You get what you pay for?! A marketing hype or a reality?
 

Since Kien saved the day from a poll :twised: I came up with this great idea of starting something else! I hear all over the net about "you get what you pay for" . Some people religiously follow it, some twist it by a bit while some just stand against it. My stand is somewhat mix for different perspectives: for some cases I believe the line while for others, I completely disagree. Here's some points that I can presented for both sides:

You get what you pay for:

1. Custom build tanks: it is a well known fact that commercially available tanks are much cheaper than custom build tank. But I believe paying somewhat more for custom build tanks are worth it since thats the "house" of all your livestocks for which you will be paying money for!

2. Salt: IO is awesome; no doubt in that but it lacks some of the things that expensive salt has. Easy to overcome that with additives BUT you would have to measure things that are needed to be mixed. I believe paying $20 more for a bucket is worth it. After all, it is the 2nd most important thing for saltwater. But I also believe there's a very sharp break even point for using expensive to cheap salts as the tank size gets bigger.

3. Test kits: Yes I am willing to pay a bit more for test kits. Obviously not crazy amount but I believe the prices of salifert/elos are justified. Even hanna to some extend.

Complete marketing hype:

1. LEDs: You seriously don't get what you pay for in this! I have heard more problem from ecotec than people using AI or even evergrow!!! Alongside, the R&D thing is pretty lame to me too. Lets talk about a company do do cradle to grave R&D for LEDs: Kessil! They design and manufacture all their products starting from the silicons to a complete fixture: that's R&D. Putting a microcontroller with codes that you get to play around in your computer with a fancy user interface is R&D too but not to the extend that kessil do. But the price difference between a kessil and an radion pro is HUGE! Sure adding some fancy things that radion has is fun but that doesn't justify the "you get what you pay for" hype. You buy a toyota for $20k while a BMW for $50k; you get the self satisfaction but again, "you get what you pay for" doesn't apply.

2. Powerheads: Worst thing to me! Buying a vortec is like spending money on expensive ski gears while you never going to ski in real life but rather be a collector. Tunzi powerheads are AWESOME! So are hydros! You can even control them to produce random waves. In the end, what are you paying for? "I don't want power chords in my tank"....sure....get an wireless heater and motor then we will be talking ;) And about the hype, vortecs get busted way too much than the cheapest hydors out there! BOOOOOOO!!!!

Well there are more but don't feel like writing much (will proceed as this thread gets big :D).

Anyway, so what's your opinion? :)

My opinion is you've never owned a BMW... :)

Well I did mention the "satisfaction". But for the reliability, you are getting nothing less with a toyota. Basically, you are paying for the satisfaction, brand value and the nice features. No one can say, hey you bought a toyota for $20k....man you get what you pay for...not true. That was my point with that example ;)

And I am an international student; I shouldn't be driving a BMW right now :P

In layman's term: my point would be "do you really need a BMW? if you can afford it; wonderful but if you can't, do you have to starve yourself? Cause of the "you get what you pay for" hype?. Similarly, I see people screaming about "you get what you pay for" when someone buying something more reasonable to them. Do you need a vortec to have a successful tank? Do you need a bubble king to have a successful tank? Do you really need red dragon pumps for closed loop? It would be nice to be able to "afford" them but they are not a necessity.

and not too many toyotas! i wish my tacoma or sienna had been 20k lol.

kessil does do a lot of r&d but they're a special case in that their parent company (dicon) is pretty big and has a pretty varied portfolio (outside our little hobby).

tunze and vortech are both very pricey. i'd group them together in the same tier. both just have different pros and cons for the pile of money you shell out.

I shouldn't have put the car example :redface:

Yah tunzi and vortech are both pricey but even compared to each other, tunzi is less expensive than the overrated vortech. And you don't have to change parts as often as vortech too :razz:

Another example of "you get what you pay for" hype. I have had better success of keeping sps under odyssea lights than many others with more expensive fixtures.

Lesson: paying for expensive stuffs is not a shortcut to having a nice tank.

Lesson: there's a bazillion other factors at play that you're probably getting right or a little more right than those other reefers (myself included @$%)

Exactly. Hence, getting expensive stuffs won't give you the shortcut to success. Its your responsibility with the "minimum requirement". Powerhead: necessity; vortech: not a necessity. Light fixture: necessity; expensive light fixture: not a necessity. I have seen a lot of thread with "odyssea will never grow anything!!!!!! because you get what you pay for"...blah :razz:

Its a very common human behavior that we judge things with the "price tag". Heavier price tag = good stuff.....which is something I can't agree to at all. And for that particular reason, there are lots of brands which set higher price: the mental satisfaction.

Part of the problem is that "worth" and "value" are very subjective terms which underscore the phrase, "You get what you pay for." We've already got plenty of examples of this with your car analogy.

In our household we do own a more expensive Audi which in my opinion is over priced for what you get. It has 4 wheels that gets you from point A to Point B. My much cheaper Murano does the same thing and is actually much more comfortable to drive and hauls more junk in the trunk.

And I for one don't think it's expensive to buy a bucket of H2Ocean while everyone who uses IO will think it's ridiculously expensive. Meanwhile, I went to Starbucks rather than Tim Hortons for a coffee today. Did I get what I paid for? Well, I paid $5 for a coffee and I got a $5 coffee, so I guess I got what I paid for :biggrin:

Bottom line, yes, you get what you pay for, and no, you don't get what you pay for.

Holy grape from the tree! That line just escalated the whole thread :biggrin: