Why spend money on Incense or lure?

Totally agree, and this is the reason why Niantic is using those "special offers" to try to sell more incense and lures, because they are worthless, incense is worst because at least with lures everyone around can get the xp/mon/dust, it is still a crap but you can take a small profit of all hackers lighting up the stops hahaha xD.

For me the only good box was the special one where you get 2 incubators and saved 50 coins, the rest is crap. Expected a lot more of this event, Halloween and Thanksgiving were a lot better.

I don't generally buy them (did buy the 100 balls and lure pack as I was short on balls (semi-rural small town with few pokestops)).

I do use lures occasionally - sitting in a pub garden, the handy stop outside the local supermarket that I can use whilst shopping, but I've only really had success when using them by water (generally more useful pokes).

Incense I've found completely useless, but haven't tried it away from Pokestops in the middle of nowhere yet.

Incense is what I use when I'm stuck at home and can't get out to play...

Made it to mid 20s solely on incense! Didn't hatch an egg or turn a stop for quite a long time.Stayed at home burning incense buying balls.

Definitely get more from incense than walking. A 30 min walk would net me 2-3 pokes at home.

FWIW, during this event got a Blastoise, a Venusaur, an Ivysaur and a Pidgeot via incense (used a total of 8 incense and get at least 2 starters in each incense). If you have incense waiting to be used, now is probably the time to use it.

Incense has seriously improved for me.

I still have incense and lures from leveling up. I never use them because I never have enough pokeballs to make them worthwhile.

The reason incense is shit for some people is that they don't use it away from spawns... I've got like 50% of my pokedex from incense.

i dont get why people arent using incence in the middle of nowhere. you get really good stuff that way. catch a poke then run/cycle until another spawns, rince repeat. Ive done this a few times when visiting my parents. Sitting in your house using one is such a waste.

Ive used incense by accident when scrolling through the items but these were ones gained from leveling up. I never got anything good. Same with using lures. Everything in the store is a waste of coins except for lucky eggs and incubators. Normally I buy 25 lucky eggs and 8 incubators at a time. I only use the purchased incubators on 10K eggs when I have 9 of them.

It really depends where you live...
As a reminder, INGRESS coordinates are key to use incenses at the best.
If you can find a location without ingress white dots (radius 1km is perfect) AND the network is ok (4g ideally) AND you can easily walk/ride 500 meters in all directions in this location, you are the perfect candidate for incenses. The spawning is random and every 200 meters a new mons appear (1 new every minute). So 30 at random mons during 30 minutes that is the best you can get from incenses.
Did this a few times when I am travelling far from urbanized locations and it works perfectly. Amazing to see what you get when niantic doesn't know in which kind of area you are playing.
Another way to use it, when you are sitting in a car (not driving) and the ride will take more than 30 boring minutes, use an incense, same rule every 200 meters another mons (1 per minute max).
The nice feature here, when the Pokémon appears, you don't have to select it when you are close. Look backwards and you will see that it will remain selectable until the road disappears from your screen (+-500 meters). Another way to catch 30 nice mons far away from cities and pokestops...

Hadn't used an incense for a long time as I also had never gotten anything good. But it's raining here tonight so used one. Got 3 paras, 1 caterpie and a growlithe. Can't believe I'd ever get anything good from these