Agreed.
Cheap breadboards can be a waste of time and money. The last one I bought had no support for the contacts other than the double-sided adhesive pad on the back.
It usually pays to match pins and wire cores to the receptacle. Ready made jumper leads can be poor quality and unreliable. In the long run, it can pay to buy reels of solid core wire or use alarm cable stranded wire and crimp your own pins etc.
I make a habit with solid core wire to cut the point on the end at an angle to ease insertion into a header..