Tread with care

Have you come across a situation where the prices are higher, but services are below average? A costly vacation booked for a week, turns out to be a substandard arrangement; or a romantic dinner booked with your husband on his promotion, gives you a complete disappointment in terms of food taste and service standard, even a disastrous experience?
Normally, we tend to believe that we pay price for better quality and services. Mostly it works out, but in some situation, you pay more and get less. This feels like cheating. Paying more in expectation of getting something better is not a vanity, it is a reasonable assumption. But not getting the worth of price paid is upsetting.
This happens not only in financial transactions, but sometimes in personal relationship as well. Expecting someone to be a good friend, you do a lot, out of the way, and it turns out that in the time of your need, there is complete indifference. Relatives expect a lot, as a matter of right, and when you say no, it is taken like a crime. With relatives also, in case you decide to do more than required from your side, and afterwards they turn eyes away, it gets bitter. How many of you have spent time, money and energy with a girl of your liking, to disappointingly hear, that she always considered you 'just a friend'?
Whether it is a restaurant, or a vacation or a relationship, how do we know what is worth of what? In case there is a formula to find it out before hand, perhaps we will not pay more price and won't invest more than required time and energy in any relationship. But that's really a utopian idea. Some economist, scientist or psychologists might have a chance to get a Nobel prize by doing a full proof research on this. Or may be some technocrat is developing an app which can guide us through in such financial and emotional transactions. But till then, as they say, investment is always risky, and return may not match the expectation or projection. So, tread slowly and carefully.