The Great 'Which gadgets were your biggest waste of cash?' Hunt

juliettet

This makes me feel so much better.

Useless to me are

fence sprayer - kept blocking even with proper Ronseal fence stuff.
Ice cream maker - used once. needs lots of double cream.
Coffee makers - all presses & espresso makers known to man.

Many many others.

Best buys
Remoska - Love love it.
Braun hand whisk - 25 years old !
Lavazza coffee maker- dont need to measure the coffee.

Lexis200

Lum wrote: »

Cat water fountain - The pump is so noisy the cat is wary of it, so I turned the pump off and then all he did was rub his head on it. I read recently that cats should be given bottled water - yes bottled water! - as they need fresh and don't like tap water. No-one appears to have told my cats this though, and despite having fresh tap water (sorry cats, I don't get to have bottled so you're not going to!) they seem to only ever drink from the toilet or the stagnant water from a bucket in the garden. Have I got common cats?

Ultrasonic cleaner - does nothing

Home IPL hair removal thing - Does nothing except warm up the hairs. :rotfl:

Ideal Home Show, the home of all useless gadgetry. My friend and I both bought a fleece-maker-newerer (I think that's the technical name...) which removes bobbly bits, cat hair and makes the fleece fluffy again. Couldn't for the life of me make it work like the bloke on the stall did. I'm sure we didn't just get it because he was a dishy bloke with a lovely South African accent at all...

adamnsu

Waste of Money Gadgets
- Sony PSP Handheld
- Nintendo Wii
- Hoover Vaccum

Great Gadgets
- Iphone/Galaxy s3
- Sony PS3
- Henry Vaccum Cleaner
- Angelcare baby monitor

wba31

Sope wrote: »

I also still have my Sony Mini Disc player that I got just when MP3 players were taking off. Wrong choice, hardly ever used, and I still have it. Can't bring myself to get rid of it knowing how much it cost!

I invested into Sony's Minidisc, only got as far as a portable player and recorder.
Looking back, sonicstage was a complete ballache, and i might as well have stuck with a walkman as the battery life was horrendous. After getting an incredible deal to buy Sony's new model at Apollo 2000, I had nothing but problems with it. The store manager where i bought it from refused to accept it was faulty (and i was a school kid so he probably didnt want to deal with me). I wrote a letter of complaint to the head office, and they picked up the faulty player from me with a cheque as refund for what i paid for it.
I then went to buy an ipod classic. best thing i have ever owned. Was stolen out of my car after 12 months, and for some reason i bought an ipod touch, which was more expensive but with less memory.
I now use my iphone for my music and podcasts, but am desperate to get an ipod kit fitted in my car, and then buy another classic so i can simply put all my music on it...

supermonkey

pulliptears wrote: »

i'll probably be ridiculed but....an iPad.

I bought it to read on, or at least thats what I told OH. In reality it was a gadget I desperately wanted. As it turned out, it was too heavy to use as an ereader and too bright. As I already had a MacBook Pro it wasn't used for browsing either and any apps I wanted I had on the Mac anyway.

It's sat for 2 years as a glorified iPod plugged in to a set of speakers and very rarely used.

You can turn the brightness down!

There quite a few on here who bought expensive items they claim don't work. Why don't you complain & return for a refund?

Jelly_Biactol

Skint_Catt wrote: »

My husband's got plenty of out of date & unworking PDA's & other gadgets used before phone's became 'smart'.

The mentions of PDAs on this thread reminded me that one person's 'waste of cash' can be another person's bargain buy. Grab yourself a secondhand PDA (off fleabay or wherever), stick mobipocket (free) software on it, and you've got yourself a great ebook reader - ultra-portable, colour screen & graphics, lots of different fonts and font sizes ... only down-side can be battery life. You can pick them up for less than a fiver ... I paid less than £1 for mine:)

pulliptears

supermonkey wrote: »

You can turn the brightness down!

There quite a few on here who bought expensive items they claim don't work. Why don't you complain & return for a refund?

Yes, you can but the glare is still too much to be a comfortable e-reader and that really doesn't solve the weight issue does it? You can't make it lighter.
Why don't I complain? Can't see me getting a refund on a 3 year old iPad 1 now Why didn't I at the time? Because there was nothing wrong with it, it just didn't suit what I needed it for. I adapted it and used it for other things (the music player) but in hindsight it was a waste of money for the amount of time its been used.

sarahemmm

Enterprise_1701C wrote: »

I love my breadmaker, and my George Foreman Grill, and my slow cooker, and my vegetable steamer.

I should never have bothered with the rice cooker though, seems to do less than a saucepan!

Now I love my rice cooker - stick the rice in and forget it until you dish up! But I haven't even't tested the George Foreman I spent ages hunting down on ebay...

purpleweasel wrote: »

One of those mandolin slicer-thingys. My OH wanted it but i have always thought it was a lot of assembly/messing about/washing up for the amount of time it might save. And i was scared it would slice the tops of my fingers off

And I love my mandolin so much I now have two! Only because I want to do thicker and thinner slicing plus juliennes (if I ever find one that does all three I will be in heaven). Thin sliced potatoes for pan haggerty (best comfort eating ever), thicker sliced veg for salads, julienne for stir fries and soups. They both have a special veg holder to keep your fingers away from the blade.


But I do have the dusty bread machine, plus a garage full of stuff that I can't quite bear to just throw away.

stec00

Worst:

Steam cleaner - a Polti one. Same experience as someone else on here. Cost £240, used about 5 times over 5 years - really only for the sake of it. Heavy to lift took up loads of room and got relegated to the garage together with its bag of attachments. The water inside went stagnant. Cleaned it up and sold it on eBay recently for £15.

Best:

By a million miles: The original Series 1 Tivo - the best PVR ever ever ever. Can't say enough how brilliant this has been. Has wishlists and season passes that work perfectly, changes the channel for me at various times in the day. The guys that wrote the software for this were ahead of their time. But for some reason it never really caught on with the mass market. Not enough sold and Thomson stopped making them so I thought the listings would go. Fair enough - I'd had good use out of it. But they didn't. They stayed - for years and years. Until last year - when the listings did stop. Fair enough again... but then AltEPG formed - just had to change the phone number it dials and the listings are there again, just as good as before. Still going now and still by far the best. My parents got through about 4 freeview PVRs in the last few years - apparently they're one of the devices in your house most likely to go wrong. This thing is like a Duracell bunny and right up there with Google for the value it adds.

snowleopard61

This thread has cheered me up no end, partly because it's funny (especially the cat drinking fountain story) and partly because I'm so un-technical and, well, stingy that before shelling out for anything like the above I always think:
a) it's expensive
b) I've managed without it until now
c) I probably won't understand how to use it
d) it'll probably break down and I won't be able to afford to get it mended and then I'll have wasted the money.

... and then for the most part I don't buy it. Reading the above, I'm glad!

My mobile is the simplest, cheapest I could buy and it seems pretty indestructible, certainly more so than the expensive ones my children have got through year after year. It has absolutely no street cred, but I don't have to worry it'll get stolen!

One thing I did buy and found a complete waste of money was an electric shredder. It scared me silly and I felt I had to leave it shut away so no one would hurt themselves on it, so I used to leave piles of shredding to accumulate and annoy me. When it finally broke irreparably I was quite pleased and bought some shredding scissors for under a fiver, which I use on a daily basis.

But as it happens I have just recently bought a cat drinking fountain (cheaply), and my cats do actually use it, so I'm happy - as long as it doesn't break down in the near future.

Oh, and I really, really want that cat pushchair so I wouldn't have to get taxis to the vet's!:rotfl: