Dollar Tree.

It used to have been an unreal experience witnessing the existence of these stores when they came out. Everything for a $1. No joke. The quality of some things have had corners cut and the quantity might’ve been laughable, but there was a good solid purpose for these stores.

And then I started seeing the signs after a few good solid years of shopping there. The first sign was how they stopped selling eggs. This was before the Bird Flu. They stopped selling eggs because they simply couldn’t afford to buy stock and then the price hike to $1.25 happened.

And now they’ve hiked the prices again to $1.50 for some products in a handful of stores. Additionally, they’ve incorporated items going from $2 ~ $15 so they have long lost the role and title of being the most affordable places to shop.

Gone were the days.

  • Porto881@lemmy.worldEnglish
    911·
    3 days ago

    Netflix back in the day. A near-limitless catalog of ad-free movies and TV for $8/month. If you tried selling that today, people would think it was a scam

    • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
      17·
      3 days ago

      I remember first hearing about Hulu sometime around 2007-8 and thinking it was a scam. Free (good) TV for one 30 second ad.

    • bizarroland@fedia.io
      6·
      3 days ago

      For me it’s not so much that the price increased. It’s that what you get for the money vanished.

      I’d pay $40 a month to have a modern version of the Netflix that existed back in 2013.

      Now if you want to have that you’ve got to have netflix, hulu, HBO Max, Showtime, peacock, and 15 other services and spend $35,400 a month for all of them and it’s just not worth the money, time, and hassle.

      • Laurel Raven@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        22 hours ago

        And even if you did get all of it, the experience would be awful trying to figure out which service has what you want to watch

    • Graphy@lemmy.world
      6·
      3 days ago

      I knew Netflix existed as a dvd service but back in like 2009 the first streaming ads I saw were on flash game sites so I thought they were scams.

      You know those like sign up for blank free trial and you’ll get 5000 fun bucks in shellshock or whatever

      • toddestan@lemm.ee
        1·
        1 day ago

        It didn’t help that Netflix was also one of the big users of pop-up ads back when that was a thing. I’ve never forgiven them for that either.