Things that are inexplicably cheap

[ChewChewIsMySpiritAnimal]

Inspired by the thread about things that are inexplicably expensive!

My pick is bananas. You can buy a huge bunch of bananas for a few pence - I'm always shocked when i get to the till and find I've got about 22 bananas for less than a quid exaggerating but they've been imported from halfway round the world - yet the British apples next to them are twice as much.

What do you find inexplicably cheap?

TV’s. We’ve recently moved and our living room is long...our previous 37 inch TV just isn’t big enough as one sofa is the opposite end of the room.

We want a 50 inch TV. Haven’t looked at TVs in about 5 years...searched on Argos yesterday ready to wince at the price and you can get a high spec 50 inch TV for £270!

I was fully expecting more than double that, I was really shocked!

My point about bananas is that they come from thousands of miles away, with all that entails, and they're less expensive than the apples i can buy that came from the farm shop down the road. I understand about supply chains etc, my point isn't that i agree they should be that cheap- just really shock that they are.

Just going to echo some PP about the taste of fruits and vegetables. In general the fruits I eat when in Africa has very distinctive taste. Like bananas are actually sweet and the smell of their tomatoes/peppers/onions as well as others. The smell and taste makes me feel like even though it's relatively "cheap" quality is also crap.

Regarding electrical goods they actually aren’t cheaper when you consider how long the stuff they made years ago lasts. Nowadays things are so cheaply made they last half as long if that.
I need to get to the local tip with modern tv’s that are burnt out. Along with the still working 20 odd year old ones that are dumped in the loft.
My fridge freezer I’ve had for about 25 years is still going strong.
It will break down tomorrow now I’ve said this 🤨

Bananas these days barely taste of anything. Maybe that's why they're cheap. And the texture has changed too. Seems like water or something is pumped into them to make them look big & nice but actually they are rubbish.

My husband met a chap who used to work on a banana plantation and his tip was that the rounder the banana, the sweeter the taste.The one that are less round (i.e. multiple flat sides and 'ridges') are picked too soon and are less sweet and tasty.

Plastic animals, DS has a collection of them that cost 50p each, and he is ridiculously happy when he gets one. Will literally carry it round for a week, then even when it get put in the collection bucket it will still get regular playing for years (well 18 months so far, but there not going anywhere).

So much happens for 1/5 the cost of a coffee, that would be gone in 20 minutes. I know the environment is paying the price for plastic use, so do limit how often he gets them. But that's a choice, if I wanted to he could have one every day without me even noticing the money.

Clothes are so cheap compared with what they used to be. And not just budget shops like Primark but clothes in general. When I was a student 25 years ago I remember getting a jumper out of Warehouse that cost £39.99 and was really expensive for me, as I was on such a tight budget. 25 years later and a jumper in Warehouse still costs about £35 to £40.

Food is incredibly cheap in the UK. I know there are still people who can't afford decent food in the UK, and it's shocking that that should be the case in 2020. But I do believe that's due to low pay and high housing costs rather than because food is expensive.

@ummusomebody is that because in Africa the fruit and veg is truly ripe and sold at room temperature? Therefore perfect for the senses.

One just has to pass a stall in the South of France to catch the scent of divine peaches and melons. Huge vine tomatoes, etc. Perfectly ripe, at the temperature of the tree. Exactly the same as a oeach or plum plucked from an English tree in summer, warmed by the sun allowing juice to run down your arm.

Things like bananas and maybe milk are "lost leaders" - they're purposely cheap to draw shoppers in to buy the more expensive items.
Food is generally much cheaper in the UK than on the continent. That will change after Brexit, as will the quality of food. Supermarkets will buy chlorine-washed chicken from America. It's washed in chlorine because their appalling treatment of the chickens causes a lot of infections. Despite the chlorine, loads of Americans get food poisoning.

I just thought of something else.

Ready made curtains. When I was a skint newlywed decorating my own house for the first time, I bought fabric and made my own curtains because I couldn't afford to buy ready made curtains.

Now I can buy nice ready made curtains for far less money than it would cost me to buy the fabric, lining, thread and tape, never mind the hours that I'd need to put into sewing them.

As PPs have mentioned the price of food, I read in Farmer's Weekly that pretty much everything in the supply of a loaf of bread is paid/costs more than the farmer receives for the wheat for the flour, including milling the wheat, the bag, the plastic clip for the bag!, the baking, the supermarket, the transportation of the baked loaf to the supermarket and so on.

Cakes. It costs way more to buy the ingredients for a cake than it does to buy a cake in a box - even a large and fancy one!

Primark knickers!!

Aldi nappies, I cant see how they would possibly make them so cheap. I'm convinced they're to get mums in the store, so many of my friends use them now.

Who the hell eats pigs heart and lungs or is it for pets? Paracetamol was cheap until recently. Nrtft, but salt is cheap.

Penguins, ah, but you only get two chicken breasts on a chicken! I think I'd rather pay more for the convenience of just breasts. If we do start have chlorine chicken here I'm not buying it.

@sqirrelfriends

Aldi nappies, I cant see how they would possibly make them so cheap. I'm convinced they're to get mums in the store, so many of my friends use them now.

You may well be right, nappies are a logical thing to use as a loss-leader.

Massive economies of scale must also be a factor. Babies’ bums are the same everywhere, so for a multinational company like Aldi it doesn’t matter if you are only making 0.1p profit on a pack of nappies if you’re selling millions of packs every day.

Chickens- I buy a very large good quality one from butchers for around £11 and get 3 meals from it

@Gwenhwyfar

"TVs. Just been looking on Amazon, 32" sets start at around £120. I remember buying a 14" portable colour( !) TV in 1984 for £240."

Yes, but a few years ago you could cheap ones second hand and that hasn't been possible since the digital switch. I find 120 quite expensive if that's what they start at.

You can still buy second hand tvs. My local charity shop has quite a few in.

Agree with cakes.
fresh Ginger
Jars of olives. In olive oil £4 a tub.in a jar 70p
Wine.
Mollys chocolate - 30p a bar. I have spent all lockdown making chewy white chocolate cookies.

Shoes. They haven’t changed in price for decades.

Just bought a wireless printer, scanner photocopier from argos for £40. We've never had one as always thought it would be really expensive, but £40 for that kind of tech is incredible. I always think what things like this would have cost when they were first available, probably hundreds and hundreds of pounds. But tech is really really cheap actually

Cooked chicken. I don’t eat meat, but when I see cooked chicken on sale in supermarkets I can’t believe how cheap it is. For an animal to be raised, housed, fed, killed , plucked etc, cooked, to end up sold for such a small sum. It shows appalling animal welfare surely.

My other is jam doughnuts, 25p in Sainsbury's. And they are awesome. Best jam doughnut by far, bag of 5 for £1, utter bliss

So much here representing cruelty. And people going 'Yay, cheap!'.

Definitely food. Food in France and Italy is more expensive, people spend a higher percentage of their income on food. The produce appears to be higher quality than we have on our supermarket shelves - we seem to want food to be as cheap as possible, regardless of quality and the effect it has on the suppliers, farmers, producers.