When Cheaping Out Backfires: 25 Companies Who Paid a Hefty Price for Cutting Corners
One night a bartender came out to the door and told me there was a fight inside, there was no security inside just 2 of us on the door. When we went in there was around 60 people brawling on the dance floor. We did what we could but it was beyond our control. Eventually the police arrived but wouldn’t come inside they stood outside and essentially instructed us to kick everyone out and they would keep them out. We spent 45 minutes dragging people out of there.
Many people were injured and after the fight one of the guys who had been fighting came back and stabbed a guy he had fought with.
The police decided enough was enough and approached the council who as expected revoked the premises license. They lost the club altogether.
The company my mom worked for had new offices built and instead of hiring movers they had the staff move. They had 3 injuries occur including my mom tearing her ACL. The HR director, who my mom was friends with, said it cost them 16x the amount they were quoted for movers to cover medical, legal, etc. costs.
Someone I know worked for the “oldest american” hoist company. They decided to outsource production to china. The cost of transport, losses, customs, etc made the chinese hoists just as expensive as their american made ones and then the chinese company stole the plan to make and sell themselves for less.
Lay off a bunch of veteran people so they can bring in newer workers for cheaper. They find they couldn’t bring in newer people for cheaper so they hire newer people at close to the same price as the veteran workers. Veteran workers are mad they have to train somebody making almost the same as they are with no experience and start leaving. Company has to pay fewer remaining veteran workers even more to get them to stay while paying inexperienced workers close to what the workers they just laid off were making.
To my knowledge, prior to the lay offs, the veteran workers weren’t even complaining about pay. Now the department is at a worse state and more expensive than what it was prior to their plan to save money.
The home health agency I work for was bought out by a hospital system in the next state over. They decided to cut costs by eliminating the position of the person who would obtain authorization from the insurance companies for services and move it all to their centralized auth department in the other state. Only problem was, they had no idea that things worked differently for our state’s medicaid program than it did in their state. They ended up getting denied for well over a million dollars in the first year for services we provided because they didn’t properly obtain authorization. But hey, they saved maybe 30k in salary so good on them, I suppose.
To cover nightshifts in the hospital a new manager imposed a rolling rota of days and nights… 75% of the staff handed in their resignation as this was not an optional thing…
Classic play silly games, win silly prizes.
When lockdown hit, they immediately decided to ‘save money’ by furloughing almost all of the staff in order to get some government money.
But we were a software company. Everyone could have written software from home. And that’s precisely what all our competitors did.
So first, we fell behind massively. Second, people on furlough grew antsy and quit for new jobs that allowed them to, you know, work. Third, the small handful of people left behind at the company were suddenly swamped with demands and got burned out and annoyed.
We could have made so many strides adding Covid-relevant features to our app, the way our competitors did. But nope. Short term panic led to long term loss.
Outsourcing the call center to central America. We were one of the only companies in our line of work that ONLY operated in the US, and customers loved us for it. Their customer base cut down by 1/3 within 2 years of outsourcing, and now they are hanging on by a thread. Wouldn’t be surprised if they went under within the next 5 years.
Not giving the guy doing 2.5 full time jobs a slight raise, instead letting them walk and paying 3 new people (combined) at least twice what they were paying him to do all the same work at like 65 percent the quality level
I work in R&D and prototyping for a small home theater company.
My boss doesnt like how it looks when we make big purchases under his supervision.
So he consistently denies my proposals to buy a $500 3d printer, preferring to spend about $200-$300 per month to have another shop 3d print for us, and then paying me my salary to sit around for 2-5 days per job, doing nothing, while waiting for the 3d print shop to process their dozens of other customers.
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(as of October 17, 2025 18:48 GMT +00:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)
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(as of October 17, 2025 18:48 GMT +00:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)
