Quote:
Originally Posted by blankall
People are really romanticizing the pre-internet retail experience. Particularly when it came to electronics accessories. Those were always the biggest crap shoot. The retail, particularly electronics, store would absolutely gauge you. In the early 2000s, you'd pay $40 for a cord to charge your phone. Sometimes as much as $80 for a branded charger. You could find unbranded ones for $20-40, but those would be an absolute crap shoot as to their quality.
If you wanted an HDMI cord, you got totally upsold on questionable brands like "Mad Catz". The sales guys would all push brands like that, as the markup was significantly higher than the big electronics brands (like Samsung) products. As a consumer you had no idea what was real or not. The quality on everything was just generally bad. Even that $80 charger would end up frayed with the cord half pulled out within a couple of months.
Now people are getting upset at Amazon, because they're paying $5-10 for an accessory and it might be amazing or it might the quality of a $5-10 accessory. Even then, you can mitigate the risk by just paying $10-20 for a brand name accessory from someone like Anker.
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And it all came in that horrific packaging that needs big scissors and then is unreturnable