I recently discussed the viral complaints springing from a change in soap at Louisville’s Downtown YMCA. So why the change to a new soap after all these years?

If the Y is anything like our company, vendors are bombarding them with offers to help them cut their costs.

We have sales people vying to shrink our phone bills, trim our bookkeeping budget, and prewfreed are bloog poasts four les monies.

Times are tough and everyone is looking to save money. The YMCA does so much to help our community that I can easily envision them thinking, “Well, if we can save some money on soap, that’s ten more children we can subsidize for summer camp.”

My guess is that the Y saw an opportunity to lower costs by using a cheaper soap, and they took it.

We all make such decisions from time to time (I recently made the poor decision to cut my kids’ hair myself…big mistake).

But all too often, cheaper doesn’t just mean inferior; it means more expensive.

I repeat:

Cheaper things usually end up being more expensive.

As I mentioned in my previous entry, the new soap was inferior in quality. It just didn’t lather.

Whereas the old soap required 2 pumps to wash my hair (yeah, it’s pretty darn thin these days), the new soap required about 10 pumps.

So I needed to use 5 times more soap for the same lather, which I suspect not only negated any “per ounce” cost savings, but probably ended up costing the Y more money due to the need to buy five times more soap in terms of overall volume.

Then factor in shipping costs on the additional soap, plus the staff time to fill the soap dispensers more often, and all in all, it’s a bad deal.

Cheaper things usually end up being more expensive.

We’ve all made the mistake of thinking that we were getting a deal only to realize that the sacrifice in quality creates hidden costs that make the “deal” a truly bad proposition.

In this instance, the YMCA ultimately dropped the new soap and went back to the old soap, and I haven't heard a single complaint since.

So when sales reps start saying, “Hey, I can do that for half of what you’re paying now,” make sure to consider the quality of what they’re selling, lest their bargain basement prices end up costing you more money.