The washing machine’s busted, Speedy’s called a technician to look at it but we’re not really sure if it can be salvaged. It’s eight years old, worked to death, so there’s always that possibility that we may have to buy a new one. Major expense (that won’t translate to profits) in a global recession.
These days, it’s not easy to write or talk about personal experiences without touching on the issue of the darn global recession. You can’t even wake up without feeling it. Just the other night, we went to the supermarket and spent over five thousand pesos and the cart wasn’t even full. And we bought no luxury items -– just the usual meat, fish, eggs, cheese, vegetables, milk, salt, sugar… You know, just basic stuff. If you’re that young to think that the proportion of the stuff we bought is commensurate with the price, let me tell you a true story. It’s a true story I’ve told before but it keeps playing inside my head so I’m going to tell it again anyway.
In 1990, a friend arranged a swimming party to introduce me to her neighbor. I would marry that neighbor a year later but on that fateful day in 1990, I begged off, missed the swimming party and stood up my blind date. Why? Because there was a coup, my mother was jittery and wanted to stockpile on everything. She needed me to drive and accompany her to the supermarket. I drove and accompanied her and the supermarket bill was a little over five thousand pesos.
You know what five thousand pesos bought in 1990? The car’s trunk was full. So was the backseat. We didn’t just have sando bags full of stuff – we had boxes full of stuff. When we got home, we had to ask help from my grandmother’s all-around handyman to take everything out of the car and bring them inside the house. And once inside the house, they wouldn’t fit in the kitchen cabinets. The space under the stairs had to serve as a makeshift pantry extension. And it took us a year to consume the canned goods, the sardines and bangus in jars, the bath soaps, the laundry detergents…
According to my father, twenty years earlier, five hundred pesos could buy the same amount of stuff. Inflation, yes. And inflation has been a permanent feature of our economy for decades. But combine inflation with recession and, well… Obviously, value for money is a relative thing.
So, let me go back to the washing machine issue. If we have to buy a new one, of course we want value for our money — the best value that we can get irrespective of inflation and recession. Meaning? A unit with the best features compared to others and for a lower price. If prices are uniform among different brands (quite possible as companies are like cartels — they agree not to drop prices too much), we want to at least get the most durable and feature-packed brand.
Time was, you go to an appliance store, the owner or one of his sales people entertains you and they tell you in all honesty which brand performs better than others. These days, you go to an appliance store and the people who entertain you are employees of the manufacturers. Merchandisers, they are called, deployed by the manufacturers to different appliance stores. You talk to one of them and they will push the brand they are paid to sell. And they will push because they earn by commission (go read about their hard sell techniques). They can’t even honestly make comparisons between the brand they’re selling and other brands because all they know is the brand they’re selling.
How to get our money’s worth? We’ll have to conduct our own research, compare features and find out feedbacks from users, even before stepping inside an appliance store so that no matter how aggressive the sales pitch, we can thumb our noses and say, “Excuse me, we’ve done our homework so we’re immune. We know what we want and you can’t talk us into spending our hard earned money on the silly brand you’re trying so hard to push to our faces.”
2-3 years ago, I could go to the market with 200 in my pocket and buy 2 kinds of fish and veggies which would last us for 2 days. ngayon, with the 200, I can only buy for good for 1 meal. Buti na lang, may space kami for a garden, kung hindi, mas grabe ang gastos for produce
With six of us in the house, 200 pesos isn’t even enough for one meal — and you still have to add the price of rice, gas/electricity for cooking, and the extras like salt and pepper.
Everyone who doesn’t live here always comments on how cheap it is here. But I don’t feel it is cheap at all. P1,000 is like change here. Being the equivalent of $20, I would hesitate spending that much on something in the U.S., but here in Manila it is a daily occurance.
“P1,000 is like change here.”
EXACTLY! And you get the feeling that you really don’t know where the money went. It’s not like you bought something big and substantial with P1000. But you go out, pay transpo or buy gas, do some errands and the money’s just gone!
On my Philippine visit last month I was so shocked when 5 small tetra paks for Nestle Fresh milk and a medium bottle of distilled water at Mercury Drugstore totaled P300. I commented to my sister, “it seems to me a P100 is like P25 now.”
From what I observed material goods in the Philippines has gotten so expensive, almost the same as the U.S. (in our province a dozen eggs costs P66 while you can get them here for $1) while services remains dirt cheap (my son got a haircut there for P60 while here would cost $18 both without tips). How can working folks survive on that?!
That’s really the problem. Prices keep going up but wages and salaries stay low. If they went up at the same rate, it wouldn’t be so hard on the people. But that’s not the case.
Hi Ms. C. My fiance is a huge appliance freak, and he usually does 6 months of research before buying something. He LOVES Bosch frontload washers and dryers. And I’ve seen for myself why. They’re a tad expensive though, but clothes come out much cleaner and stay new longer. Make sure you include it in your own research! Take care!
Thanks, Gabby. I hope Bosch is available here. I think that’s the brand of our lawnmower.
I’m OT again -
All the times, I thought that when you buy an aircon, you must always refer the capacity to its horsepower. But just last Monday, a consumer relation officer of an appliance store said in a morning TV show that if you want to buy an aircon, you must read its cooling capacity which is included in the pasted specifications label at its casing.
To get the opitmum aircon performance:
Room Area x 500 = Cooling Capacity (choose the higher value in the specification and not the lower one)
Wow, I didn’t know that. We buy aircon based on HP too.
Front-loading washers and dryers are the best. They use less energy and water. Better for your pocket and the planet. I just don’t understand why they have to be so much more expensive than the top loading ones (to purchase, not to run).
Here in Canada front-load washers and dryers are also much more expensive than the traditional type. The manufacturers claim they are energy efficient and use less water.
IMO, front-loading washing machine are more expensive than top loading because it has more moving parts. I have observed that front loading is less damaging to denim pants.
Our every-durable washing machine carries the name Electrolux (frontloading kind), has been with us since 1990. It has not conked out on us! A real workhorse! Not sure if this brand is still available in the market …
Mom used to tell me of the time back in the late 60′s when her baon to college was 1 peso. That was enough for lunch and round trip busfare.