Dollar Stores, do you love them or hate them or...

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i read an article about it once. the guy who came up with the idea is loaded. apparently they get a lot of their stock from cancelled/incorrect orders made by other big stores (supermarkets etc)...if they cancel the contract the supplier is stuck with a whole heap of goods and keen to get rid of them at short notice, even for minimal profit. so in swoops the pound shop

I liked them in my former town. But the ones in my area are filthy and smell funky, so I tend to avoid them.

I buy a couple of bottles of Coke there once and a while. I haven't tried their perishables except once I bought some chicken pot pies to try and I didn't care for them so I gave them to my cats.

OSB - I never really gave it much thought but that makes a whole lot of sense and explains why my Dollar Store has an over abundance of pound cakes that they've been trying to sell this past week.

Sparx - That's messed up and I don't blame you, I would too.

Thanks Taupey

What, you mean like Poundland, Pound World, 99p Stores and the like? They're not bad; usually you can get some cheap enough stuff from them even if it's only something like three tins of Coke for a quid.

We have Dollar Tree and there used to be a thing called Greenbacks.

The rip-off (not 1 dollar store) are Dollar General and Family Dollar which anger me.

I have a certain candy which I think I can only obtain from the Dollar Store for a reasonable price.

Then there are other deals like 8 oz of chips for a dollar, certain pasta sauce brands. 24 oz of pasta and those was the only good deals pertaining to the limited diet I eat.

I think Super Savers has better deals on gum (25 cents per package) and flour (1.40 for 5 lbs of flour, WO!)

Garage sales is where I get the majority of my books (and libraries )

I learned this after 2 months of college ^_^

The problem with the pound shops (that limit themselves to selling goods (or multiples) for a pound) is that they miss out on anything that costs (even slightly) more.

As a result their range is often fairly limited. I would expect a dollar store (which in the uk would currently be a 59p store) to be even more limited.

There is another type of shop which aims to be cheap (Poundstretcher and numerous bargain stores run by independents) but don't try to force the value of goods to a certain value.

Neither of these shops are always that much cheaper than the large supermarkets, with the disadvantage of often limited stock.

I think this used to be the case more, the abundance of pound shops has resulted in them having to get a lot of their stocks from cheap manufacturers. Some manufacturers have reduced the size of their products to allow them to be sold at poundland.


source article

im ambivalent towards 2 dollar shops unless they are in places that have culture or meaning then i am hostile towards them. like sydney's oxford st (the gay golden mile which is dying slowly) or newtown. they are a good source of craft/art supplies and cheap food. i cant really find aloe vera juice anywhere else.

I'd disagree with that. Often these shops are far cheaper than the established supermarkets (Home Bargains sells Robinson's orange concentrated juice for 59p a bottle compared to around £1.30 in the regular shops), sometimes they're a bit cheaper and other times they're about the same.

Chrissy -
I don't like the stores that use the word "Dollar" in their name but aren't Dollar Stores. I think that's very misleading.

xmh -
Yes, they certainly are limited but some of them try their best to provide a good variety of things people use commonly.

VMSmith -
So what are the names of them in Australia? Are they called, "2 dollar shops"?

Tequila -
We have some items at the Dollar Store close to me that are the same as what they sell in the two large supermarkets a block further away and those items are cheaper at the Dollar Store than the large supermarkets too.

Indeed! Though, one time, I found a fake dollar store and then there was a real one across the street, that made me happy.

Sorry to answer on behalf of someone else but, yes, in Australia and New Zealand they're known as $2 stores.

In the eurozone they can be known as the euro store, and so on. You get the drill.

Personally, I prefer the non-fixed price places. More variety.



Home Bargains - while not a 'pound shop' - sells mostly brand name items much more inexpensively than they would be in the supermarket. For instance, a tin of Coke is 31p in Home Bargains, whereas in a regular shop it would be more like 55p or so.

We have a few here. I love finding fun stuff. Plus I rarely have much money so it's nice to be able to treat myself with something like $1 bath stuff or whatever. I also find toiletries there for about half the price of department stores (face wipes, Epsom salts, razors, etc). They even have some basic food essentials.

I don't like when they first stock them though because they put extra items blocking the aisles and then I have to navigate closer to people. My favorite one has a big, airy layout but it's further away so we don't go there as often.

P.S. If you want to spend a little more you can also find stuff at outlet stores, like Big Lots or Ollie's. I find a lot of interesting books at Ollie's.

The soaps or "off brands," usually are mediocre and my wife avoids these.... the fabric softener is watered down, and the laundry soaps don't brighten up your garments.
We found one automatic dishwasher soap that works well..... others' leave food spots on the glasses.

Sometimes a garment fits., and other times .... one jacket I tried on for size, a hooded zip up jacket that was made backwards, in other words it was like putting on a shirt backwards, but with the hood and zipper facing forward .... I'm sure it was a reject that found its way in these stores for a re-sell.

All and all you have to sift through the stuff to find what works, and is a deal. My wife knows the better Dollar stores and saves us money.

I like em because they give the WalMarts some competition. They are c;loser & LOT more convent. I don't spend 20 minutes in line & they actually have customer service

I like dollar stores. I'm poor and cheap.