History Main / YouGetWhatYouPayFor

The bane of any DoomItYourself enthusiast, especially when it comes to the DoItYourselfPlumbingProject.

* An old tale (that can be changed to be about any technical job) tells about an inverted instance of this trope. One day, a critical component at a major factory jams, shutting the a large part of the factory down. Executives are panicking, and ask the lead engineer to try to fix it. Luckily, he realizes that he doesn't know how, and brings in a paid professional to come in and see if he can repair it. The professional comes in, and gets his tools out. But first, he looks at the machine from every angle, for about ten minutes. He then takes out his hammer, and hits one spot on the machine, and it fires back up. The executives are overjoyed, until they see the fee of ''$10'000''. They're enraged, and ask why they should pay that if all he did was tap on one spot with a hammer. The professional then (bemusedly) writes an invoice. "Hitting spot with a hammer"? That was worth $5. The other $9'995 was because he knew ''where to hit it'' with the hammer.
* This is a major reason why people living in poverty have such a hard time escaping it. People in poverty have to buy cheap, low-quality goods and services which don't last as long as more expensive ones or They have problems They can't afford to address and They snowball into something bigger and often much more expensive, such as not being able to get a minor vehicle issue which then results in it breaking down completely and costing much more to fix.

* The whole plot of the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' episode "[[MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS5E9SliceOfLife Slice of Life]]" is kicked off because Cranky hired Derpy to print the wedding invitations at half the price the other printers would charge, resulting in everyone turning up a day early due to a misprinted date. Derpy later admits the only way she could do it so cheaply was by hiring somepony who didn't know how to work a printing press.

** A standard reply from Apple fans when haters complain about Apple's prices.

* Despite Hammond's insistence that he "spared no expense," a large part of the series of failures in ''Literature/JurassicPark'' were the result of ''extensive'' cost-cutting (He spared no expense on the stuff that the tourists would see, and skimped outrageously on the behind-the-scenes stuff necessary to make the park actually run), meaning it was only a matter of time before the park failed catastrophically even if he ''didn't'' have to worry about a disgruntled Nedry sabotaging the computers.

* The "Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socio-economic unfairness", as outlined in the Literature/{{Discworld}} novel ''Discworld/MenAtArms'':

* An old tale (that can be changed to be about any technical job) tells about an inverted instance of this trope. One day, a critical component at a major factory jams, shutting the a large part of the factory down. Executives are paniciking, and ask the lead engineer to try to fix it. Luckily, he realizes that he doesn't know how, and brings in a paid professional to come in and see if he can repair it. The professional comes in, and gets his tools out. But first, he looks at the machine from every angle, for about ten minutes. He then takes out his hammer, and hits one spot on the machine, and it fires back up. The executives are overjoyed, until they see the fee of ''$10'000''. They're enraged, and ask why they should pay that if all he did was tap on one spot with a hammer. The professional then (bemusedly) writes an invoice. "Hitting spot with a hammer"? That was worth $5. The other $9'995 was because he knew ''where to hit it'' with the hammer.

* In the ''Film/ASoundOfThunder'' movie, the boss of the safari company shutting down a key component of the time machine to save power contributed to the catastrophe at hand.

* ''TabletopGame/DarkHeresy'' and related games have Craftsmanship rules laying out four qualities of gear: Poor, Common, Good, and Best. Poor-quality items can be obtained more cheaply and are easier to find, but weapons are less accurate and [[ShurFineGuns more prone to jamming]], armor is less protective, and other gear doesn't work as well. Conversely, the more expensive and rare Good- and Best-quality items are more accurate, immune to jamming, more protective, and generally work better as well as being [[BlingOfWar visually more impressive]].

-->'''Max''': So in the end I guess I had become what they wanted me to be: some rent-a-clown with a gun who puts holes in other bad guys. Well, that's what they had paid for, so in the end, that's what they got. Say what you want about Americans, but we understand capitalism: you buy yourself a product and you get what you pay for. And these [[BullyingADragon chumps]] had paid for some angry gringo without [[BlackAndGreyMorality the sensibilities to know right from wrong]].

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' spoofing the story of Moses, Lisa and Milhouse escape a badly designed DeathTrap, a room with moving walls covered in spikes where the spikes line up to the opposing walls, causing them to stop the whole trap, with Lisa noting, "Slave labor. You get what you paid for."
** Also happens in "30 Minutes Over Tokyo", when the Simpsons, in a fit of super-frugality to save money for a vacation, goes grocery shopping at a 33 Cents store. Homer immediatly gets poisoned by a can of plankton from Mexico that expired three years before.
* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible'', [[HarmlessVillain Dr. Drakken]] angrily complains about the [[SurroundedByIdiots shortcomings of his henchmen]]; [[TheDragon Shego]] scoffs at him for being too cheap to hire better ones from [[ArmsDealer Jack]] [[HisNameReallyIsBarkeep Hench]].

* [[HippieTeacher David Van Driessen]] hired ''WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButtHead'' to clean his house as a means of teaching them about the value of hard work. They end up destroying his irreplaceable collection of 8-track tapes, but they turn out to be unwittingly giving Van Driessen LaserGuidedKarma when he only pays them a dollar each.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'' episode "Injustice For All" ComicBook/LexLuthor gathers a group of villains and says he will pay them after defeating the Justice League. When he berates them for failing in their first attempt, the Shade tells Luthor you get what you pay for. In the end Ultra-Humanite betrays the team- since Batman guaranteed double what Luthor offered. And came through with a way to further twist the knife into Luthor: [[spoiler: a major donation to Public Broadcasting in the Ultra-Humanite's name with recognition given at the end of an opera that drives Luthor nuts.]]

* Despite Hammond's insistence that he "spared no expense," a large part of the series of failures in ''Literature/JurassicPark'' were the result of ''extensive'' cost-cutting, meaning it was only a matter of time before the park failed catastrophically even if he ''didn't'' have to worry about a disgruntled Nedry sabotaging the computers.

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* ''[[VideoGame/{{MaxPayne3}} Max Payne 3]]'' has Max explaining the concept (in his trademark sarcastic after-commentary) "to" a guy who threw a grenade too early in the intro sequence:

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* In ''Literature/ABrothersPrice'', due to men's GenderRarityValue, women who want children have three options: They can either swap their brother (if they have one) for a husband, they can pay the eponymous "brother's price" to marry another family's brother, or they can go to a so-called crib, which is a bit like a brothel, but more focused on conceiving children. A brother's price can range from two-thousand to five-thousand, depending on whether the man is a commoner or royalty. The men in a crib cost ten per night, but there is the risk of catching an STD, which is incurable. Considering that a woman might have to try for a dozen times or more to conceive a child, and a husband will sleep with all the sisters in a family, the "cheap" option is actually the more expensive one, as explained in the Discworld example of this trope. A family is mentioned where one sister went to a crib before she and her sisters married. The whole family (newborn children included) died from the ensuing STD.

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* TruthInTelevision. Computers/cell phones are designed to last only 3 or so years, or less if they can blame stuff on damage.

** Especially obvious in case of the CMOS batteries in computers, which cause the computer to not boot when they run empty (often after three to five years). On desktop PCs, one can usually swap the battery for a new one (same type as in a quartz watch), in notebooks, the CMOS battery often is soldered under the - equally soldered - CMOS chip and therefore cannot be replaced.

* In ''[[VideoGame/{{Deponia}}]]'''s 2nd part, ''Chaos on Deponia'', Rufus is sent to get a datasette to reinstall Goals memory. Unfortunately, he chooses the cheaper version, because he gets a lollipop extra.

* In ''[[VideoGame/Deponia]]'''s 2nd part, ''Chaos on Deponia'', Rufus is sent to get a datasette to reinstall Goals memory. Unfortunately, he chooses the cheaper version, because he gets a lollipop extra.

* During the construction of the Titanic, White Star Line chose to cut costs by using lower quality components which backfired horrifically when the ship struck an iceberg and wasn't made of high enough quality material to stay together for the rest of the voyage.

-->'''Max''': So in the end I guess I had become what they wanted me to be: some rent-a-clown with a gun who puts holes in other bad guys. Well, that's what they had paid for, so in the end, that's what they got. Say what you want about Americans, but we understand capitalism: you buy yourself a product and you get what you pay for. And these [[BullyingADragon chumps]]0 had paid for some angry gringo without [[BlackAndGreyMorality the sensibilities to know right from wrong]].