Savvy shoppers know that the deals available at store-closing and liquidation sales are generally terrible, but that didn’t stop everyone else from raiding Sears Canada stores over the weekend, strewing boxes and merchandise across the floors. Shoppers described the scene as “apocalyptic,” which sounds about right. [More]
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T-Mobile Does Away With Unlimited LTE Data In Mexico And Canada
By 10.16.17
Here’s some bad news for T-Mobile customers who like to travel around North America while streaming Netflix. As of next month, the carrier is ending one of its more interesting perks on most plans: Unlimited LTE data in Canada and Mexico will no longer be available. [More]
It’s Not Just The U.S. — Equifax Security Issues Causing Headaches Around The World
By 9.13.17
We already know that more than 143 million Americans’ personal identify information was compromised as part of Equinox’s two-month-long data breach. If you thought that was bad enough, it gets worse: The credit reporting agency’s lax data security may have affected tens of millions more consumers across the world. [More]
Sears Canada Lays Off Mike Myers’ Brother And 2,899 Other People Without Severance
By 7.14.17
Not long ago, as Sears Canada (a separate company from Sears Holdings here in the United States) was struggling and closing a few stores, one longtime employee did something important for the company’s morale and good publicity. He asked his brother, comedian Mike Myers, to make a commercial for Sears Canada. Four years later, Peter Myers has been laid off with no severance. [More]
Tim Hortons Franchisees Complain That Burger King Is Flame-Broiling The Brand’s Canadianness
By 7.12.17
While Tim Hortons has restaurants in Canada and in the United States, most people think of the coffee and doughnut chain as an icon of its home country. It is, after all, named after a hockey player and sponsors a national curling tournament every year. If Timmies isn’t Canadian, then nothing is. Only now the chain’s franchisees say that the new bosses are charging them more for basics, and ending community involvement. [More]
Retail Apocalypse Spreads North: Sears Canada Files For Bankruptcy
By 6.22.17
The same factors hurting department stores and Sears stores in particular are affecting retailers north of the Canadian border as well: Today Sears Canada announced that it’s applied for creditors protection, the equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and plans to reorganize and shed some of its current stores. [More]
Smuckers Recalls Three Brands Of Flour Over Possible E.Coli Contamination
By 6.1.17 — Updated: 6.9.17
The two-month-old recall of potentially E. coli-contaminated flour in Canada is makings its way across the border, as Smuckers announced the recall of three brands of flour shipped to the U.S. [More]
Canada Recalling Bombay Sapphire Gin That Contains Dangerous Amount Of Alcohol
By 5.4.17 — Updated: 5.10.17
While you might think that an especially boozy cocktail sounds like a fun idea, it could actually prove very dangerous if you aren’t aware your gin is almost twice as strong as it’s meant to be. In an effort to prevent from happening, Canadian regulators are recalling a Bombay Sapphire Gin that contains 77% alcohol by volume instead of the stated 40%. [More]
McDonald’s Is Selling Waffle Fries This Holiday Season — But Only In Canada
By 12.7.16
Do you like waffle cut fries? Even though you can probably get them at just about every sports bar or diner in town, do you nonetheless have a craving to purchase them from McDonald’s? Then you had better plan a trip to the wintry north, because the fast food chain is only selling them in Canada this holiday season. [More]
U.S., Canada Team Up To Fight Robocalls Together
By 11.17.16
If you didn’t have much to do during the mid-’90s, you may remember a CBS show called Due South about the unlikely crimefighting duo (is there ever a show about a likely crimefighting duo?) of Constable Benton Fraser of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Chicago Detective Raymond Vecchio (until he had to go deep undercover and was replaced by not-quite-lookalike Det. Stanley Kowalski). Today’s announcement from regulators in the U.S. and Canada is exactly like that show, except it’s about robocalls, and is really nothing at all like that show. [More]
Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Order Your EpiPens From Canada
By 9.1.16
One solution that some families have used in response to the soaring cost of Mylan’s EpiPen, an essential product for people with life-threatening allergies, is to order the product from a cheaper pharmacy in Canada instead. While this might appear to be a solid plan, the problem is that “Canadian” pharmacies aren’t always necessarily what they claim to be online. [More]
The Battle Between Trader Joe’s & Pirate Joe’s Rages On
By 8.30.16
Can you effectively recreate a supermarket by buying a bunch of that store’s products, shipping them across the border and selling them in a store with a deliberately similar name? That’s the question at the center of a years-long legal battle between Trader Joe’s and its Canadian lookalike Pirate Joe’s. [More]
Quebec Maple Syrup Cartel Increases Quotas To Prevent Black-Market Sales
By 8.11.16
We’ve told you before about the maple syrup cartel in Canada’s province of Quebec, to which the producers of most of the world’s supply of the sticky amber stuff belong. 72% of the world’s syrup currently comes from cartel members, and the group is about to have members increase their production, which could send maple prices plummeting. [More]
With Landlord Settlement, Target’s Failed Canada Experiment Nearing End
By 3.8.16
More than a year after Target announced plans to shutter its 133 stores in Canada, the retailer is finally ready to put the failed business venture behind it. The company recently reached a $30 million compensation deal with the landlords of these former Target stores. [More]
International Fast Food Roundup: Fish-Shaped Fish Sticks And A Creme Egg McFlurry
By 3.1.16
For American fast-food chains, their international subsidiaries serve as a research lab where they can inflict strange food combinations on the unsuspecting public. Combine that impulse with food tastes that are simply different from Americans’, and you end up with glorious and fascinating combinations that you kind of want to see imported, and kind of don’t. [More]
Cable Company Decides To Shame Overdue Customers By Posting Names On Facebook
By 12.3.15
There are a lot of reasons you might fall behind on your cable bill — finances are tight, a medical emergency — or maybe, as we’ve heard all too often, the cable company screwed up and hasn’t properly credited your account. But even if you’re just a cheap jerk with no intention of ever paying your bill until they cut off service, that still doesn’t merit being called out publicly on Facebook. [More]
Late Pizza Delivery Driver Calls Customer Morally Bankrupt And Fat
By 11.13.15
Pizza Pizza is a chain restaurant that some readers outside of Canada might remember faintly from a line in a Moxy Fruvous song. No? All you need to know is that it’s a pizza chain, it delivers, and it has a 40-minute guarantee. If your pizza arrives in 41 minutes, it’s free. Simple enough: unless the driver gets mad about it. [More]
Regulators Sue To Shut Down Illegal Offshore Payday Loan Network
By 8.4.15
While most of us think of payday lenders as small-time storefront operations, there is also a complicated web of interconnected payday businesses operating outside the U.S. borders, but illegally issuing costly short-term loans to American borrowers. A newly filed lawsuit hopes to put an end to one such network. [More]
