Worst buying decision ever made?

[daniel]

What is the worst buying decision you ever made?

In my case, it was a cheap tape deck ( expensive if I considered my dissatisfaction with it).
My brother used to be sold to nak tape deck.
I used to be sold to Stereo review. So when I was looking for a tape deck, there was on one side my brother, and on the other my bible. Since I didn't want to pay for nothing. I decided to go to a shop and compared a nak ( not the most expensive) to one really inexpensive tape deck that had the same thing has the other: vu-meter, control...and it look better with is faux metal casework.
How did I compared them? Double blind test. ( Remember, my bible was stereo review). Since I was not able to see any difference, I bought the cheaper. I was so glad. No ripe off for me!

Well, I was not that glad for long. It didn't gave me that much pleasure.My brother told me I made a mistake and I should have brought some tapes that I knew and take all the time to listen for one, than , and only than, listen to the other.

One day He told me he was going away for vacation. so I asked him if I could borrowed is nak. He agreed.

Not telling anything to my girlfriend, she ask me what I did, the sound was so much better. I showed her the nak playing music.
I ask her to play tape in one of the out of sight tape deck ( blanket over them). I just took note on what I was hearing. I repeated the same thing for three days.

The nak was really better than the other one.

[warpdrive]

Onkyo Integra tape deck in the 90's. At $1000, it didn't sound as good as a $400 NAD tape deck I also had despite a lot of fancy features supposed to me it sound good.

Also, the Philips 960 CD player (their high end player at $1000). It never worked right.