Tell me about your spectacular wastes of money

[Pennybubbly]

I'm feeling physically sick.
I placed an order overseas for a move-coveted Christmas present and paid and obscene amount. The goods arrived and they're the wrong size. (Kind of my fault, kind of not). Worse still, the goods cannot be exchanged. My fault for not reading the small print. It's a company in the US and you can "re-sell" them on their website, so today I just spent another fortune shipping them back and listed them on the website.
I'm such a twat. Please tell me tales of stupid things you've done so I know I'm not the only one.

I own horses… need I say more

Bought some tickets on Viagogo just before lockdown. Rescheduled twice, don't know if the tickets I've got are even valid anymore - original purchaser could have claimed a refund from ticketmaster.

Concert in another city, so if we do try to go we will have to pay for travel and hotel.

Trying to do a section 75 with my bank.

Haha, yep horses, may as well hand over your credit cards, overdraft + contents of your wallet on purchase and never expect to see again!

On a more incompetent theme, DH and I are usually functioning adults but when it comes to holidays we seem to have more frequent expensive brain farts than the norm, some examples being hotel rooms booked for wrong month, flights booked from/to wrong airport, whole holiday booked for wrong YEAR , sometimes we've caught them early enough that it's only payment of an 'admin fee' stupid tax to correct but we have actually shown up at destination, got very cross and huffy when they don't have a record of the booking we clearly made only to notice our error and have to shell out for very expensive last minute bookings...

My DH got his annual bonus of £5,000 (worked his socks off for that)
So we Bought a new bathroom suite and some big expensive tiles (we are not rich in anyway but we thought we would for once ‘treat ourselves’ and get a quality item)

A friend recommended a retired tiler to do the tiling.
This is where it all went wrong.

He arrived and he looked about 80 year old.
Within the first hour he had a poo in our only toilet that stunk the whole house out so badly that our 3 year old was shouting “urr mummy what’s that disgusting smell”

He then dropped the tile from a height which landed into our new bath which caused a massive hole in the bath.
He walked out and we have never seen him since and we had stupidly STUPIDLY paid him half up front WHY!!!!

So we are left with a brand new bath with a giant hole and about 3 tiles stuck to the wall and the memories of the smell of his shit lingering through our house.

We then got a bath repair man out as we couldn’t afford a new bath.
He done such a bad job he even said “sorry I’ve royally fucked this up. I won’t charge you for what I have done- bye”

We had to get a loan to have the whole mess sorted and are still paying now 3 years on.

DS who was 3 at the time was absolutely dinosaur obsessed, Walking with Dinosaurs was touring. We booked very expensive tickets plus train plus hotel. He was so excited we felt it was worth every penny. Got to the arena, the show starts-opening scene is a (very realistic) dinosaur eating a baby dinosaur. DS completely freaked out, screaming, crying, clinging to us for dear life. Felt every pair of eyes in that arena on us as we did the walk of shame out of there. Tried to take him back in after he'd calmed down only for him to freak out again. He did love running up and down the arena steps though!

MaybeAMoaner I think you win!

Yup a colleague of mine came back out retirement to pay for her horse. I didn't realize how expensive they were to keep.

@MaybeAMoaner oh my goodness!

As a uni student I won a scholarship of 5k. I had no financial awareness or skills. It was gone in 2 months on nothing whatsoever of any merit. The worst I think was a pair of designer trainers that were 1 size too small. I convinced myself they were fine. Never wore them. Absolutely ridiculous

I bought two Merino wool chunky knit throws for the sofaa that I had been wanting for ages. Cost me an absolute fortune only to discover they are completely impractical when you have small children who love to shove fingers and hands in the holes. And the wool snags and pulls so easily so they fluff up and look messy. They are on top of the wardrobe until they all move out!

2 years ago booked tickets for a comedy gig which has been reschedule so many times i completely forgot about it. Got an email last week with tickets attached. Couldn't go and no refund.

Bought out current house, it has only increased in value over a decade by about 20,000 but we have spent much more than that on repairs and maintenance.

My ex insisted that buying a brand new car with CREAM interior would be a great idea. We had young children at the time. The amount it cost in valeting was mind blowing as the seats became dirty very quickly.
He did the same with the sofa, cream leather. I had to clean it at least once a week with wipes scrubbing it for ages and ages.
I no longer have a cream sofa or a car with cream interiors. Best of all I also got rid of the ex.

There was the time we took dd to Disneyland Paris but she was ill and slept through the whole weekend.

and the memories of the smell of his shit lingering through our house.
🤣

@Fluffyteal272

DS who was 3 at the time was absolutely dinosaur obsessed, Walking with Dinosaurs was touring. We booked very expensive tickets plus train plus hotel. He was so excited we felt it was worth every penny. Got to the arena, the show starts-opening scene is a (very realistic) dinosaur eating a baby dinosaur. DS completely freaked out, screaming, crying, clinging to us for dear life. Felt every pair of eyes in that arena on us as we did the walk of shame out of there. Tried to take him back in after he'd calmed down only for him to freak out again. He did love running up and down the arena steps though!

DS did this age 4 - he was obsessed with Robot Wars and we got tickets to see it live. We were in there less than a minute after it started. He absolutely freaked at how loud it was.

@NotPersephone
Turns out DS has classic autism and sensory processing disorder. Expensive child either way. Really wish we'd known earlier, not (only) for financial reasons!

yep, same with DS. We didn't really know until high school

@MaybeAMoaner I feel livid for you after reading that . What did your friend who “recommended” him have to say about it?

We've just "wasted" a couple of grand on replacement decking.

We'd had the old decking for 20 years and it was basically OK, just a couple of small areas where it was starting to rot. We'd been happy with it (quality of installation, design, etc), so we just wanted a "like for like" replacement with new wood really. Thought it would be easy!

How wrong we were. We went with the same long standing local reputable decking/shed/fencing/summer house firm that originally installed it. The owner came to measure up and give us a quote. He said it was a relatively quick/simple job as the foundations/footings were all in good order, so they could do a "like for like" rebuild of it with new timber frame and decking boards. Hence the relatively low price.

But, Oh my word, the couple of clowns who came to fit it hadn't a bloody clue. Their first attempt (just the frame) was completely different, too long one way, too short the other, not the same footprint at all, so they had to spend half a day taking it apart and putting it back in the right place (it was bloody obvious where it was due to the posts/footings etc which they seemed to ignore). Then they put the steps in the wrong place, so that was another wasted half day as they had to move them. Then they put the decking boards down in the wrong direction, so another day wasted to rip them up and put them down again. But, of course, the old screw holes were now in the wrong place, so there were random screw holes. That was another day as they had to take it up again and put down new boards. Finally, after nearly 2 weeks for a 2 day "simple" job, they finally finished. The workmanship was truly awful, boards weren't cut level at the edges, diagonal angles were wrong, but we'd had enough and decided to just put up with it. We paid the bill and put it behind us.

Then, with all this rain, it's now apparent that the decking boards aren't even level as it's "puddling" in a few places. OH put a spirit level on it and they're all over the place.

We've decided to have it ripped up and replaced again next Spring, hopefully this time by people who know what they're doing. What a waste of money that was!

Wedding day.

MaybeAMoaner We’re overseas (so not the same Trading Standards protection etc) and paid £8k for some works (won’t say what as outing) the job looked great for a few months, then rapidly fell to bits. The company have gone bust, and the owner did a runner. Currently getting it redone by another company, so having to pay a second time which will cripple us for a few years.
I just keep thinking that if this is the worst thing that ever happens to us then we’re very lucky. No one has died and the pain will eventually be forgotten.

@MaybeAMoaner

My parents did something similar. Hired a guy who was officially a vicar (pastor?) to do their bathroom, but he was a plumber on the side as it didn't feel ethical to make money from sharing the word of God.

Anyway, he did a shit job and the bathroom leaked for years and left a giant damp patch on their ceiling. Turns out that the tiles were properly sealed and the pipes under the bath were properly connected. Parents swore blind it must be because we were using the bath/shower wrong because there was no way that a Christian would do a cowboy job on the bathroom then vanish with the money.

They lived with a shitty bathroom for the best part of a decade before they could get it sorted because it cost so much. 20 years later the shower still doesn't work properly!

I posted back an order of clothes in the U.K. in early/mid October and have lost my proof of postage but it doesn’t look like they received my return. £150!

Not a purchase but a demonstration of stupidity.

Took out a credit card to buy our car. Don't know why, as we had the cash, but I felt like it was too much of a splurge, this seemed like the cheapest way to borrow it across a term. The deal was 24 months interest free for purchases - perfect - I'll pay it off at the end of the 24 months before interest gets charged.

Except we didn't actually purchase the car with the card, I'd transferred the available balance from the card to my current account and then paid the dealership from my current account. I didn't know that this is actually called a money transfer and the interest free period for that was only 6 months. I logged on to the app around 24 months later to see how much I had to pay off only to see that 18 months of interest had been accruing at 21% APR.

I can't believe I didn't know that, what's worse is that I work in banking. I couldn't even apportion any blame to the credit card company for not warning me that interest was going to start charging, as they'd text me one month before the expiry date and I seemingly had completely ignored it, there it was just sat in my inbox, marked as read!

@MaybeAMoaner

My DH got his annual bonus of £5,000 (worked his socks off for that) So we Bought a new bathroom suite and some big expensive tiles (we are not rich in anyway but we thought we would for once ‘treat ourselves’ and get a quality item)

A friend recommended a retired tiler to do the tiling.
This is where it all went wrong.

He arrived and he looked about 80 year old.
Within the first hour he had a poo in our only toilet that stunk the whole house out so badly that our 3 year old was shouting “urr mummy what’s that disgusting smell”

He then dropped the tile from a height which landed into our new bath which caused a massive hole in the bath.
He walked out and we have never seen him since and we had stupidly STUPIDLY paid him half up front WHY!!!!

So we are left with a brand new bath with a giant hole and about 3 tiles stuck to the wall and the memories of the smell of his shit lingering through our house.

We then got a bath repair man out as we couldn’t afford a new bath.
He done such a bad job he even said “sorry I’ve royally fucked this up. I won’t charge you for what I have done- bye”

We had to get a loan to have the whole mess sorted and are still paying now 3 years on.

This really pained me to read 😳😳

I started having a porch built on the front of my house. The builders vanished without finishing it. Water poured in the first time it rained and it wasn’t attached to the house properly. I had to pay someone to re-do the whole thing 🤬 They’d also used a sub contractor who came twice to badger me for payment when I’d already paid the cowboy outfit for the whole job.

I also had some plastering done by another firm. It slid off the wall overnight and he also did a runner with my money.

Finally, I paid a lot of money for a complete bathroom re-fit, but the shower they installed never worked other than a trickle. They came back and changed the pump five bloody times, but it still never worked. I sold the house eventually…