My neighbor wastes more $$$ (rant)

[RedCorvette]

Originally Posted By: AlienBug
I just find it amusing that someone can be a member of a website where people obsess over when to change from summer to winter air in their tires, complain when a lube tech doesn't use a torque wrench on their oil drain plug, stash 300 quarts of oil for a car they no longer own and parse whether a 2 ppm difference in boron makes an oil better or worse than another oil with 1 ppm more phosphorous. Yet somehow, the neighbor who buys parts at the dealer is weird.


Very insightful. People have their reasons for doing what they do. So long as it doesn't hurt someone else, let them be.

 

[RedCorvette]

Originally Posted By: gathermewool
Instead of ranting, try to talk to him about it. If you don't know enough to be able to convince him, then you don't have a very good argument for him to change his ways. Peace of mind is great and all, and in some cases paying more is justified, but when it comes to oil and filters, there are many viable alternatives.


Now that would be weird. "I'm your concerned neighbour and I want to talk to you about your oil and filter purchasing habits"

 

[RedCorvette]

Originally Posted By: JC1
It's called keeping up with the Jones'. Did he work for Enron???? Sorry I couldn't help but take a jab at that!!!

Just be glad he's the one of the People that don't have a clue. He probably spends half his time driving all over town picking up stuff when the local auto parts store would be the best bet!

Maybe this article for the Toronto Star will explain it

http://www.thestar.com/business/article/...ncompetent?bn=1

Why incompetent people are too incompetent to know they’re incompetent


This will explain a lot.

It turns out that incompetent people are too incompetent to recognize their own incompetence.
Luckily, we don’t just have to take the incompetent people’s word for it – there’s years of rigorous study to back this up.

For more than a decade, David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, has found in his research that it’s “intrinsically difficult to get a sense of what we don’t know.”

Dunning, working with Justin Kruger, a former colleague at Cornell now at New York University, told Life’s Little Mysteries, that in their studies, they give people a short test, tally their scores, then ask the subjects how they think they did.

People who didn’t do well on the test are only slightly less confident about their ability than those who performed well.

And everyone thinks they did better than average – even people who did very poorly on the test.

“People at the bottom still think they’re outperforming other people,” Dunning said.

It doesn’t matter what the test is about – logical reasoning, how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases, grammar, the funniness of jokes.

Even when Dunning and his colleagues offer a $100 reward to those who can rate themselves accurately, study participants just can’t do it.

This inherent inability to accurately gauge our own level of knowledge may be an underlying cause of many of society’s ills, including climate change denialism, Dunning said.

“Many people don’t have training in science, and so they may very well misunderstand the science. But because they don’t have the knowledge to evaluate it, they don’t realize how off their evaluations might be,” he said.

Stay tuned. There’s more to come. Dunning’s related interest: “how people bolster their sense of self-worth by carefully tailoring the judgments they make of others,” he writes on the Cornell faculty website.

“That is, people tend to make judgments of others that reflect favorably back on themselves, doing so even when the self is not under explicit scrutiny.”



Thanks for sharing. I've worked a lot around biases in decision making and this confirms what I've read and my observations (at least I think it does unless I have an ulterior motive).

I suspect that part of it is due to the over praising by parents of children that seems to have been in the norm in America for a while.

 

[Topo]

There are ignorant people all over the place, it's annoying but that is life, let him buy away. Now if he ask's for advice than you have a great argument, but he isn't asking you how to save money or what the best choices would be, therefore I say again, " Let him spend away".

 

[SteveSRT8]

Originally Posted By: fxrider
Who cares??


probably the most concise answer yet!

 

[SteveSRT8]

Originally Posted By: JC1
Dunning’s related interest: “how people bolster their sense of self-worth by carefully tailoring the judgments they make of others,” he writes on the Cornell faculty website.

“That is, people tend to make judgments of others that reflect favorably back on themselves, doing so even when the self is not under explicit scrutiny.”

 

[gathermewool]

Originally Posted By: RedCorvette
Originally Posted By: gathermewool
Instead of ranting, try to talk to him about it. If you don't know enough to be able to convince him, then you don't have a very good argument for him to change his ways. Peace of mind is great and all, and in some cases paying more is justified, but when it comes to oil and filters, there are many viable alternatives.


Now that would be weird. "I'm your concerned neighbour and I want to talk to you about your oil and filter purchasing habits"


His neighbor already seems to come to him for just about everything related to maintenance of his toys, so...what did you think was weird again?

 

[Malo83]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VaazQfxGso

 

[BISCUT]

End of the day your neighbor might just be a tool...but his $ and his issues. I'd look to buy his used stuff!! HA!

 

[Landrew]

I can see what the OP is saying. I mean I have been told by people hey did you know you can get those over here under this name for half the cost, or did you know that you can actually do this or that to make this work, you don't need to do it this way. I love getting advice from people and learning from it. If I can save a dollar here or an hour of my time there I feel great. Why not share that info. I often wonder why people don't research any and everything that they do to try and find a better way to do it? I really like the age of the internet and information. It makes us better consumers and perhaps the OP was just trying to help him out.
If you saw a person buying a 15W40 HDEO in the middle of winter in Alaska for their compact 4 cylinder would you tell them that the pour point is not compatible for the current temperatures or would you say - pfft his money down the drain??
I suppose convenience has it's costs and going to the dealer is very convenient. Then again some people do not know there is an alternative until informed. I used to buy steaks precut, then someone said get a whole tenderloin at Costco for cheaper and better meat and cut your own. I tried it and will never go back. Imagine if there was a subject you were interested in and you wanted to know more about it. Wouldn't it be cool if you could get good info and have questions answered from others etc. Like even setting up a place where you could share information through a network of computers. Wicked idea.

 

[JustinH]

Reminds me of my future FIL. He asks me who I know to get some service done on his car, I give him two names that both do great work for about half the cost of a shop. I find out the next week, he just took the car to the dealer and got absolutely ripped off on a brake job.

The following week he asks about an oil change, I say that is something that we can do ourselves, he ends up with another bill for right around 70 dollars for dealer service. This is a dodge caliber, not a euro luxury car.

A few months down the road, he says he is looking for tires. I tell him about ordering them online, saving the tax and having a tire shop mount and balance them. He would save quite a bit with 17 inch rubber. He takes it back to the dealer, and says that they told him that he should special order OEM tires for the car.

Now if he asks me for advise, I just shrug. I love people who ask for advice over and over again, then do the exact opposite, and stupid thing.

 

[DuckRyder]

I don't find the neighbor particularly odd or foolish, frequently stuff isn't any more expensive at the dealer.

I've spent more time wrestling with inferior parts store junk than I saved in money. I'm rapidly reaching the point where I go to the dealer unless I can verify that what I am getting is identical to the OEM (like the water pump I got from Pelican that had the "Volvo" ground off of it).

What I think is weird/foolish is when some one buys a [insert brand here] car/truck/van/boat/motorcycle and when they need something for it they go get the cheapest Chinese parts store junk they can get. I mean why spend money on a Honda or Mercedes or anything else and then maintain and repair it with the cheapest stuff you can get?

 

[Barkleymut]

OP - tricked the heck out '90 stang 'vert, F150, 5th wheel, hunting equipment galore, etc.

Do you really think he cares about saving $15 on any given weekend? Honestly if you go over there talking about how to save a few bucks he is going to think you are a nut job.

Trust me I know where you are coming from. But you have no need to save him money. Let him feed the economy.

 

[GROUCHO MARX]

Originally Posted By: dwcopple
My neighbor likes his powersports toys. He has a TRX700XX and a LTZ400 and a brand new Polaris 800cc side by side. He gets new plugs for them each year and changes the oil far too freqently but whatever. Problem is, he only buys parts from the dealers. Honda quad gets a plug from the Honda dealer, Suzuki-Suzuki dealer, etc. The other day he says that they only had a 8 series plug in stock and the OEM plug is a 7 will it be okay? I asked him why he doesn't just get the plugs at Advance Auto or something and save some money and he just stared blankly at me. He buys his lawn mower filters and plugs from the JD dealer too. I told him they are ripping him off on filters because they can be had for 1/3rd of the price at a auto parts store. He thinks those filters are inferior or something I guess. He is no dummy and has a Master's degree, but when it comes to this it just irks me.

Oh, he said Honda didn't have the oil filter for his 700 so he ordered them online for $7 each with $7 shipping

He buys the GN4 oil there by the gallon to the tune of $54 for 2. The he complains about MI proposal to raise ORV sticker pricing...

I wish I had something to sell him.