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Wendy's avatar

It still surprises me when I see mentions of Angi, because I'm old enough to remember when it was Angie's List. Angie's List had a stellar reputation of being 1000% the best place to turn to if you needed to hire someone to do something to your home or your car. What happened to it? The same thing that seems to be happening to every formerly decent product, service or business: venture capital and private equity firms that pushed the company into an IPO.

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Amy Anderson's avatar

The best way I normalize "receiving less for paying more" is by reminding myself that I am voting with my dollars. I live in Minnesota and when I pay $5/pint for greenhouse cherry tomatoes from Iowa rather than $3/pint for the ones from California, I remind myself that these tomatoes didn't travel as far, which reduces their carbon footprint and means they're probably fresher picked. When I pay $80 to have a great pair of leather boots resoled instead of throwing them away and buying new, I remind myself that this is keeping them out of the landfill, supporting my local shoe repair store, AND I've spent 10 years breaking them in and they fit me perfectly, so why start over? It's counterintuitive when measured against our idea of "the cheapest is the best" (and I'm a person currently wearing a thrifted sweater and shoes, so I can be pretty cheap!) but I want my community to still have shoe repair stores and local bookstores and non-chain grocery options, so I need to support them as much as I can.

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