Coolopolis offers you many ideas about how to live well in Montreal. Not all of them respectable. Here's a pair.
-Go to the store, buy every item you see under $10. Carefully note the price of each item and watch closely as the cashier punches it in. Check your bill to see if you have been overcharged for any item. According to one study, about one in 20 items will result in an overcharge. Once you catch one, insist that you get it for free, as the law states. Then take all of those other items and return them at the refund desk immediately. Rinse and repeat. You should get a couple of hundred bucks in free swag by doing this, although you'll surely annoy the staffers to no end.
-Next time you need an apartment, go to the Rental Board and check their database for past cases. Search for terms such as "sept mois" or "huit mois." The aim is to try to find a landlord who only asked for an eviction for non-payment after a very long time. Then proceed to phone that sucker landlord and try to rent an apartment from him. Then once in, proceed to provide complicated but convincing excuses as to why the rent is seven or eight months late. A few weeks ago I saw a softhearted landlord who I shall not name that allowed a tenant to go 11 months without paying.
-Go to the store, buy every item you see under $10. Carefully note the price of each item and watch closely as the cashier punches it in. Check your bill to see if you have been overcharged for any item. According to one study, about one in 20 items will result in an overcharge. Once you catch one, insist that you get it for free, as the law states. Then take all of those other items and return them at the refund desk immediately. Rinse and repeat. You should get a couple of hundred bucks in free swag by doing this, although you'll surely annoy the staffers to no end.
-Next time you need an apartment, go to the Rental Board and check their database for past cases. Search for terms such as "sept mois" or "huit mois." The aim is to try to find a landlord who only asked for an eviction for non-payment after a very long time. Then proceed to phone that sucker landlord and try to rent an apartment from him. Then once in, proceed to provide complicated but convincing excuses as to why the rent is seven or eight months late. A few weeks ago I saw a softhearted landlord who I shall not name that allowed a tenant to go 11 months without paying.
When that law about pricing came into effect, the local
ReplyDeleteMetro was good at catching such things, including a couple
of times when I bought clearance items (I don't think those
apply) and was initially charged the original price. I
merely wanted the clearance price.
But about three years ago, at the same store, I find an
item that in the flyer had a higher price than normal. If
I hadn't bought it regularly, I might not have noticed. I
took issue with it, they grumbled a lot, and finally gave
me the item free. But they didn't do anything adjusting the
price in the cash register. I said "well I could come back
every day this week and get it for free", which didn't seem
to bother them. I thought it was absurd that it wasn't
even that they didn't have the sale price in there, but that
through error the price was higher than normal. If it's in
the flyer, especially with the "sale" card under the item,
we tend to expect them to be an actual saving.
I checked another outlet of the same grocery store, and checked
the same item at the barcode reader, and found the higher than
normal price there too. Obviously it's all controlled at the
head office.
I find the law interesting since it in effect is a fine for
not having things set right, but it fails if they don't bother
to update the register. I suspect that week, they made quite
a good profit from not fixing the error at the cash.
There does seem to be some grey area, some stores don't seem to
count or at least they don't recognize the law. There have been
a few times recently when the price at the cash was higher than
it should be, and they corrected it, but never offered the item
free, and it was grey enough I wasn't sure I should make an issue
of it.
Michael
You've got to make a stink about it around half the time. I got a free pair of boots from Wal Mart like that, and it took a while for the manager to come out and I got a ton of dirty looks. So it was free in terms of money but also not free in terms of personal suffering.
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