CONSUMER REPORTS: Dollar store danger

[Roon]

KUSA - While retailers are suffering their worst downturn in more than 20 years, dollar stores are hiring and even building new stores. Higher-income shoppers who weren't dollar-store fans before are checking them out now.
http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=118463&catid=188

[femmocrat]

1. Best bargain I've found recently....

Our local Dollar Tree has the Sunday paper ($1.75) for $1.00! Can't pass that up!

I wouldn't buy toys there (if I had kids), but appreciate their prices on shampoo, toothpaste, etc., paper products, and cleaning products. I always buy their cleaning products for school. They also have a good selection of school supplies and some crafts items.

[tabbycat31]

3. I love Dollar Tree

I just had my cousins for the week and they were on the verge of breaking their shoes. I took them to Dollar Tree and found them each a pair of flip flops. I also found an Al Franken book there.

Dollar Stores are great when kids are around, also when you have a lot of guests (I buy packages of toothbrushes at the dollar store for when people forget one)

[SoxFan]

2. Building 19

Not a dollar store, but a weird mash-up of a junkyard, badly run K-Mart, warehouse, and 1920s mental hospital. They buy just about anything at insurance sales and sell it in their stores, which are mainly located in blue collar New England cities. You might find surgical scrubs, left-handed golf clubs, souveneir buttons from the 2008 Dem National Convention, and, at Christmas, lumps of coal.

I found a very nice cashmere overcoat for about $40 last year, as well as books by Wesley Clark and former Al Gore advisor David Osborne.

[flvegan]

4. Local news did an expose here not too long ago. They found

that many items, like toothpaste, detergent, etc was made for sale in Mexico and therefore didn't meet the same quality/safety standards as is dictated for the US market.

My ex-wife seemed to spend half her free time at the damn place.