@stanfrombrooklyn: I was at a local Dollar store a few months ago and found a package of "Sharpie" looking markers, complete with the name on them in the same script, but when read carefully they said "Skarpie". It's become a household joke around here. LOL.

@z4ce: LO:) Good one. I love Penn & Teller.

I've been called on many times by my neighbor while doing the oil change or the bi-yearly tune-up i do on my car. Even when I'm doing it in the small court in the back garden.

@Buran: Thats why I learned how to change them myself. I can afford to get the really good ones because I am saving on the labor.

If you want to talk excessive shop charges look at motorcycles/atv's. I bought my first new bike in June. The manual and the shop advise a 600 mile service. I went in to get it figuring an oil change and checking the fluids. They wanted almost $300!!! Labor for a motorcycle mechanic is about 80-125 and hour. I took it back home bought the service manual and did it all myself. It cost me about 45$ on parts and supplies. And about 2 hours to do it all myself, but I know it was done right and now I love my bike even more cause I did everything myself.

I buy my brakes pads at Autozone and put them on myself. Cost me $16 and guaranteed forever. If I need to replace them, I bring them in and get new ones for nothing. It pays if you know what you're doing.

Some knock-offs can be frightening - e.g., the brake pads made of kitty litter, the toothpaste with antifreeze, etc.

Some, I admit to liking/buying - the knock-off purses. As long as the Prada label on my fake bag doesn't say "Prado", "Proda" or "Pravda", it's fine by me.

I loved hearing about knockoff Pepsi while I was in China that was just watered down soy sauce, man someone was in for a surprise when they took a big swig of that. There were some fake Colgate toothpastes made in S Africa that were going around the dollar stores in my town, didnt have fluoride in them I believe.

Yeah, imagine my surprise when that Rolox I bought from some guy on Canal Street turned out to be filled with baby scorpions!

My wife was hooked for a while on fake designer handbags: bogus Coach, Vuitton, Chanel, etc. knock-offs that she could pick up for about $30 apiece at this major flea market in the Poconos. The dealers would have humongous piles of these things, surrounded by hordes of zombie-like women getting their fake fix. Of course my wife knew that they were totally counterfeit, and she became an expert on the myriad details that distinguished a real bag from a fake one. I finally couldn't take it anymore and sprang for a genuine Coach bag for her for Christmas. That was the "intervention" that saved my sanity, since it broke her bogus bag addiction.

Then again, it IS cool to slam national cost-cutting chains at every corner here, this time in favor of relatively expensive department stores ... gotta love the Consumerist, one part useful info, one part anti-company litany ...

On a related note, local police in NH arrested 32 people for selling 20000 different counterfeit items at a local flea market.

Often times people who are NOT poor shop at those places because they are cheap and in the long run its actually cheaper to buy good stuff because when you buy a cheap towel from dollar general you replace it about 20 times before you would have to replace a good one from BB&B. Good stuff lasts much longer

@scampy: I believe in the old adage "poor folks got poor ways". Not everyone can afford BB&B for towels. Family Dollar, Wal~Mart, Dollar General etc. have their place. Or would you rather poor folks go without until they can afford the "nice" places?

@z4ce: DHMO! Its gotten so bad its everywhere! Do you know that they figured out a way to store it in solid form in a household freezer?

Toothpaste with a chemical found in antifreeze? *gasp* I hope its not Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO).

Good brake pads cost a lot more than $20: at least $40 for a high quality pad like Wagners for a small car, on up to $150+ for 1 ton pickups.

The pads aren't the ripoff. The shop charges are.