You get what you pay for?

Seeing as there’s a desperate need for questions right now, i’m asking the ones that I keep stored for emergencies like this.

I’ve noticed that there are some incidences where buying cheap is not a good idea. I’ve found this to be particularly true with a few particular items:
Toaster: Taking my boyfriend’s (bad) advice to buy the cheapest toaster the store had was one of the more regrettable decisions that I have made in a long time. The toaster was $6. It was purchased at target. The toaster cord was ONE FOOT LONG. I measured. It was absolutely absurd. When you plugged it in to the wall the toaster was pulled up off the ground. It was also a completely metal toaster with no insulation. Once you turned it on you needed oven mits to touch it. It toasted the top half of things perfectly and charcoaled the bottom half. Lastly the little dial that is supposed to change time was perfectly symmetrical and could spin infinitely backwards and forwards. That toaster has now gone to toaster hell.
Pillows: I have a thing about buying bedding. I buy the best things possible for my bed because if you’re spending half your life somewhere you should probably be comfortable. Nathan, on the other hand, is an absolute spendthrift. If there’s an aisle of pillows and some are five dollars and it goes up to fifty… he buys the cheapest ones. I mean, you can’t make a pillow badly, right? Wrong. His pillows all go pancake flat within a few weeks. Its the strangest thing ever. I have NEVER had a pillow do this. Its like all the cotton (feather is pricier) in them compresses. You can’t do a thing about it. Fluffing it just breaks the cotton apart and makes it flatter and chunky.

Have you ever had this happen? Do you have any personal stories about it? Warnings to other people?