Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for the ‘Retail’ Category

As eyes turn towards the juggernaut coming at us called the Christmas spending orgy (I am thinking of trademarking that phrase), let me reflect on the idea of using Charity as a present.

Let me first point out that I feel that I do a fair amount of charitable work, and I do give to charities as well, so as a rule and as a concept I completely support charities and feel their good works are a wonderful thing. I strongly suggest to you, good reader, that you give at this time of the year (and all year round). Remember that giving is not just a monetary thing, many charities would love your skills and time as well, so please remember that as part of your charitable works.

What a Crock of Beans!

Now, for those of you who plan on sending me a card that says something like:

“We thought of you this holiday season and have made a donation to the Human Fund in your name”

let me be very succinct: BULLSHIT (note the Seinfeldian reference).

If you wish to give to Charity, wonderful, I applaud your giving, however, do not believe that your “giving” in any way, shape or form makes me feel more festive because of it. You giving to Charity is not a gift to me. If you don’t want to give me anything this year, that is cool, and you don’t even need a card, just drop me an e-mail something like:

“Dear Scrooge, we didn’t feel like sending you jack this year, enjoy the Holidays you unlikeable so and so”

No, I have not completely gone off my nut, but I am really kind of tired of Pious folks showing me how Good they are by “giving for me”, I give as much as I can, and that is as good as it can be.

If you want to give, please do, but don’t masquerade that it has anything to do with me, thanks. Oh and if you send out a card like that and DO NOT give, Karma and or the wrath of whichever God you worship will get you eventually (isn’t that a Happy Holiday thought as well).

Happy Thanksgiving my American Brother and Cousins

Enjoy your deep friend TurDuckEns and gorge yourself on this Happy Festival day.

I received 3 different e-mails about On-Line Canada Day sales (Best Buy, Future Shop and Indigo) at various stores and at first I simply ignored them, but after thinking about it, this is really evil genius at work in the retail trade.

From the retailers point of view these “sales” are pure gravy for them:

1. Their retail stores are closed,  yet they are still selling stock (from their distribution centers).
2. They aren’t paying any retail sales staff, yet things are being sold (yes they are paying web folk to be around in case things crash, but I am sure they are relatively cheap).
3. No order is actually dealt with until the day after Canada Day (since you couldn’t ship, even if you had folks in your distribution center). No distribution center staff need to be working on Canada Day (thus you don’t have to pay them time and a half).
4. You have an interesting audience of folks either waiting to go out and party, or those that have come back from a party  and might be more motivated (read imbibed some alcohol).

This is truly evil genius on the part of these retailers and I salute their ingenuity. I like reading the e-mails and day dreaming about what I might buy one day, but unless there is something specific I am looking for, that I have the money for, I don’t usually take advantage of these “sales”.

Eating and Drinking Out More?

Even with the financial apocalypse Stats Can points out that Eating and Drinking out expenditures continue to increase in Canada:

Current dollar sales for the food services and drinking places industry increased 1.3% from March to just over $4.0 billion in April.

The price of food purchased in restaurants increased by 0.3% between March and April, according to the Consumer Price Index.

Very interesting numbers, given I would have thought folks would be staying home and eating more home cooked meals, however, this seems to contradict this a bit. Maybe this is a sign of a recovery, or more confidence folks have? We’ll see.

More and more data is coming out about how important a good night sleep is to your health, and I think I tend to agree with this data.

My wife and I slept on a water bed for a very long time. The first water bed we had was a full motion bed (i.e. a bag of water), then we moved to a motionless water bed (we had two of those), but a few years ago we went back to a regular king size bed.

Water Bed?

The advantages of the water bed to us were that it was always warm and it was a bigger bed typically. The disadvantages were more unfortunately:

1. Cats + Water Bed = You better have a repair kit handy (and enjoy waking up very wet).
2. Back aches due to lack of support (not as important when you are younger).
3. Sloshing yourself to sleep (you need to burp your bed often).
4. Once you put a bed in place, it does not move!

This post is not a slagging of water beds, I enjoyed having one, but as I got older it didn’t make as much sense. 

Price of Regular Bed

When we bought our conventional bed, it was BLOODY expensive, however I view it as an investment (and we have had that same bed for 7 or 8 years). The bed has served us well.

The problem we have run into is that the sheets we have and the pad underneath have not aged well and for the past little while, I have woken up many nights with the bed in disarray (I blame that on the sheets, I don’t know if they woke me up, but I hated the sensation).

My wife and I went out and spent about $120 on new sheets and a bed pad, and I had no quandry about spending that money. If these new sheets DO help me sleep it is worth as much, if not more than what we spent.

Sleep to me, is as important as exercise and eating well, I hope this helps me sleep.

Finance Carnivals

The Carnival of Twenty Something DC Edition is hosted by Your Money Relationship where they link to my Advice to New Grads.

I have said many times that Cash is King, but I may need to rethink this idea given the odd situation my wife ran into a week or so ago.

The Cash Tale

Our son’s Nursery School was running a Scholastic book fund raising book service, so my wife found a couple of books she figured my son would like, and she filled in the form and gave it in with the exact cash needed to pay for the order.

My wife has decided to see if she uses cash instead of cheques and direct withdrawal, if it will give her the “tactile feedback” she needs for budgeting (I applaud this idea). My wife’s plan is simple once the cash is gone, there is no more spending, but that is a side note to this interesting story.

Mrs. C8j dropped off the order and thought no more about it, until she was cornered by the mother who has volunteered to run the book order. The volunteer told my wife that Scholastic did not accept cash and that my wife needed to write a cheque instead. My wife then asked the woman, why didn’t the volunteer write a cheque on her own account and take the cash as a cash advance and the problem would be solved. The volunteer said she couldn’t do that, and told my wife that she must submit the order with a cheque or the order would be refused. My wife ended up writing a cheque to get the books.

Cash is not Money?

This incident leaves me scratching my head, asking the question, when did Cash stop being currency? I realize there are situations where cash shouldn’t be used (sending cash in the mail is a bad thing), but it seems more and more, society is frowning on the use of cash, or is making it very difficult to use cash.

This made me wonder what would happen if I did the following experiment: Buy a car and walk into the dealership with the entire payment for the car in cash, would the dealership take the money? I am curious to hear if anyone has actually done this.

With counterfeiting of Canadian $100 bills, most establishments do not accept bills over $50, and they don’t really like taking those bills much either (try to pay for a $11.00  charge with a $50 bill and see the reaction of the cashier). How long will it be, before cash and bills in specific stop being accepted as currency?

As I mentioned last week we purchased a new camera last week and didn’t get the extended warranty.

This past Friday (6 days after purchasing the camera),  I read the Future Shop flyer and saw that the same camera is now selling for $50.00 less. I tend to read the Future Shop and Best Buy flyers because I am a techno-geek and like to window shop for things I can’t afford (and know I shouldn’t buy), and this time it paid off very nicely.

I went off to Best Buy, and was my normal polite self, I had my bill with me from the previous Saturday and spoke to the young lady at the Customer Service (sic) desk (I also brought a copy of the Future Shop Ad for the camera). The young lady was very polite as well and then checked and Best Buy was in fact carrying my Camera (Canon S5 IS) for $50.00 less also, and because of this my account was credited for $56.50 (after tax rebates and such).

Well worth the trip, even though I most likely spent $4.00 worth of petroleum to get my money, but money well retrieved. Most electronics stores, and I believe most big box stores (aka Wal-Mart) have this kind of purchase protection plan and it is important to make sure you are not being over-charged and you are taking advantage of later sales on products you have purchased.

I am thinking now, I should have raised a mild stink and asked for more than $50.00 back, because the sales person at Best Buy should have known this camera was going to be on sale in the next few days, but I didn’t think of it at the time.

Extended Warranty?!?

As I stood in line I saw another interesting piece of consumer sleuthing that I feel it is important to report on as well.

A young lady was in front of me, and she had her iPOD touch with her, and there was some issue with it not working correctly. The young lady had her original box, and her extended warranty (which we said she paid $70 for (I believe)), and the Customer Service rep was very polite and said she’d have a look at it.

The Customer Service rep then told her something that caused my ear hear to prick up. Evidently if the Best Buy Customer rep couldn’t repair or make the iPOD work successfully, the young lady (customer) would have to send it to Apple, because it is within a year of purchase and Apple does all repairs in the first year.

Let that sink in, the customer has purchased an extended warranty from Best Buy, however, Apple’s warranty covers the exact same repair in the first year (presumably the first year of the extended warranty as well).

Read that previous sentence again, and tell me you didn’t at least have a “WTF” moment.

What is the use of this “Extended Warranty” if Apple repairs this and not Best Buy? The Customer Service rep in fact said, the customer must send the iPOD back to Apple, because Apple will not accept the iPOD if it is sent in by Best Buy. Another “WTF” moment for me.

So the extended warranty you purchase overlaps with Apple’s, and is effectively redundant (i.e. useless).