The not-so-Great Canadian Corporate Greed thread

[Wigs]

urbandreamer, we have a right to bitch about FRAUD. And you have a right to waste your time to bitch about us bitching about fraud
I do agree that recycled cotton or linen should be the standard type of reusable bag to use instead of more plastic derivatives

If you keep the reusable bags in the trunk of your car, you'll never forget them.

[Hecate]

But cotton bags are worse for the environment than plastic bags, so if people continue the trend of just buying more bags the problem gets even worse

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4822660

[Nouvellecosse]

Well there's different ways something can be better or worse for the environment. There's the issue of disposal and plastic contamination in the environment, and then there's the energy and resources needed to produce and distribute something. It can be hard to balance the pros and cons, but we also shouldn't use a lack of perfection as a distraction.

A few years ago the SciShow channel did a good breakdown. They showed that new cotton bags aren't good but reusable plastic bags are better than single use as long as you use them 6 to 11 times (depending on the study) to offset their greater climate impact during production and distribution. And of course they should be disposed of responsibly. I've easily used my reusable nylon bags many dozens of times over the years. Perhaps even hundreds. Although the thing they're the most useful for is to carry with me in case I don't have my backpack or don't have enough room for everything in my backpack.

• Video Link

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by lio45

Let’s consider the fair and equitable reciprocal action:

Loblaws Customer brings two “200g” bags of chips to the self-checkout, scans only one, pays only one, leaves with the two “200g” bags, declares “we’re even, Galen”

How does that sound? Reasonable?

I mean, surely paying for ~200g of chips then leaving the premises with ~200g of chips can’t possibly constitute shoplifting, right?

agree completely.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

OMG you guys are bitching about $1.50 bags of junk food. NN chips are extremely unhealthy, so less is probably good for you.

It must be nice to 1) have a cushy job 2) spend the majority of your job bitching online about things you have no control over 3) feeling superior to the unfortunate

Why are Canadians so lazy and unproductive?!

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

^thanks for "getting it".

Plus, I just don't like Galen. Who could? His company conspired with other oligopolies in the grocery industry to control bread prices, for more than a decade. His PC/no-name products often weigh half of what is listed on the packaging. Blatant false advertising, at best, and more likely outright fraud. Not an obsession, but the guy is certainly an asshole (there are just so many examples to corroborate this), so I don't understand at all why someone without any connection to Galen (presumably?) would feel personally slighted. Such as the likes of Whippersnapper. Galen brought it completely on himself.


‘It’s crazy how much more we pay for less now!’: Loblaws customer buys chip bag labeled as 200 grams. It only weighs 103 grams.

For sure, Galen is not the only case of corporate greed in Canada. But he has become the face of it.

Shoppers discover boxes of Cheerios, bags of Loblaws chips that weigh far less than advertised

The banks are similarly engaged in such egregious behaviour, basically forcing their hapless employees (many of whom seem only slightly more intelligent than a bag of hammers) to upsell customers into financial products and insurance that they don't need/want.

I suggest that you step away from the TikTok... I finally clicked on this thread today, saw the chip conspiracy theory and recalled I happen to have an unopened bag of those exact chips that I bought for 2/$4 last week. Curiosity got the best of me, and since I happened to have a pet scale handy (it reads in kg, so it doesn't read to the gram), I put them together, and:



The scale could be off a little (though I did "calibrate" it with a pound of butter - 454g - and it read 0.45 kg...), but even if it's off by 10 or 20g, there's definitely more than half of the advertised chips in the bag.

So, the TikTok case... a manufacturing issue? Creative scale calibration in order to get attention on TikTok? We'll never know...

I just love the internet...

[Nouvellecosse]

I didn't watch the tiktok but I suspect (or hope) the complaint isn't suggesting that every bag contains half the labeled contents since loblaws would realize that would be discovered pretty quickly. It's probably either a complaint about quality control (that some incorrectly filled bags are slipping through because of inadequate quality control) or that the Weston's are actively short changing some small percentage of batches which could save them money but may go unnoticed and allow plausible deniability if it was noticed. In either case more an issue of them not caring enough about consumers to ensure all products contain the advertised quality rather than all of them being under-filled. So showing that some are fully filled doesn't really say much about either of those possibilities. A small variance in content weight is normal and the bag itself would weight around 5g. But having half the advertised content weight is definitely an issue. How big an issue depends on how often it happens.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

I suggest that you step away from the TikTok... I finally clicked on this thread today, saw the chip conspiracy theory and recalled I happen to have an unopened bag of those exact chips that I bought for 2/$4 last week. Curiosity got the best of me, and since I happened to have a pet scale handy (it reads in kg, so it doesn't read to the gram), I put them together, and:



The scale could be off a little (though I did "calibrate" it with a pound of butter - 454g - and it read 0.45 kg...), but even if it's off by 10 or 20g, there's definitely more than half of the advertised chips in the bag.

So, the TikTok case... a manufacturing issue? Creative scale calibration in order to get attention on TikTok? We'll never know...

I just love the internet...

I've never used tiktok

Good then, it was fixed. This was not the case originally. I suspect that it is only the tip of the iceberg. Let's face it, Roblaws has a history of ripping off customers (the great bread pricing debacle). I am sure it is not just a Roblaws problem, and probably extends to many other retailers.

The combination of shrinkflation, underweighting and inflation are killing consumers.

I worked for years in retailing, and I can say, with confidence, that price changes are asymmetrical in terms of what consumers end up paying. For example, prices go up but this may not be reflected on the label/tag. So consumers pay more than they should. Companies argue that sometimes consumers get a better deal, when prices drop and said price drop is not labelled/tagged, but an investigation revealed that in almost every such instance of a discrepancy between the advertised price and the actual price, overwhelmingly consumers pay more (not less) than the advertised price. Guess what firm was one of the worst offenders? Yep, you guessed it, the place with already inflated prices, Shoppers Dog Fart. Which is now owned by....Roblaws.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I didn't watch the tiktok but I suspect (or hope) the complaint isn't suggesting that every bag contains half the labeled contents since loblaws would realize that would be discovered pretty quickly. It's probably either a complaint about quality control (that some incorrectly filled bags are slipping through because of inadequate quality control) or that the Weston's are actively short changing some small percentage of batches which could save them money but may go unnoticed and allow plausible deniability if it was noticed. In either case more an issue of them not caring enough about consumers to ensure all products contain the advertised quality rather than all of them being under-filled. So showing that some are fully filled doesn't really say much about either of those possibilities. A small variance in content weight is normal and the bag itself would weight around 5g. But having half the advertised content weight is definitely an issue. How big an issue depends on how often it happens.

I also didn't watch the TikTok (first one was unavailable, second one wanted me to sign in, so I didn't bother as I don't do TikTok).

However, the point is that people shouldn't take random bits of information and make up a story that the store is trying to rip them off by intentionally placing less product in the bag than is displayed on the bag. There could be many reasons, but most likely is some sort of production fuck-up.

I don't work in the grocery industry, but I would be fairly sure that Loblaw's contracts out these store-labeled products, probably to the lowest bidder, with the contract provision including certain quality requirements. As a 'no name' brand, I suspect the quality provisions would include the quality of potatoes that are used for the chips (anecdotally they seem to have more imperfections than name brand chips), but there certainly wouldn't be any cost-benefit to Loblaws in not requiring the bags to reach the product weight requirement.

It's not about whether they care about the customer or not, by having a contractor who mistakenly underfills X number of bags (and we don't know what X is, do we?). It's about how much Loblaws charges the customer over and above their costs.

I posted the package that I weighed because... so what? One or two underfilled bags do not a conspiracy theory make...

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

I've never used tiktok

Good then, it was fixed. This was not the case originally. I suspect that it is only the tip of the iceberg. Let's face it, Roblaws has a history of ripping off customers (the great bread pricing debacle). I am sure it is not just a Roblaws problem, and probably extends to many other retailers.

The combination of shrinkflation, underweighting and inflation are killing consumers.

I worked for years in retailing, and I can say, with confidence, that price changes are asymmetrical in terms of what consumers end up paying. For example, prices go up but this may not be reflected on the label/tag. So consumers pay more than they should. Companies argue that sometimes consumers get a better deal, when prices drop and said price drop is not labelled/tagged, but an investigation revealed that in almost every such instance of a discrepancy between the advertised price and the actual price, overwhelmingly consumers pay more (not less) than the advertised price. Guess what firm was one of the worst offenders? Yep, you guessed it, the place with already inflated prices, Shoppers Dog Fart. Which is now owned by....Roblaws.

Hey, I am squarely in the camp of believing that the grocery chains are profiting greatly at our expense, on items that we can't do without (food). My opinion is that Covid supply chain issues got consumers accustomed to the idea that we may have to pay more for less, and that the grocery chains have taken advantage of our acceptance of higher prices to their financial gain. I think it's scandalous.

I've been watching shrinkflation for years, like 20 anyhow. Companies have long adhered to the practice of plateauing pricing for a period of time while shrinking their content weight (but usually maintaining the same packaging size so that the customer doesn't notice). After some period of time they will then bring the contents up to the previous weight with "new larger size" or such printed on the package, with a 'new larger price' attached. Or keep the shrunken product at the same price, while introducing a "jumbo size" of the old content weight at a higher price. It's slimy and it pisses me off... and everybody else out there who are struggling to keep their heads above water.

As far as the chips go, that's not 'shrinkflation'... IMHO it's most likely a supplier fuck-up, and also IMHO a poor example on which to base a conspiracy theory. If folks want to do it up, then find out who the supplier is, talk confidentially to the employees to see if there have been some directives from Loblaw's to intentionally remove content, randomly or whatever. That won't happen because it's difficult and risky, unless the CBC or somebody gets their hooks into it... but I suspect they won't because it's more likely that somebody pushed the wrong button on the bagger and accidentally changed the weight calibration, or something like that.

Anyways... I'm in agreement with you. I hate them and how much money they are taking out of my pocket for items that I can't live without (and I'm not talking about chips).

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

I also didn't watch the TikTok (first one was unavailable, second one wanted me to sign in, so I didn't bother as I don't do TikTok).

However, the point is that people shouldn't take random bits of information and make up a story that the store is trying to rip them off by intentionally placing less product in the bag than is displayed on the bag. There could be many reasons, but most likely is some sort of production fuck-up.

I don't work in the grocery industry, but I would be fairly sure that Loblaw's contracts out these store-labeled products, probably to the lowest bidder, with the contract provision including certain quality requirements. As a 'no name' brand, I suspect the quality provisions would include the quality of potatoes that are used for the chips (anecdotally they seem to have more imperfections than name brand chips), but there certainly wouldn't be any cost-benefit to Loblaws in not requiring the bags to reach the product weight requirement.

It's not about whether they care about the customer or not, by having a contractor who mistakenly underfills X number of bags (and we don't know what X is, do we?). It's about how much Loblaws charges the customer over and above their costs.

I posted the package that I weighed because... so what? One or two underfilled bags do not a conspiracy theory make...

I don't think quality control is just about cost vs expense though. There's an important ethical element that this type of reductionism disregards. Perhaps there are cases in which the profit margin isn't unreasonable but if they performed the due diligence needed to ensure quality standards then the margin would be much tighter. Well an ethical company would realize that you can't sacrifice quality because of the potential negative effects it could have on customers. They'd realize that if they wanted to achieve a healthier profit margin they'd need to improve efficiencies in other areas. A company is not entitled to profit at any cost. There are some corners that cannot be cut. So simply concluding that "if their profit margin seems reasonable, they must not be doing anything wrong" isn't a good approach.

But yes, in this case, if the people who made the tiktok drew the conclusion that it must have been intentional malice or negligence then I agree that it was premature. But I hope you're not suggesting that people should draw the reverse conclusion by assuming it must be totally innocent when we don't have evidence to support that either. Especially when they've done things to erode the benefit of the doubt they'd normally to entitled to.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Hecate

But cotton bags are worse for the environment than plastic bags, so if people continue the trend of just buying more bags the problem gets even worse

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4822660

Love it when CBC haters use CBC links.

Here's the bottom line:

"You have to re-use the cotton bag many times before the impact is similar to the lightweight conventional plastic bag," Jonna Meyhoff Fry, one of the study's co-authors, told The Sunday Edition's host, Michael Enright. "We found, for the assumptions we had made, you had to re-use it 131 times."

Based on a weekly shopping trip, this requires more than two years of regular use.

Says nothing about the problem of microplastics in everything.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I don't think quality control is just about cost vs expense though. There's an important ethical element that this type of reductionism disregards. Perhaps there are cases in which the profit margin isn't unreasonable but if they performed the due diligence needed to ensure quality standards then the margin would be much tighter. Well an ethical company would realize that you can't sacrifice quality because of the potential negative effects it could have on customers. They'd realize that if they wanted to achieve a healthier profit margin they'd need to improve efficiencies in other areas. A company is not entitled to profit at any cost. There are some corners that cannot be cut. So simply concluding that "if their profit margin seems reasonable, they must not be doing anything wrong" isn't a good approach.

I really wasn't intending for this to be any bigger than 'I don't think that a random TikTok video should be considered good evidence for the topic', but here we are...

IMHO, you have to look at it for what it is. No name potato chips. To be able to sell them for two or three bucks a bag, they are going for low bid. Plus, I don't know how much production plant experience you have, but quality glitches happen. No excuses, it's just a reality of a production environment, and I suspect that low-end chips would have as few quality checks as possible, outside of health-related ones.

You missed the point on profit margin. It was simply 'I hate grocery stores because they make too much profit in a time of inflation when everybody is already squeezed for cash'. It's a separate point.

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

But I hope you're not suggesting that people should draw the reverse conclusion by assuming it must be totally innocent when we don't have evidence to support that either.

I thought that was obvious, but apparently not.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

I really wasn't intending for this to be any bigger than 'I don't think that a random TikTok video should be considered good evidence for the topic', but here we are...

IMHO, you have to look at it for what it is. No name potato chips. To be able to sell them for two or three bucks a bag, they are going for low bid. Plus, I don't know how much production plant experience you have, but quality glitches happen. No excuses, it's just a reality of a production environment, and I suspect that low-end chips would have as few quality checks as possible, outside of health-related ones.

Well sure, I already acknowledged that the tiktok post on its own isn't proof of anything when I said "A small variance in content weight is normal and the bag itself would weight around 5g. But having half the advertised content weight is definitely an issue. How big an issue depends on how often it happens."

In other words, not a big issue if it doesn't happen very often. So if that was your only point I'm not sure why you objected to anything I said.

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

You missed the point on profit margin. It was simply 'I hate grocery stores because they make too much profit in a time of inflation when everybody is already squeezed for cash'. It's a separate point.



I thought that was obvious, but apparently not.

So hopefully that helps clarify why it wasn't obvious.

Also, I think sometimes if you've disagreed with someone in the past it can be easy to see a new post and think, "Oh oh. A person I disagree with is saying something else. I assume I'm also going to disagree this time". I'm know I've been guilty of that myself before and it can cause one to read less carefully and conclude that disagreements exist when they really don't.

[Wigs]

I like how you weighed the bag instead of the contents inside the bag

None of us watched TikTok, I posted a CBC video link since apparently enough people complained to our public broadcaster

See guys, manufacturing conspiracies.
Roblaws always respects the consumer. They were voted most moral corporation in Canada.

[Hecate]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Love it when CBC haters use CBC links.

Here's the bottom line:


Says nothing about the problem of microplastics in everything.

You really are a boob! I don’t hate the cbc. I actually advocate for it. But I do think it is biased, wastes money and needs restructuring. And Peter mansbridge also agrees.

As for micro plastics are they worse for the environment than the chemical pollution from cotton factories. I really don’t know but I’d say both are equally shitty. So if you want to champion stupid bag bans that have now proven to increase plastic waste be my guest.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Well sure, I already acknowledged that the tiktok post on its own isn't proof of anything when I said "A small variance in content weight is normal and the bag itself would weight around 5g. But having half the advertised content weight is definitely an issue. How big an issue depends on how often it happens."

In other words, not a big issue if it doesn't happen very often. So if that was your only point I'm not sure why you objected to anything I said.



So hopefully that helps clarify why it wasn't obvious.

Also, I think sometimes if you've disagreed with someone in the past it can be easy to see a new post and think, "Oh oh. A person I disagree with is saying something else. I assume I'm also going to disagree this time". I'm know I've been guilty of that myself before and it can cause one to read less carefully and conclude that disagreements exist when they really don't.

Yeah, sure, not objecting to anything you said, actually, just providing clarification as there sometimes seems to be slight misinterpretations to what I've written. Understandably, I might add as I'm often writing in haste, or fail to explain things carefully.

So we can agree to agree.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Wigs

I like how you weighed the bag instead of the contents inside the bag

Dude... I planned to eat the contents!

[urbandreamer]

Do you weigh pizza slices? I noticed Loblaws MLG had pizza slices for $5, some clearly larger than others. Or how about phone plans? I pay $40/month for 75GB of US&Canada data from Public Mobile, while some of you may pay $90/month from Robgers.

Is it fraudulent to go to UWO, pay the same tuition as everyone else yet get a C instead of an A from Molson Ex?

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

Do you weigh pizza slices? I noticed Loblaws MLG had pizza slices for $5, some clearly larger than others. Or how about phone plans? I pay $40/month for 75GB of US&Canada data from Public Mobile, while some of you may pay $90/month from Robgers.

Is it fraudulent to go to UWO, pay the same tuition as everyone else yet get a C instead of an A from Molson Ex?

If a product isn't sold by weight or other specific size/quantity metric, then it's up to the consumer to decide if they want to risk the purchase without knowing. Fraud isn't about bad or uncompetitive pricing. It's about lying or deception. Being offered one thing in exchange for a particular payment and not provided with what you paid for. If it was just a mistake that couldn't reasonably have been prevented then mistakes happen. But fraud specifically refers to intentional or negligent stuff.

With the university, if they don't mark your work based on the same metrics as other students then that would be a form of discrimination for sure. And if they they stated that you would get a course credit based on fulfilling a certain set of criteria which you fully fulfilled, then that could qualify if they fail to award the credit. I know obviously you're just teasing but I just want to be clear what the specific complaint is that people are raising.