50 People Who Work In Luxury Industries Spill The Biggest Rip-Offs They Sell Their Rich Clients

Luxury beauty brands: you’re paying a king’s ransom for perfume, makeup, hair care, and skincare that shares R&D space with drugstore brands (at least for the global conglomerates). Of course there’s differences. You’re potentially paying for some more qualitative ingredients (ex: materials sourced from a specific region) or heavier packaging (ex: glass vs plastic) or fancies store experiences (real Italian marble floors at their shop-in-shop vs the shelves at CVS) but the quality difference is normally negligible to the end user. You’re also normally paying to access the innovative technologies first before they get disseminated to masstige or d**g store brands. But within a few product launch/renovation cycles the technology/formula concepts will move beyond the luxury brands and be more accessible.

Also: always try to buy your big expense products in travel retail spaces if you’re lucky enough to travel internationally. Base prices are almost always purposefully cheaper than your local country’s stores and you save on duty (taxes) on top of that.

Used to work as a Butler at a 5 star hotel. One of the most prestigious in my country. Saw celebrities and politicians such as Bruno Mars, Taylor Swift, the Prime minister of England, and many more on a monthly basis.

I'm not kidding you, these guys pay extra for water. Apparently there's cheap water and expensive water. There's no difference in taste, feeling, texture or whatever. It was sort of a joke among the staff to try out the water and figure out what makes it so expensive. It's literally just water. They pay extra nonetheless.

The only difference is literally in presentation. The expensive water is in a pretty and fancy looking gas bottle and that's it. These guys pay like 30x more for an expensive and fancy glass bottle.

And there are layers to it. Like there's cheap expensive water for the standard rooms and floors.

There's the mid option for the deluxe rooms and floors.

And there was the very expensive water for the premium/presidential suites.

There's no difference in taste for any of these waters. I really mean it. It's the same water we drink.

Oh man, there were so many absurds. I'll try to remember more. Those were fun and very luxurious times.

Well, I don't work in a luxury industry, but when I recently stayed in a high end hotel, their restaurant offered a $20 bowl of Raisin Bran for breakfast, so I'm gonna put that up there.

I can tell you one thing middle-class and lower-income people get ripped off on. I used to work for a well-known luxury shoe brand with a long heritage. After we were bought by a big corporation, we were eventually required to sell products to stores like TJ Maxx. Even though those discount retailers claim they carry the same items sold in high-end stores for a better price, the truth is they receive lower-quality versions that we design specifically for them. So you really aren't getting a deal.

€9 a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice start out of a carton.

Edit: price was in 2018, couldn't even find the hotels own website to price it now with all the 3rd party ads.

Hotel was a 5* in a big European city and would have been easily in the top 3 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).

Luxury cruises. I had a client happily pay $100,000 for a 30 day cruise to Japan for two people.

It's their money though, who am I to question it?

Room service. You’d be surprised with how many people accept paying fees on top of poor quality food and smaller proportions just so they don’t have to walk down and pick it up.

Edit:

It definitely comes down to what kind of hotel you order from. You will likely get different experiences ordering room service at a hotel that has a 3 star Michelin restaurant compared to a casino or smaller hotel.

The casino I work at is a 4 diamond resort and even at its peak, I found the room service lacking. It was often bland, small proportions, and poor quality. We would get constant complaints. The hotel still offers room service but it’s not 24hours and won’t tell you they have trouble finding servers so it’s not uncommon to never have a runner which means guests will have to order to go and pick up themselves anyway.

Ironically enough, this has never made the resort lose a diamond even though that’s a part of the score. We even have a 24 cafe restaurant and we have gotten used to transferring guests to them so they can tell them sorry no room service due to no runners.

Does working in the “wealth management” field count?  If so, I’m not sure every account gets the service from its advisor or advisory firm that is charged for.  Usually expressed in “basis points” for advisory services, often, most of it can be done by the *captive* actually holding the money.  Particularly in dealings with institutional or “family” offices, like I work in. .

Obligatory “Not me but a guy I know” - one of my best friends has worked at a very high-end hotel in a North American state somewhere in the Rocky Mountains for a few years. There are no rooms at this hotel which go for less than $1000 a night ever. There is a pretty diverse crowd of people who come to visit, everything from individual guests to families to business travel.

He said no matter who the person is the odds that they check into their very expensive hotel room for the weekend, sit and watch TV for 48 hours, and then go home is actually very high. He said this is basically a year-round thing and the final cherry on top is that most people who come and go do not seem to be in any better mood upon leaving. It is apparently just a break for them from working really hard or doing whatever they do and then they go back to their normal life. He said they typically don’t even take advantage of the of the luxury amenities. Just 48 hours of recorded football games in a $2500/night suite & then private shuttle to the airport. Lol.

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.