Friday, November 14, 2008

What's in a Name?



Does your purse say Brada instead of Prada? Has "Western Family" become your nickname? Is "Kirkland" a hot label for you? If so, you're probably a bargain shopper. And all things equal, I like to be a bargain shopper too. I do. But I also hate to waste my money on crap. So usually my policy is that if I can taste the difference or see the difference in some other significant way, then I pay for the name brand without worrying about it. If the difference is negligable,however, I don't. I will never pay $200 for a pair of jeans because the difference between $200 jeans and $50 jeans just isn't big enough. But sometimes I don't know. I'd like to save $5 per tub of washing machine soap, but will my clothes come out looking like I rolled around in mud? And if I buy designer imposters fragrances, will dogs and cats start howling when I come near? If I go with the dollar store bubble bath, will my kids grow extra toes? Sometimes I just don't know! All I do know is if I buy the cheap brand and it just plain doesn't work, then I've wasted money, not saved it. I don't want to spend my money and get a vastly inferior product. That's why I LOVE when Consumer Reports comes out with a new article that pits name brands of common products against the store brands. I love when they do all the dirty work for me. Because I'm pretty sure they will mention it if extra toes are involved.

In this month's article, Consumer Reports rated batteries. AA batteries. And guess what? Those fancy expensive litheum ion batteries that cost $4 for 2 actually do work better. But when it comes to just plain old alkaline batteries, Kirkland brand rated 7x better for the price than Duracell or Energizer. SEVEN TIMES BETTER! For the price. So let me be clear. That doesn't mean that one Kirkland battery will last last 7x longer than one Duracell. What it means is that if you spend $10 on Duracell and $10 on Kirland, you'll get 7x more battery life for that $10 with the Kirland. So unless my memory serves me very poorly, I've been paying $1.50 more for Duracell batteries at Costco and getting 7x less energy. Hmmmm....now who's giving me extra toes?


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7 comments:

tiburon said...

And that is precisely why I have a subscription to consumerreports.org

And Costco.

Christie said...

We recently bought batteries from Ikea, and they seem to last even longer. They were way cheap too. Very interesting info!

Anonymous said...

My purse says Whydoyouhaveapurseguysdonthavepursesorevenmanbags. I'm all for not paying for the name unless quality comes with it.

CaraDee said...

With the way I go through batteries (wink, wink) I'm lucky I already KNEW THAT...hahaha.
I buy those giant packs at Costco all the time. They just might last longer now that Brandon converted my wink wink to using a plug. ha

Hildie said...

I just bought some yesterday. I'm on the same mental wavelength as Consumer Reports.

Mindi said...

i buy generic on lots of things, but NEVER: cereal, downey and tide, and perfume.

alex dumas said...

I knew this. I think Consumer Reports must have done a test on batteries back when I used to read it.