‘What is a complete rip off the rich happily pay for?’ – 21 cautionary tales from people with the inside scoop on premium prices

12.

‘Truffle oil. I’ve worked at some crazy high end places, and they’ll often use the same stuff from Spectrum which is not truffle oil as much as it is a gasoline byproduct. And they’d pay out the ass for it, then ask for more.’
–Epicfaux

13.

‘Travelling during peak season. That $1800 room sells for $400 in the fall. I want to say room service, but it’s a pure lazy tax. You pay that same lazy tax when you use Uber Eats.

IME, you get what you pay for. Certain properties in certain markets might have a specific thing that gets you, but generally you can get what you’re paying for.’
–Martin0994

14.

‘Catering that they don’t even eat. My wife works at a fixed base operator at Palm Beach International airport. It’s where the Uber rich land their private jets. They order all this really good food that goes untouched. All in individual containers wrapped up. I’m talking thick cuts of prime rib, vegetables, mash potatoes all in one container.
Lucky for me, the food that wasn’t opened gets split up with my wife and her coworkers. You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff these rich people leave behind. Several months ago my wife came home with one of those big Yeti cooler bags, the thing is over $400, and it was left.’
–LessBig715

15.

‘Bottle service at a nightclub. Imagine paying a 1000% markup on a bottle of Grey Goose that typically costs $50.’
–jinsanity811

16.

‘I worked construction for a couple years in my 20’s. I was the only white or college educated guy on the crew. It was a regular occurrence while working on wealthy people’s properties that they would request that I personally return for side projects, even though everyone else on the crew was much more skilled and harder working than me.’
–Legendary_Lamb2020

17.

‘About 15 years ago I started working in a well to do retirement community. Word got around that I was a good contractor to work with and my customer base started exploding.

After about two years I had a group of customer who were trying to dick swing the level of work and expense I was providing. ‘Well, I had Andy do $10k worth of patio lights’. Well, next week Suzy wants me to do $20k worth of interior lights so she could brag to Marsha that she had more money to spend with the electrician. Rinse and repeat over and over, just whatever extravagant shit I could think of they wanted.

It was an awesome gravy train until they passed away.’
–andyb521740

18.

‘€9 for a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice straight out of a carton.

Hotel was a 5* in a big European city and would have been easily in the top three hotels in the city some saying it was the best. No one ever complained about the orange juice (to me or that I heard of) and was a popular choice (tasted nice in fairness).’
–Mig224

19.

‘Work in fine dining as a cook. Sure the $80 steaks are a thing and so is a $20 crème brûlée. But probably the thing that’s the biggest ripoff that sells like gangbusters is the up to $180 charcuterie board. Yes, it looks pretty and has very expensive meat and cheese on it but it’s mostly filled out with nuts, pickled veg and crostini and a few dips.

In all on that board there’s maybe $15 or $20 worth of product and it takes me 5 to 7 minutes to assemble each (after the meats are sliced but that’s all done in prep in the afternoon.) The margins on that are better than even most alcohol save perhaps nice wine. People love their chart ( pronunciation shart) and just pay out the nose for it. Fours sharts coming right up.’
–Super_Commercial9195

20.

‘Former Aviation project manager here. Corporate and private. Some of the requests I have seen for optional modifications are quite insane. The principles wife preferred Grey Goose vodka and requested a galley cabinet be re-configured to accommodate the bottle size and drink-ware. This was in the $65k range. This was certainly not the most expensive.’
–sad_mustang

21.

‘Breakfast. Bacon and eggs is bacon and eggs no matter how you serve it. I once saw a man pay £20 for three fried eggs on toast.’
–Neffwood

Source r/AskReddit Image Screenshot