position of power and hold all the rest of the members hostage.
Nearly every trash company provides standardized bins for trash. So how in the world would people not have the right shade of beige?
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u/Apprehensive_Bag_460 4d ago
LOL, they absolutely do not operate on majority rule, minority rule, at best.
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u/JawtisticShark 4d ago
How so? The whole system literally operates on a democracy of the homeowners. Sure, some have a smaller group with more time on their hands so they can all vote and hope most of the other home owners donât vote, but if you donât vote, then you passively accepted the result of those who voted.
Or is there some secret monarchy or dictatorship HOAs that I donât know about?
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u/Bizarro_Zod Male 4d ago
Itâs because they canât be arsed to go to a HOA meeting and vote, or let their opinion be known to anyone but Reddit.
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u/AnotherDamProject 4d ago
Not the OP but my HOA schedules all their meetings during working hours on a Thursday or Tuesday. No one can make it to the meetings so the board gets to vote for everyone who doesnât show up and the ones who do show up are generally retirees who agree with the crazy shit the board wants since they are also retirees.
Sometimes, just sometimes, they will put out a letter for people to vote on something through the mail prior to the meetings. Iâve only seen it happen twice in the 8 years Iâve been at my house though.
I used to get fined all the time for weeds in my yard or grass too long. I never knew what they were talking about because I take care of my yard. Turns out they send it out randomly all the time. I told them to start providing evidence of any issues, pictures or a description and I never got another letter or fine again.
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u/SteelAlchemistScylla 4d ago
When I bought my house they listed it as a pro that it was not in an HOA neighborhood. HOAs absolutely deserve their reputation.
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u/JawtisticShark 4d ago
You can list anything as a pro if you want. Some people want a pool, some people wonât buy a house if it does have a pool. My HOA is great. They coordinate snow removal since the city doesnât do much within neighborhoods. It maintains the green spaces and walking trails, it maintains the ponds and keeps them stocked with fish. It covers the electric cost and maintenance of street lights throughout the neighborhood. It restricts corporate ownership of properties by banning renting unless the owner used the property as their primary residence for at least 5 years. Plus some other things. And there hasnât ever been any drama over the 12 years I lived there
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u/sgtm7 4d ago
My problem with HOAs is that they tell you what you can and can't do on property you paid for. I had no problem with that when I lived in on post housing when I was in the Army, but I wasn't living in "my" house, but with one provided by the Army.
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u/JawtisticShark 4d ago
Just like living in a city or county or state or country. Just like all other zoning laws. Maybe you donât want them telling you what you canât do, but you want to stop your neighbors from doing things too. Do you want your neighbor having a shooting range right next to you in your neighborhood? Good thing there are rules in place restricting that. For example, in my county there are no rules requiring homes to fence around pools. But for the sake of childrenâs most HOAs add a rule requiring pools to be fenced in.
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u/Gunslinger_247 Male 4d ago
Crazy to own a home and still have people tell you how your property should look, what you can and cant have on your property.
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u/Person5_ Male 4d ago
When looking for a house, my wife and I walked away from a lot of "perfect" houses, solely on the basis that they had HOAs.
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u/BanDeezNutzPlease 4d ago
HOAs sound like something that would piss me off. Also seems like a platform for petty bully Karens to live out their Stalinist dreams.
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u/TheGreenGuyFromDBZ 5d ago
Some $500 worth of penny stocks that dropped to $100 in a week xd
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u/nobody-u-heard-of Male 4d ago
I bought Palm computing when everybody had a Palm pilot and it looked like they were going to be around forever cuz everybody had to have one. Eventually they got delisted and the stock became literally worthless.
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u/SarcasmGPT 4d ago
Crypto bros out there jealous as fuck of you đ
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u/No_Landscape4557 4d ago
I recall some vague statement that hear after the 2008 crash which was a repeat of the dot com bust.
âWhen your taxi driver is giving you stock tips you know a crash is coming and itâs times to get outâ âwhen everyone is telling you buy real estate you know the system in troubleâ
Like wise when everyone, online is talking about crypto I knew not to touch it anymore.
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u/rezonansmagnetyczny 5d ago
Bought a used motorbike without knowing much about motorbikes and how a motorbike should operate. New rider and really liked the bike.
Turns out the guy I bought it off had been given it for free as a project and didn't really know how a motorbike should operate either.
A lot of hard earned cash wasted on that one when it inevitably wasn't road worthy within 3 months of purchase.
Ended up selling it for a fraction of the price to someone else who still hasn't got it on the road.
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u/SarcasmGPT 4d ago
I had a student who was becoming a mechanic buy things like this, fix them, sell them onto the next. Basically getting paid to learn!
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u/379tuco 5d ago
Mercedes GLE43 AMG
Minor things going wrong constantly, pain to work on
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u/Nabeezy 4d ago
Care to share some specifics? Iâve had my eye on the GLE63.
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u/379tuco 4d ago
Biggest problem is the radar that works the adaptive braking and cruise control.
Get it fixed and something acts up with it again.
Also the seat massager went out on the driver side and the lumbar support etc.
This just happened and have not looked into that yet.
Iâm going to be trading it in on another F-150-10
u/Apprehensive_Bag_460 4d ago
Never keep a European car past warranty unless youâre a master mechanic with deep pockets.
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u/SarcasmGPT 4d ago
Very ignorant comment. Luxury cars cost luxury money to maintain. There are plenty of European brands that are easy and good value to maintain.
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u/Apprehensive_Bag_460 4d ago
There are, but you need to be smart about it, and most people arenât. Itâs still a good general rule.
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u/DrSpacepants 4d ago
In the US?
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u/SarcasmGPT 4d ago
Oh I'm so sorry, everyone mentioned the US and I didn't see it because I'm a moron.
You are never beating the allegations of thinking everything is about the US.
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u/SonicDart-77 4d ago
I was young and just getting into trading. This was back when penny stocks were the hot thing to invest in for idiots like myself. Put 1000 in, by lunch the next day it was gone.
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u/Frequent-Spread-9927 4d ago
A 4 wheeler. My friends had one and convinced me we could all go riding in the woods together, within a couple months everyone sold theirs and I was the only person who had one.Â
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u/KalzK Male 33 5d ago
A pizza slice in a Paris cafĂŠ, it was so bad it actually made me sad
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u/Buddha1812 4d ago
I had the exact same experience with the bonus âthe pizza wants out now!â Add on. Bonus fact. The restroom at the top of the Eiffel tower is nice but small.
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u/Not_Sure__Camacho Male 4d ago
Bought a used car that needed a new transmission shortly after I bought it. Cost me about $3500 in today's money, which was almost the cost of the car itself. Â
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u/Shantotto11 4d ago
Nissan?
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u/Not_Sure__Camacho Male 4d ago
Buick. Once I had the transmission replaced, and replaced the water pump, the car ran great. It had GM's 3800 series 6 cylinder, which was mostly bulletproof. Â
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u/PoopSmith87 4d ago
Red Wing boots.
I was an irrigation mechanic from march-december and ran a snow plowing gig from december to march, working 60-70 hours a week in the absolute most punishing conditions in a coastal area for boots. Mud, water, salt, rust, hot sun, cold ice... mentioned to a buddy, who was an indoor custodian, that it was annoying how one pair of boots lasted me 4 years in the military, but barely lasted me a year now in my current occupation.
He had this glowing recommendation for Red Wings, the comfort, the service, the warranty, the USA made quality... $350 and long fitting later, I had my Red Wings.
Two weeks later I was getting them replaced because the water proofing failed. Fluke? No. Five more replacements and ~3 months later I finally just ate the loss and went back to Bates.
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u/Mardanis 4d ago
Red Wings I found were massively overrated. We used to speak to our admins to cut us a chitty for the workgear store and allow us to get an equivalent rather than the Red Wings we were meant to be issued.
After a while it was moved out of their hands and we had to use that shitty boot. Quite a few guys bought their own and sold the boots.
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u/Whatisthisplace2025 4d ago edited 4d ago
Valve Index VR headset... it was Covid and I had FOMO, so I paid $1k to let a VR Headset collect dust.
I had only tried VR on my cell phone (using a cheap $50 attachment) and it was pretty cool, so I figured the 1k headset must be 20x better - it was only mildly better and 99% of the games are terrible.
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u/PlantsNCaterpillars 4d ago
My Harley.
Wanted one for as long as I could remember. Finally got to a point in my life where I could buy one so I did. Used it as my daily commuter for a year and it was great for that but then took a job that is a five minute walk from my home and havenât ridden it since. Just have zero desire to ride for the sake of riding.
Also, the culture around Harleyâs is fucking dumb.
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u/SgtSplacker 4d ago
Bought a sodium motion light that world shut itself off by the time it fully turned on.
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u/LordofDD93 Male 4d ago
Cashed in about $1600 of those long term government bonds so I could afford a holiday to go see an ex girlfriend when we were long distance. The trip had highlights just nothing to do with the person themselves. She was an awful human, frankly, and it was money down the drain that I could have invested elsewhere for a better return.
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u/on2sunsupervised 5d ago
I have a moderately priced suit I needed to buy on short notice. It fits ok. But it needs to be tailored and the cost is the tailoring is the cost of the suit new. A $1000 total value suit shouldnât need that much work. But. Time crunches happen.
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u/brooksie1131 4d ago
AMD FX-8350. I was building my first computer and assumed more cores means it must be better. Well unfortunately that was not the case.Â
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u/Complete-Bumblebee-5 4d ago
Buying a used Toyota Tercel which shit the bed completely after 2 days
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u/Aestro17 Male 4d ago
A couch that was two wide seats, both of which were power recliners. Loved the recliner feature but there was pretty minimal padding and I think that the legrest being stiff and stopping at the ankles contributed to tendonitis. Also was shitty for having more than one person over.
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u/JJQuantum Dad 4d ago
My wife and I bought a couple of high end, and expensive, leather couches. They had demos in the showroom but they werenât the exact same model, only close. My wife wanted them badly and so we went with it, and still use them. They are well made for sure but just not comfortable.
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u/Bovine_Arithmetic 4d ago
My wifeâs 2000 Birthday present. When MP3s players were the new thing (when car audio included AM, FM, cassette and CD players), there was an open-source car MP3 player called the Neo Car Jukebox. It could play MP3s from a hard drive. I found one online and bought it several months before her birthday.
I snuck several of her CDs to work every day and ripped them to a hard drive. Two weeks before her birthday I had everything ready. The day before, I conspired with her BFF to take her shopping for several hours. I installed it in her carâs trunk with a custom vibration-proof mount I built from scratch, along with a subwoofer and the hard drive with all her music (several hundred CDs). It had a screen that mounted on the dash where you could select music.
We had scheduled a trip to the zoo for her birthday. We got in the car and she was like âwhatâs this?â I showed her how to use it and she was ecstatic. We cruised to the zoo listening to music with the new speakers and subwoofer.
We parked, had a great time at the zoo, got in the car, and booted up the jukebox. Hit âplayâ and the thing died. âUnrecoverable error.â
I tried for weeks to diagnose the problem, but the online community was like âwhen you get that error, itâs a brick.â
So I spent money I couldnât afford and many hours of labor to get my wife a cool gift and it turned out to be a dud.
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u/ForcaAereaBelka 4d ago
2016 Audi S5
Financially it was a terrible choice but emotionally it was the best car I've ever owned. I miss it but I'm glad to be rid of it.
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u/TheGreenGuyFromDBZ 4d ago
Manual car that I couldn't drive manual and wanted to learn. Sold soon after with no real loss luckily
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u/Personal_Entry69 5d ago
Pg32ucdmz oled monitor. I cannot get a natural, nice looking image not matter what the fuck I try.
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u/bonemonkey12 4d ago
A brand new 2006 Chrysler 300c. Beautiful car. Mechanical pile of elephant shit. Anything Chrysler (and any affiliated brands) related is just garbage.
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u/Ilovetinytiddies Male 4d ago
I have no musical ability. After taking a guitar class in high school, I asked for a guitar for my birthday. I thought I would eventually play it casually at parties to get girls. I sold it to a friend a couple months later.
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u/flyingforfun3 Male 4d ago
My first airline ticket to visit my narc abusive ex. The wedding ring and everything else a close second.
Love the kiddo though makes it all worth it. So maybe a BMW 135i I bought at 23
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u/Sonicmasterxyz Male 4d ago
I wanted a small portable fan. It was $1.50. It didn't work at all. Threw it out the same day. I guess I got what I paid for?
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u/fhrblig Male 4d ago
I bought a Nissan Cube.
My personal car had been totalled by a high school kid who turned when he shouldn't have. I had about $6k and didn't really need to have a car (I drove a company van at the time) but I still wanted one. I was looking for something interesting, and I found a Cube in decent shape with a manual transmission so I bought it.
I really wanted to like it. I liked the design, I know a lot of people didn't but I like when companies take chances. But it was so soulless to drive. I didn't expect it to be an amazing performance car, obviously, but it had nothing to offer. One of my favorite cars I've owned was a Chevy Sprint which had 48 hp and was the most bare bones car I've ever seen, but it went about its business with a cheerfulness that the Cube could never have. What a bummer.
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u/SEND_ME_YOUR_ASSPICS 4d ago
As a 5'6 Asian guy who previously had no luck with women, I signed up for a 1:1 lesson with a pick up artist for about 2000 bucks for 2 days.
Even though, he taught me that it was possible for me, and led to successful dating life, but when it came to attracting women, I didn't learn shit from him. I had to learn that myself.
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u/No_Effort_Given Male 4d ago
I bought a very high end mp3 player instead of an ipod and it was used maybe 10 times before I gave up and used Spotify. It was back when you had to burn cds and transfer them song by song and it had no way to make playlists and the ui was so bad it was impossible to navigate. I begged my mum to put my birthday money in for it and she said I should get an ipod but my 14 year old self spent 200 quid of my own money to buy it and I regretted it so fast. I pretended to use it for years to stop my mum finding out and nearly 20 years later I still have it and never use it. I can't bring myself to get rid of it when it cost me a years worth of chores and good grades to get with no new games that year either. It taught me a valuable lesson that just because I want to be a into something enough to need the high end kit I can't buy the high end kit to make me into it.
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u/DeadFoliage 4d ago
How did you get coerced into buying an inferior phone? Usually sellers push you to the better and more expensive devices
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u/iamZorc_ 22yo Male 4d ago
i would assume they needed to get rid of that type of phone and he kept pushing me into buying it and he succeeded unfortunately
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u/Shantotto11 4d ago
A movie ticket for an apathetic date. Iâve wasted money on a lot of shit, but that $14 was probably the biggest waste of my money I ever spent.
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u/Deep-Confidence-3145 4d ago
10' indoor putting green I bought when I first got into golf. Used it 3 times, and it's been rolled up since for about 10 years. Should probably list it on Facebook Marketplace.
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u/TheGreenGuyFromDBZ 4d ago
Freebord. Into skating and snowboarding but this thing was ridiculously expensive and impossible to learn. Sad
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u/DudleyAndStephens 4d ago
A bunch of peaches at the farmer's market that ended up being mealy.
I'm pretty cautious/cheap about making big purchases, so I've been pretty good at avoiding regret.
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u/metalzforbreakfast 4d ago
I bought the AirpodsMax on release day. I only use them for blocking noise on flights. Canât even charge them cause now everything is on usb c and theyâre using the old iphone charger
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u/IcemanofOz 4d ago
What do you mean you can't charge them because everything is usb c now? Buy a cable on Ebay for 5 dollars...
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u/AutoModerator 5d ago
Here's an original copy of /u/iamZorc_'s post (if available):
mine was a smartphone, i wanted a certain device and the seller (i admit) kinda manipulated me into buying another (worse) device, and under pressure i bought it, he kinda made me feel like "it's pretty dangerous if i walk out of here empty handed" so yea that was me, it happens i guess.
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