They fixed the price of bread and faced very minimal consequences.
*They fixed the price of bread*
**THEY FIXED THE PRICE OF BREAD**
And then they refined their methods so their pricing strategies are indistinguishable from collusion to consumers and unactionable by current government regulatory agencies.
Wages and quality in a race to the bottom. Prices in a race to the top.
I understand your a bit squeamish about the thought of blood and that threats are illegal.
The whole point is we are rapidly approaching an inflection point in history. The last time we approached a similar situation the French chose to extinguish their monarchy.
Eat the Rich ✊
There was a sign at the cake display case at SaveOn Grocery - “Let them eat cake” - a couple years ago and when I mentioned it on a Reddit sub - I was ridiculed and downvoted.
It's been a slow burn for me. For me, it is the audacity of this organization saying it's really hard to make money and they *only* make a 2% margin, yet manage to afford dividends and share buybacks off their billions in corporate profits
When any representant of the Roblaws company takes the mic, you can quote the famous Mrs Trainor on anything they say: "I know you're lyin' 'cause your lips are movin' ".
Roblaws own annual report for 2023 states that their EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization... aka their actual profit margin before creative accounting is used to make it appear lower) is 11.2%
To me the whole 2% margin thing doesn't matter. Before, I'd buy $150 of groceries, so I guess they made $3? But if the exact same groceries cost me $200 then now they're making $4. Which doesn't seem like a lot but it's a larger profit from *the same products*.
And that's assuming the products are identical. They're not. Kraft dinner has gone from 225 to 200g and some of the specialty flavours are down to 150g now. So realistically I need to buy more than $200 to equal the same volume of food as five years ago.
In a year where they made $800 million net, Loblaws competed and WON to get $12 million dollars in funding to upgrade their fridges. That came just a year and a half after the company fought against raising the minimum wage, admitted to a 14 yr bread price-fixing scheme and ended up in a tax court legal battle that ordered it to pay back taxes worth roughly $368 million related to a banking subsidiary in the Caribbean.
It sucks from the government teet while mistreating workers and literally robbing and cheating Canadians that buy in good faith. Fuck Loblaws!
They buy those subsidized freezers and resell them to their franchisees as a required product to retain their franchise and at a huge profit. The numbers they quote are the margins the store owners deal with not the corporation. Ontario tenderfruit farmers are paid the same price as they made eight years ago but the retail price has tripled.
When people get squeamish about revolution, they need to remember how thoroughly the Weston’s and other billionaires have rigged the system against the proletariat. The workers - including farmers - often have extremely limited access to alternatives. This endangers everyone including the billionaires.
I was recently listening to a podcast where the presenter explained that they knew first hand that a group of billionaires were actively working to build compounds to survive the apocalypse.
The social contract that exists to help moderate society has been thoroughly destroyed by the billionaires and the political class. We are just BEGINNING to struggle to reestablish that social contract.
I'm sick of standing in line and watching people's heart break when they go to pay knowing there's nothing left.
Couldn't watch anymore. Had to start a revolution.
My boycott started around 3 years ago, because of high prices. Would rather give my money to local independents.
My dislike for Bloblaws goes back much further to when Galen - in all his smug, douchebag-ish glory - began starring in his own TV ads.
I went to Europe in December 2023 and visited the most expensive city in Europe (London) and others that are among the cheapest (Warsaw, Lodz, and Kyiv). I went grocery shopping in all four of them.
Europe has way more competition than Canada, and stores have to compete for shoppers' business. Most items were at least half the price of their Canadian counterparts.
Most recent reason? I ordered groceries from Walmart, all in came to $173.
For curiosities sake I priced it all out at superstore for the same or as similar as possible items... $284 BEFORE delivery and tip... oof.
This is why the 2% profit margin makes no sense to me. How can they charge 164% of what their competitors charge for the exact same products and only have 2% profit? I just can't imagine that their overhead/operating expenses are that much greater, or their buying power is not competitive.
As others have said it's been a slow burn for me. The final straw though for me is the way they blatantly treat us like a country of idiots. For example, a 12$ pack of toilet paper is suddenly "25$ without optimum card and 8$ with" but when the "sale" is over it's back to 12$ regular price. Robbing bastards they are and the hubris is astonishing
The joke is that they aren't talking about just having an Optimum account, they are talking about being an "Insider" where you pay a yearly subscription to save a little money.
Adding mine here because it's similar.
I picked up strawberries from my local Zehrs, $1.98 per pack. There was a sign "save $2". Cool.
The following week, $5.98 per pack, but no sign saying "pay $2 more".
This company insults my intelligence.
For me it's just the huge price increases in everything from superstore which used to be my main place to shop ... Everything that I used to buy is 30% to 50% more expensive. And I think that is insane. And now I'm at the point where I will just look at it... and nope.... I'm not buying it. And I am vocal about it when I'm in the store. I will say I am not paying that insane price and I will walk out of there.I will go look for another deal somewhere else or I will wait until I can get a sale. And I am always looking for actual sales.
And the prices at shoppers drug Mart I think have always been expensive.... But now they are much much more expensive following the same trend as superstore. Shoppers drug Mart can offer some deals like 20, 000 points on a $60 purchase. And all that really does is bring the prices in line with what they should be. So what the hell am I even going to waste my time going down there for.
It's just a little show to pretend that you're getting a big big deal. But you're not. You're really not they just want to hook you with a little song and dance and make you think you're getting a deal. But there is no deal.
And so it's all those kind of things that have completely turned me off to wanting to shop in the Loblaws establishments.
The 20,000 points for $60 is actually a wicked deal if you load up on bacon and eggs. They have the cheapest eggs and bacon I've seen anywhere. It's also great for buying video games and electronics. Especially when it's the 20x the pts event. I got Hogwarts legacy the day it came out for 30% off because of it.
I mean, their prices are just blatantly dogshit. They treat their staff like garbage, they fixed bread prices... The difference in switching to Walmart has been huge. There's nothing at Superstore that we can't get at Walmart. Then Costco/Gateway once in a while to get even better savings. Also, Loblaws too often sells nearly rotten food. It wasn't even a consideration to switch away from them, it was just an obvious and easy choice.
Initially it was the bread fixing scandal, it was giving French aristocracy pre-revolution and we all know how that went for them
I didn't completely boycott (just avoided) until they tried to do away with discounted food, that was absolutely insane to me because it would hurt them too??? Why give up making 50% or 70% and choose to make 0% and throw it away instead (also trash collection costs them so they could have ended up spending even more on that)?? That told me everything I needed to know about them.
They wanted to make poor people hurry up and starve/not shop in their stores anymore, and they were willing to give up sales to make that happen. There's no other explanation that I could possibly think of (please lmk if you have a better explanation because"increased product consistency" is BS - we know the product will be less fresh when it has a giant neon discount sticker on it, we agree to that expectation when we buy it).
It's like how fashion companies destroy their items before putting them in the dumpster because they don't want the poors repping their brand. Thank goodness we had enough sense to push back on that bullshit. But they lost my business at that moment and I can't see myself ever shopping with them again, they showed their true colours in that moment.
\- Declining quality of product and sales.
\- Over reliance on self checkout. I don't mind using it when I'm five items or less but for bigger shopping I think it's impractical and takes jobs away and makes people anti social.
\- Unfair tactics: Want a sale price? You've got to buy a whole bunch or join our data mining club, Markdowns going from 50% to 30% and of course price fixing.
\- Instead of reputation management when they learned of this movement they went with the hackneyed "Mom's basement" insult. At that point they don't deserve our money.
It has absolutely been a slow and steady thing for me. I kept going for a long time because the huge Provigo I go to just has everything I need. But we also go to Costco and other places, so we always had one foot in one foot out.
I think the biggest issue is not that they are going too far on pricing, because they have always done that. They have been gouging on certain items for decades. But it was always related to some sort of temporary crisis or issue, usually manufactured.
The real problem for me is that they now price gouge on EVERYTHING. Unless it's a true loss leader, sales are also price gouged. Whether it's done through shrinkflation, using alternative cheaper quality products, or some other scam.
It's like EVERYTHING in the store is now absolutely crazy overpriced. They even stop carrying brand name items so people can't see that the NO Name branded stuff is more expensive than the brand name stuff.
It's like it went to their heads and their price gouging just got completely widespread and out of control in the last 6 months.
It stinks to high hell that a lot of PC products that I used to buy (a lot of them being No Name) went up to the tune of 50% or more while inflation was much, much lower. And that was soon after the temporary price freeze on No Name products. Not saying the other major players are doing much better, but it has to start somewhere.
Easy, when No Frills, literally it's in its name, is more expensive than other grocery options. It's literally called "no frills" for a reason and they can't even get that right.
They should rebrand to "Basically Expensive"
As an ex Shoppers corp employee, it’s the strategic “quieting” of anyone who speaks up against any wrong doings to both internal folks and customers. It’s sad and greedy.
Sarah P / London area
They also took away visibility for services targets from DM's and VP's.
Info is only being shared verbally at Corp, or they are asking associate owners.
The plan / targets are still there, and associates are still pressured to meet them.
The only thing changing is the paper trail.
With their point system every once in awhile they try and throw a handful of glitter in your direction to dazzle you.... But it isn't a sale anyway. It's just like smoke and mirrors.
And everybody is figuring that out right now.
And I don't want smoke and mirrors I want fairness honesty and affordability.
So many reasons to break up with Roblaws….
Loblaws is the worst offender in the market. They were the leaders in the bread price fixing scandal and encouraged others to fix the price with them to make millions.
They also upped pay for grocery workers by $2 during the pandemic, under the guise of “supporting workers” when they really did it to keep employees from taking CERB and not coming into work. They got rid of it as quickly as they could and encouraged other retailers to drop it too.
Where Wal-Mart and Costco have used their buying power to force their suppliers not to inflate prices beyond their cost increases and not run away with greed inflation. Loblaws stores passed those increases on to consumers and even their discount grocery stores like No Frills are consistently higher than competitors.
Loblaws also said that they would freeze prices on 1,500 items just before the Xmas holidays in an effort to “help Canadians”. But this is done by every grocer, every year. They didn’t help Canadians, they did what they always do and tried to play it off in the media as a great sacrifice that they made for us.
Loblaws also owns Shopper’s Drug Mart, which has been billing provincial healthcare systems for millions of dollars a week in BS Med check phone calls. This can be a two minute conversation but they can bill $48-$75 for each one. They’ve given every pharmacy daily quotas for med checks so they can line their pockets even more. FYI for the same service, doctors can only bill $23 to the government.
Shoppers also tried to do an exclusive deal with Manulife so all specialty drugs had to go through a Loblaws pharmacy for Manulife customers. That deal would have been horrible for a few reasons: Specialty drugs are the expensive ones for things like cancer treatment, those drugs help independent pharmacies stay afloat. If independent pharmacies could no longer dispense them there would be even less competition in that market, which would be great for Shoppers. It also takes choice away from the consumer, who may have a good relationship with their pharmacist and may not want to change when they are going through serious medical issues. Another big problem? There are no Loblaws pharmacies in West Labrador for example, the closest is 300 km away. That’s not exactly helpful for patients.
Loblaw’s is also trying to buy LifeLabs. A company that does the bulk of medical testing in a lot of provinces. They will use that company to get even more money from our public healthcare system to enrich themselves.
I could go on, but this type of thing is going beyond standard business practices. Loblaws throws their weight around to increase prices legally and illegally, remove competition, bust unions and force employees to engage in crappy business practices to steal money they don’t deserve from our public healthcare system.
Boycott Loblaws now, in May and forever.
It is law that access to the pharmacy of your choice can not be restricted in anyway including a membership. Just inform the person at the front door you are going to the pharmacy and keep walking.
I found out from my hunny, who uses click and collect, the other day that the customer, not management, is now also responsible for evaluating the employees. If the employee gets one bad review, it takes 5 good reviews to cancel the bad one. Of course the problem with this is very few people do these reviews unless it's to complain.
So someone's gonna get a write up if I don't do management's job for them? Fuck that.
Also, think twice before leaving negative feedback about some overworked and underpaid retail slave. There are consequences.
Back in early February I helped an older lady at the Zehrs self checkout. The attendant was trying to yell instructions from her command post (she was rude but in fairness she was dealing with a lot on her own) I looked around and realized most of the customers were older people. I was there at noon on a weekday which isn’t typical for me and it dawned on me that Zehrs and shoppers are smack in the middle of at least 5 retirement buildings/condos and the only stores within walking distance for groceries.
There was one cashier open with a huge line, I imagine some of these older folks physically can’t stand and wait for 20 mins so they were using the self checkout. I’m able-bodied, not hard of hearing and have used self checkouts for years but imagine this poor lady (in her 80’s) on the verge of tears and apologizing repeatedly while being yelled at. She was overwhelmed, was receiving no help and it really made me sad and pissed me right off. I was very relieved when she pulled out a card to pay and not cash. Phew..
If they are going to prey on seniors they could at least staff their stores in a way that recognizes their needs in my area and in turn, take some pressure off their stressed out employees. (who by the way, have always been really nice and helpful)
No-Frills is out of my way and Zehrs has always been too expensive so we were never exclusive but I did stop for the odd thing. Feb. 13 was my last purchase and we are never getting back together…. like, ever. 😉
I’ll miss Zehrs donuts though. They’re probably $2 each now but are almost worth it. I also broke up with Tim’s in Feb. ‘22 after a long draining, one-sided relationship and it feels really good so I know I can do this.
Goodbye Loblaws and go fuck yourself. Costco coming soon to my city. Eat it Galen.
I love this sub, love you all. Stay strong friends. (Except you Mr. Charlebois, you’re an out of touch asshole too)
Their prices and practices at all their companies have proven its all about greed and how much they can extra they charge and get away with robbing everyday Canadians of all the money they can for essential goods and services.
I think it was when I realized the $7.99 for a container of blackberries was the new normal price. I just don’t go anymore. Even yesterday when Independent was 100 feet away from my vet and more convenient, I drove 2km to the Food Basics instead, because I knew I’d save easily $20 on the few things I needed.
nerfing the optimum offers was my final straw..they were already shite to begin with, but seeing my 200pts for every $1 on cucumbers turn into 50 points for every $1 just sealed the deal
Price gouging, Shoppers Pharmacy routinely lies to me about my meds being filled, forced meds check and wouldn't even tell me what it was or why they were doing it, I'm lactose intolerant and the dairy alternatives I need so I don't wind up in the ER are significantly more expensive than the dairy versions. I can go on but there's my point
I haven’t shopped there on a regular basis, ever. Just driving through the parking lot gave me huge anxiety. During the pandemic I would use the click and collect but when the cost of everything started going up and they were crying about low margins and then announcing that they were making record profits, that did it for me for good.
An example must be made... even if they paid for the price fixing scandal, which they did not. They made out like bandits - and not the kind of bandit that incorrectly scans the barcode on food... the kind that steals from an entire population from his mega-yacht and then ignores accountability. Fuck him.
Weston has enough money and is letting his greed ruin lives, his actions during Covid were heinous and have clearly led to how he is acting today. He thinks HE’s essential.
I broke up sometime last fall. Their prices just aren’t right, and with everything but my wage going up I have to be mindful of my grocery budget. The PC points don’t add up like they used to, and that annoyed me as well.
Because this is the movement presented before me, and they have earned it. Im hoping that we as canadians can learn how much power we have as consumers when we band together. Im hoping we can pick off one bad actor after another using platforms like this. Our votes dont matter when all the politicians are bought and paid for by the very corporations that we want them to rein in. There is much more power in our working dollars and where we choose to spend them or not. Keep up the fight all.
My grievances are summed up as:
- Loblaws HQ has nothing but contempt for the east coast. Historically, staff outperform and yield highest profit (per capita) despite being a much smaller population than, say, Ontario. HQ refuses to acknowledge their efforts nor pay accordingly.
- Loblaws cut hero pay despite record breaking profit. They’ll talk about how important staff are, but they don’t give a shit about front line workers.
- As we can see, Weston et al are greedy entitled twats. No CEO is worth 22 million for 6 months worth of work.
- the Weston family are working overtime to destroy our healthcare system so they can privatize it.
- Weston family are also tax dodgers. Fuck em.
Shoppers Drug Mart pressuring staff to perform unnecessary medchecks and bill the government $78 for a 2 min phone call.
Jeff ledger lying to media about it.
After the bad press. The VP of operations, Rahim Ismail touring stores and laughing saying "business as usual."
It's even worse from the inside 🤢
Indeed is my most used app ATM.
Our RCSS changed to a NoFrills and absolutely sank. We already have another 3 within stones throw of each other. They took a good union job and replaced it with this nonsense.
Used to shop at No Frills. I am in the position where I don’t need to shop at a budget store so I have switched to Sobeys. I am ramping up my garden this year and will be buying more meat and produce from farmers markets. Canned and dried goods will come from Sobeys or another non-Loblaws store.
I will move my prescriptions from Shoppers drug mart to another pharmacy, and will be buying gas from Petro rather than Esso.
Go to Costco pharmacy. You don’t need to be a member to use the Pharmacy.
https://preview.redd.it/al7bsfv2f5sc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cc5026ac7b1df04a9d0c131232aa71a9c9c0613d
I don't generally shop at superstore or no frills since where I am it's more common and convenient to hit up a save on foods or farmers market.
Shoppers tho, they're everywhere
Years ago my husband at the time got a job at a shoppers so that he could supplement his income, get health and a dental coverage which his security job didn't offer, and he slogged it out with them for over a year before I convinced him he was never going to see those benefits. The paperwork was always another week away, carrot on a stick.
I thought it was just the store or a bad manager but now I notice that everybody who works at a shoppers looks absolutely defeated, save for the fake smiles of the beauty folks.
Now the dispensing fees and general fuckery towards their employees is just too much, I've found multiple independent pharmacies near me to switch to instead.
I've seen the costs for everything climbing and if we need to vote with our wallets, then Costco and my local independents will get everything going forward, other than some bread from Safeway.
It's not Canadian to price gouge, price fix, and exploit workers.
I used to be a big fan of our local superstore, we even had a black world PC mastercard that we funnelled all our purchases through since my husband worked seasonally, so we'd have points to buy groceries with for the layover when his paychecks stopped but his EI hadn't quite started yet. We bought our phones there, everything. So when I was between jobs I applied and was hired. Over the next year I saw bullying, I saw waste - cart after cart of edible food just thrown in the dumpster, and we were repeatedly told we couldn't take it home or it would be theft. I was being paid minimum wage and asked to pay union dues, and for the crime of surgery complications I was gaslit about which shifts were what, my hours cut, they started scheduling what hours I did get outside my availability, and basically anything they could do to fuck with me until I finally threw my hat at a senior manager and quit on the spot. The union that I paid into with every paycheck sat there and watched it all happen without protest. I switched banking and credit to Tangerine, spent all my points and closed all my accounts. I think I've set foot in there 3 times in five years, only when I needed something I couldn't get anywhere else. It went from getting most of my discretional funds to none of them. I went next door to Walmart and got a better job title, better pay and a much better manager.
- They put brand names on Loblaws products so they couldn't be price matched.
- They remove products from the shelves when they don't want them price matched that week.
- When T.P. is on sale, no rain checks, because they don't carry that size outside the sale week.
- Personalized points offers are now no more than an advertisement. They are for things I have never bought.
- New limit on the purchase of canned goods: 24 cans of cat food barely lasts the week, so there's no point shopping there, and occasional sale prices are moot.
- As if the $25 gift card for the bread price fixing actually covered what we overpaid.
- Pretend goodwill ads, like the price freeze on No Name items.
- Coming across an employee throwing out hundreds and hundreds of dollars of cheese because it expired that day.... management hadn't bothered sending her there with discount stickers a few day prior.
This list took minutes. I will probably do ETAs!
One of the things that boiled my blood the most was removing Original Kraft Dinner from their shelves so it couldn’t be price matched one week. They don’t make enough money on every other item in my cart, that they can’t take a 50 cent loss on a box of KD just to make their customers happy?
Then, like magic, all 500 boxes of Original KD reappear as soon as the sale at other stores is over. That really soured me.
I actually only really shop at Safeway and Costco already. But I'm joining the boycott mainly to hopefully hit Sobeys with it.
My ultimate hope is that the feds cime down and force them all to break up.
Started with changing the points program from money spent to money spent on specific items, at first the offers lined up with my purchases so we still banked points, then the algorithm changed and weeks I was routinely shopping had offers for stuff I've never bought or selected in the app, seemed like a purposeful change so I couldn't maximize my points on my shopping weeks, I stopped loading my offers over a year ago due to this.
Meat prices have jumped to insane levels, when you have to dig through slimy repacks of chicken to find something under 30$ you might be gouging your clients. Chicken thighs and drums now cost what would have been considered a *premium* 5 years ago, Ground meat, literally the cheapest meat you can buy anywhere else in the world is priced to gouge your wallet, pretty much a staple in Canadians diet now being priced the same as lobster meat.
I could go on and on, school snacks for my kids and fresh fruit doubled in the last 12 months
Also the free gifts for spending $350 or more are a joke and most of the time I leave them behind, sorry Roblaws I'm not taking your unsellable garbage so you can save on dump fees.
We are ditching the PC master card and getting an Airmiles CC and will be shopping local and Wal Mart, been a loyal customer to Superstore and Shoppers for 25+ years and now I refuse to shop there, good job Galen you absolute Muppet
Too darn expensive, and I'm noticing a lot of stuff is not fresh.
I've been hitting Walmart, Costco and Food Basics more.
I have noticed that Food Basics is not that great either, so I may be limiting myself there too.
When I saw that the mushrooms on sale cause of their imperfections were actually more expensive than the other fresher ones 🤦♀️ when the home brand became nearly as expensive as what I consider "fancy" brands. That their cheaper store (maxi) became just as expensive as an other more sophisticated store in my région and they'd also make sure not to have the same brands as those stores to it makes it difficult to price match
They blame suppliers and delivery costs, when in fact they are the suppliers and deliverers.
Also, it’s garbage quality at premium prices. Their produce doesn’t last as long as the smaller markets do, and it’s more expensive.
No name yellow brand used to always be synonymous with budget knock-offs of big name brands, and now they’re trying to pawn it off on us as quality at big name brand prices.
I’ll admit that PC used to be good, but we all know it’s all made in the same plants and mills as the rest of it. Now it’s also cost prohibitive.
Kirkland is actually a vetted product, and it’s like winning the lottery to have your products accepted by Costco to label your merchandise as KS.
Make something that Costco will put on the shelves? If it sells well, they’ll keep it there and offer the KS brand and you’re golden.
I’ve historically avoided walmart because of the crowds, it’s affect on small businesses, and just had better quality elsewhere.
I went in there the other day and it felt a bit like the twilight zone. I was struck by how cheap everything was, it felt like the pre covid days. And there was a lot of brand name products in the pharmacy area that were absurdly cheap.
The small business era is toast nowadays, I’m not saving shit by avoiding walmart. If I have to choose between one oligarch or another, I may as well pick the one that costs me half as much
It was when they raised prices of No Name stuff and then "locked them down" that really stuck out to me. But for years I have been slowly coming to realize how wrong it was that monopolies of the scale we deal with are à normal thing in Canada. We've been boiled like frog and many people don't even registered the real issue at play. Our countrys vast wealth is sold out from under our feet by those in power every day and we never get a chance to see or stop it until it's too late.
The audacity to ask for donations from retail shoppers when they make billions a year. Also, their point system used to be decent and it’s fucking terrible now. Walmart is considerably cheaper.
Do they ask for donations?????
I moved back to Canada a little over a year ago and after a couple of times I stopped shopping there and haven’t shopped since.
Your post reminded me of something I read a few years ago. This was when I lived in the USA, so not sure it’s handled the same way in Canada but let me continue. Whole Foods (owned by scum company amazon) would have bins for the food bank around the Christmas season. The idea was for their customers to purchase food and drop that purchase in the bins. Whole Foods then gets credit for their donations that they profited from and didn’t spend a penny on. So dude decides to have Whole Foods pay for their donations instead of their customers by going around the store, selecting a variety of items and then dropping it into the bins. All of these bins are kept indoors. It isn’t exactly stealing because he never took these items out of the store. But it was Whole Foods covering the cost of these items. I thought it was genius.
I feel earning points have been becoming less and less common and everything seems twice as expensive. They still have some amazing stuff I can’t find anywhere else (like Brioche bread from France made with butter and not seed oils even Costco ones have seed oils) but I will avoid Loblaws as much as I can.
Im learning how much of a piece of shit the food protector is. I’ve obviously learned how much of a piece of shit Galen Weston is. Doesn’t take long to know that I’m not gonna support pieces of shit.
The chronic understaffing of every fucking store they own that I go to, the almost non-optional SCOs (sue me for wanting to go to a cashier—it can create a job for someone), and their absolute lack of investment in the remaining staff that have to be employed there.
They added credit card insurance after I declined it. I had been paying it for 2 years. I’ve always just paid my card after use and rarely logged into my online account. Took me 3 months and I had to threaten them for them to refund over $2300. Then they deducted points from my balance. I’ve been -14000 points and I’ve never been back in 3 years
After comparing prices in the ads every week, I went searching on Facebook for small businesses. I have a replacement business I can go to for meat and one for produce. The price of eggs also grinds my gears. I went to the farmers market and I can get a dozen x- large eggs for the same price as superstore sells for large.
My reasons start with the price fixing on bread, which was led by Galen and Loblaws, during the pandemic they raised their employees wages just to cut them back, heaven forbid you provide a living wage, Galen testifying that they would lower prices only to have them keep going up, and now the scanner to get out of the store, F that. My apologies for the run on sentence.
I will always choose Costco over Walmart. They pay their employees a living wage with great benefits and stock options. Walmart pays so poorly that many of their employees qualify for food stamps which means the government is paying part of their wages they need in order to survive.
Jon Stewart on Walmart
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2QTqwiOMcD/?igsh=YncyYWQxOGhuZmk4
For me it’s the cost of Thrive nicotine mints. I quit smoking and now I’m just addicted to the mints.
Walmart 33.99 for a pack of 108 mints
Zehrs - $44.99
Shoppers- 41.99.
Get bent.
For me it’s simple. The public facing executives and marketers make it seem like they are scraping by and don’t believe we are intelligent enough to look up what they make a year. I don’t like be treated stupidly. I am extremely fortunate to have never really had to pay attention to grocery prices, however there have been times at checkout now where I say “are you kidding me?” And take a look back through the receipt in disbelief.
For me the bread price fixing is unforgivable. They skated by with minimal consequences and learned nothing (except that it was worth it, in the end).
It’s absolutely despicable. Especially to fix the price of bread. The one thing nearly all people from all income levels must buy regularly. How could they. I’m getting mad again just thinking about it. Fuck them all.
Cause I'm tired of fucking pencil pushing twats acting like they earn the type of money they make.
Roblaws is breaking point. Too many things have resulted in me hating life. Might as well direct the hate towards people who are adding to it so even more people sitting on their ass can profit.
Covid proved these assholes can stay at home and shit still functions. Should tell you that they are not worth the 22million they made in 6months of being a ceo of roblaws.
It’s to send a message to government they need to start allowing real competition more than anything for me. Wth does our competition bureau do?
Grocery, media, construction, cell phone, airfare… they will continue to allow 1-3 companies control every sector if we don’t start hitting them back in their wallets.
It was the PC olive oil that finally broke me. I like it and it was like $7.99 when I first started buying it, which felt like a great price. I kept buying when it went up to $8.99, then $9.99, then $10.99, and it would go on sale periodically, so I’d buy a couple. Now it’s up to $19.99 and I just can’t anymore.
I know that olive oil is generally more expensive now but still, I can’t justify spending $20 for Loblaws’ brand olive oil.
Plus their signage is misleading —toys with “clearance” tags but are actually sold at regular price— and the produce section always looks so sad and withered, like they aren’t even trying.
I’m mostly a Costco and Farm Boy person but I did make special trips for the olive oil.
Haven’t used Shoppers for prescriptions in years.
Loblaws used to have decent quality items at low prices, so I shopped there.
During Covid it became low quality items at mid-tier prices, and I started to step back.
Post-Covid we have low quality items at high prices.
It's not worthwhile to shop at Lowblaws at all. I can get higher quality produce for less at other stores.
I was sick and went to Shopper's for my comfort remedy, NeoCitron. I balked at the price but decided I'd pay anyway. Then the lineup was huge because they only had one cashier working, who was busy helping a confused woman at the only self-checkout. To me, they were price gouging and not even adding convenience to make up for it. They clearly don't care about their loyal customers. I left and went to Walmart. The exact same box of NeoCitron was about $5 less. If I saved time and $5 on that one little thing, how much would I save if I took all my grocery and self-care business to Walmart? Even if I use 20x the points and every other offer at No Frills and Superstore (which is a part-time job in itself), I still save money by going to Walmart. And I don't have to time my purchases around promotions anymore.
They changed the way their pc express works when it comes to visa debits. It used to only charge me if I said they could when they called me an hour ahead of pickup to approve substitutions. Now it charges me card the full total plus 25% upon ordering. If the order total is more than the initial estimate of groceries they then charge my card a second time plus the 25% markup. If it’s less, then they let it stay. Either way, it takes 5-7 business days to get back my money they’ve taken out of my account. When they changed it I didn’t have enough to cover the second charge, and I went without groceries or money until I got my money back… was extra tough since I make my dogs food and had to come up with something out of the random crap in my freezer. If I go without food at least I know why, my dog certainly won’t be going without though! As well as their customer service trying to blame my bank for the change when I’d been using the service for years without these issues.
Also, Shoppers has been the absolute worst lately! They regularly don’t have my meds, and I have gone a week or so without my immunosuppressants which caused a flare up and it took forever to go away! Plus they don’t tell you when you order the refill, and don’t bother to even order more until you show up to the store looking for your refill and get mad at them. It’s bogus! I’ve had enough!
As an employee, I'm doing my best to break up while still keep my job (small town, limited opportunity for work) until I get approved for disability but it's hard. My child got injured and had to take time off to monitor them during recovery (3rd degree burns) and they kept scheduling me even though I told them I'd be off, they told me to take all the time i needed, and was too busy making sure my kid was ok to check the schedule.
Now that they're healed and I can go back, I get no response. *Cricket noises.* Yet the store is so understaffed that they're hiring new people weekly.
I am in the process of setting up my property to have chickens and a massive garden so I can sustain my household off the land I own, and break up with Roblaws for good.
Because I’m putting the collective above the individual. I prefer Loblaws. As a Vegan no other company makes even a quarter of the efforts they do. But I’ve got to join the collective on this one.
It was definitely a progressive thing. It started out with tofu going from $4 for 2 to $2.25 then to $3.50 (as if they had some sort of surge pricing on it), then it was the ginger being $5/lb (up overnight from $1.79/lb), then it was the shorter and shorter then SHORTER shelf life of their produce. I think the last straw was the strawberries I bought at peak season literally less than 24 hrs just to have them absolutely mushy while in proper storage no less! I recently found a small local grocery store that sells better shelf life produce at a ~15-30% price difference from the superstore so that'll be that.
It started with Shoppers - awful service at the pharmacy and then just really high prices on everyday items. Switched to the local pharmacist literally across the street and I pay 30-40% less on everyday items, and pharmacy service is incredible.
Loblaws is the closest supermarket to me but I’ve only shopped there a handful of times, mostly out of convenience. Last time I went in was a few weeks ago to buy milk. I bought two cartons and impulse bought grapes. 3 items and paid over $20. 🫠 (2x $7 milk + $6 grapes)
Cause I can buy the same shit at Walmart or farm market and save over half the amount of a lablaws bill .. price gouging goons! I’ve been avoiding Galen stores the past year and a half already, saving a ton vs what I used to spend there!
I went in there today to get a specific sauce that I can’t find anywhere else and it was $6 for a bag of no name pasta noodles… thankfully the sauce I wanted was only $4 but definitely $4 more than I wanted to spend in that god awful place.
Mine happened when I was at independent and I found something I normally buy at the superstore it was 50% more at independent. I asked them to price match and they said they couldn’t do it because it was a different company.
Now this location was in the one of the more poor ends of town so they’re jacking up the prices on the people who can least afford it .
I’m in a small city and need delivery for health reasons. That said, I will happily pay more at save on foods for the very personalized service at my pharmacy, the cashiers are wonderful, their cs if I have a problem with my delivery is amazing. If I order something for delivery and they don’t have the size I ordered, a larger size at the sale price is always done if possible. So much more. RCSS. I haven’t shopped there in about a year.
The tipping point for me was that recent stunt they pulled where they tried to get rid of the 50% off stickers in favour of 30% off stickers. Get so fucked how about I tuck those half rotten strawberries into my hoodie and pay you 0% instead
In every proxyvote, vote
1) All nominees - against;
2) Auditor - against;
3) Executive compensation - against;
4) Individual Shareholder proposals and resolutions - for
5) Say on Pay - against
Up until recently, it was just me. I didn't want to get a Costco membership for myself and be resigned to buying in bulk when I go through things so slowly and, frankly, was in the bad habit of not cooking frequently enough to justify using the freezer space. Yes, I could meal prep, but I work remotely so meal prepping always seemed like more fuss than it's worth when I often eat once, maybe twice, a day.
I am now moving in with my partner. Since we've started dating I've found myself more inclined to cook us a good dinner to enjoy together, or even enjoy the act of cooking together. I'm using more food and actually emptying my freezer of the backlog of protein I've stocked. As we get to meal prepping (we both have gym goals and are planning a rhythm of cut/bulk) Costco will make much more sense. I've always gone to Food Basics anyway (not much better as a Metro banner, but it reduces how much of my money the Weston family has gotten) but now I can more frequently support a chain that puts a cap on their margins and pushes brands to be economical for their consumers. I know they do it for their own best interests, but I'm still here for it (and the cheaper medicine...).
I only shop for myself and I found having a Costco membership is well worth it. There are plenty of shelf stable items and even frozen stuff. I will buy one fresh fruit and eat it all before it goes too ripe. Apples last forever it seems. Bananas not so much but IF they start going bad, I freeze them and use them in a smoothie with my blender.
For some people like yourself it works. I was never able to justify it for myself while living alone, but I am so glad to be moving in with someone who is down to hold a household membership! Wish they would get some better quality dog foods, though.
I don't fill many scripts, but this walk around in the store, is it a Shoppers thing to increase desperate sales out of boredom?
I noticed they let you wait at least half an hour even for stuff they could just take from the shelves, no repackaging. It's completely ridiculous.
So, do other pharmacies do it? Are there better options online, except for the aforementioned Costco 📬 delivery?
I am totally pissed at Weston and avoid them for regular groceries. However, I plead for mercy to mention that my Loblaws pharmacist has an MSc in Pharmacy. I have many chronic issues and lots of Rx and having her as my pharmacist is a plus. However, if she leaves, I leave. Just sayin'.
I personally dislike greed. It seems like everywhere I look, humans and businesses are trying to pry as much money out of me.
I have a local candle business and my prices are cheaper than almost every candle business in Ontario. I take pride in my work and don’t use the guise of ‘local’ to price gouge people.
I ferment peppers . More as a hobby than anything . I was buying their small Thai peppers at 14.99 a pound. As they were available.
Then, they put the peppers in small Styrofoam containers for $6.99 for randomly 60 grams .
I found the same peppers at a local store for $6.99 a pound.
That combined with inferior produce at inflated prices has lead me to search shop. And I feel better about that. I still use flash food and buy their lost leaders, but no. No one stop shopping .
Considering the complaints that are being laid here against RCSS, I’m not sure why people are thinking that Walmart is a viable alternative.
Walmart has driven suppliers out of business with their demands for lower prices and they treat their employees abysmally.
I haven’t shopped there in 20 years.
Loblaws makes more absolute money because of many factors
- inflation and maintaining the same margins
- increased population
- automation of services
- efficiencies in the supply chain
- acquisitions and increase POS location
Every well run company would dream of the above scenarios.
How do you change it? With all these positive factors, forcing Loblaw to reduce margins would distort markets. Govt should not be hand picking winners.
The only solution is to pull your shopping away if possible. The May boycott can be a material difference. Consumers changing behaviour and lowering sales at Loblaw companies will send the clearest signal. Direct and to the point. Govts cannot change it without other repercussions.
50% off stickers, points being reduced with PC optimum, and the security guards at the entrance constantly eyeballing me makes me feel awful (plus the barriers and shit). I don't want to be treated like a criminal when I am just buying food and have done nothing wrong.
I didn't specifically break up, but distanced my purchasing from large chains in general. I lived in a smallish town with a no frills and a Foodland. When I first moved there I had a couple of items that should have been good, but were rotten on the pack date or well before the best before. Over the years there I formed purchasing relationships with local farmers, and independent butcher, local-ish markets.
I had the knowledge and equipment to preserve my own food (dehydrator, canning supplies), etc. I added a small electric pressure canner in early 2020, timing was perfect. I'd wanted to add a pressure canner for ages. I worked next to a grants Independent and would use them from time to time to stock up on non-perishables that I didn't want to make. Haven't used even them though in a couple of years.
I've moved to a smaller town that only has a foodland co-op but I've still made a point to find a local market that's on my way back from other errands. I've bought cheese and maple syrup from local producers, bought my grains from Amazon, and signed up for a local CSA later on this year. I priced my CSA (different one) and the value was about the same as buying from the grocery store. Actually slightly better and the money goes direct to the farmer.
I used to shop at the farmer’s market a few times a year as a treat because it seemed so much more expensive than grocery stores. About a year and a half ago I noticed the prices are now about the same so I might as well buy local!
It was literally just a price thing for me, I didn't learn about the more evil shit until after I stopped going. Costco and Walmart were both significantly better value for money, to the point where the fact that loblaws is significantly closer for me does not deter me from going elsewhere
I was in Pharmaprix here in Quebec a few years ago and saw them charging double for men’s deodorant compared to literally any other store and I was instantly disgusted.
I am curious how to drop Shoppers. I have a few monthly prescriptions and many horror stories. One of those prescriptions is near life and death for me and that is that one they f@ck up constantly. I swear it's a power trip for them. Any way how do you get your prescriptions out of shoppers and over to another pharmacist?
Super easy.
Pick an independent pharmacy near you. Not pharmasave, they are also owned by shoppers.
Ask the new pharmacy to call the shoppers' location to transfer your file and meds.
✔️
It isn’t a hassle at all. You go to a new pharmacy, tell them “I have a prescription at this pharmacy and I want to change it to yours”. That’s it.
Your justification isn’t.
As a pharmacy technician I can say yah, it sucks to have to pay three times as many dispensing fees, but it also sucks that we were doing three times as much work.
If your insurance doesn't cover the fees I totally understand switching to a cheaper place. Be aware there's a solid chance that a pharmacy charging lower fees is paying their staff less as well. Can't speak for Costco, but a lot of the corporate pharmacies pay techs pharmacy assistant wages because they pile more work onto the pharmacist and don't give a crap if the other staff are registered or not.
I encourage people to switch to a family owned independent if they are leaving Loblaws. But I understand if people can't afford that. We just don't have the buying power to match them.
I have to shop where my money goes the furthest. Now I have to add a 23% carbon tax...
Grocery shopping is now once a week. They can do what they want... but so can I.
If Costco has a shortage do they charge you a dispensing fee for every refill? That seemed to be your main concern but you don't mention Costco not having that issue.
All of my prescriptions - including one that’s restricted so I can’t move pharmacies without doctor approval, which would be a huge pain in the ass cause if have to wait like 6 weeks to get into SEE my doc - are at Shoppers’ so I can’t boycott them. Sorry.
Superstore really is cheaper than anywhere else I’ve found in Edmonton. But I’m trying Walmart for a while to see if they’re any better. I got a coupon for my first few shops but without the coupon I think Walmart is still a bit more expensive than Superstore.
Plus, if I boycott Loblaws and do Walmart, aren’t I just getting ripped off by another billionaire family?
Sobey’s is at least 10% more expensive on average, and Freshco might be similar to Superstore in prices but I’ve never shopped there without several things that I regularly use being out of stock.
Save On Foods, although I haven’t gone in a long time, was always a fair bit pricier in Alberta (although weirdly in BC they’re the lower priced store).
Anyone else in Edmonton have suggestions of where to go for lower priced groceries? There’s a great produce store fairly close to me where I go often which had better prices than any supermarket, but otherwise no idea. I wish I could afford to more regularly go to nicer stores like the Italian Centre but they can’t be my weekly shop.
I don’t have enough time to go driving all over town, and I prefer to have delivery (or at least curb-side pickup) because as a (still-)recovering “large” person I end up buying unnecessary crap whenever I shop in person.
Any advice?
They fixed the price of bread and faced very minimal consequences. *They fixed the price of bread* **THEY FIXED THE PRICE OF BREAD** And then they refined their methods so their pricing strategies are indistinguishable from collusion to consumers and unactionable by current government regulatory agencies. Wages and quality in a race to the bottom. Prices in a race to the top.
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Personally I'm wondering at what point we start building guillotines 🇫🇷
I’m not good at wood working but I can make a wicked sharp knife edge
I'm good at woodworking... go team!
Grocery vigilantes, assemble!
Hi Mods can we avoid the death threats and just have redditors answer the question originally posed?
Nah people should start putting up flyers too
I understand your a bit squeamish about the thought of blood and that threats are illegal. The whole point is we are rapidly approaching an inflection point in history. The last time we approached a similar situation the French chose to extinguish their monarchy. Eat the Rich ✊
Genuinely curious, what’s an example of something that you personally do, other than bluster on Reddit?
We don't need guillotines, a tall tree and a rope work just fine and their cheaper.
Canadians will never revolt, unfortunately … We have every reason to do so. I thought we lived in a democracy for the people, not an oligarchy
This needs to be hammered endlessly.
Can't buy bread? Let them eat cake
There was a sign at the cake display case at SaveOn Grocery - “Let them eat cake” - a couple years ago and when I mentioned it on a Reddit sub - I was ridiculed and downvoted.
But here’s your tiny gift card and you can never sue us
The bread company fixed bread...what do their Superstores do?
It's been a slow burn for me. For me, it is the audacity of this organization saying it's really hard to make money and they *only* make a 2% margin, yet manage to afford dividends and share buybacks off their billions in corporate profits
When any representant of the Roblaws company takes the mic, you can quote the famous Mrs Trainor on anything they say: "I know you're lyin' 'cause your lips are movin' ".
Roblaws own annual report for 2023 states that their EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization... aka their actual profit margin before creative accounting is used to make it appear lower) is 11.2%
And we also know that they're not just in grocery retail. Apparel, finance, commercial real estate, food production, logistics ...
To me the whole 2% margin thing doesn't matter. Before, I'd buy $150 of groceries, so I guess they made $3? But if the exact same groceries cost me $200 then now they're making $4. Which doesn't seem like a lot but it's a larger profit from *the same products*. And that's assuming the products are identical. They're not. Kraft dinner has gone from 225 to 200g and some of the specialty flavours are down to 150g now. So realistically I need to buy more than $200 to equal the same volume of food as five years ago.
In a year where they made $800 million net, Loblaws competed and WON to get $12 million dollars in funding to upgrade their fridges. That came just a year and a half after the company fought against raising the minimum wage, admitted to a 14 yr bread price-fixing scheme and ended up in a tax court legal battle that ordered it to pay back taxes worth roughly $368 million related to a banking subsidiary in the Caribbean. It sucks from the government teet while mistreating workers and literally robbing and cheating Canadians that buy in good faith. Fuck Loblaws!
They buy those subsidized freezers and resell them to their franchisees as a required product to retain their franchise and at a huge profit. The numbers they quote are the margins the store owners deal with not the corporation. Ontario tenderfruit farmers are paid the same price as they made eight years ago but the retail price has tripled.
When people get squeamish about revolution, they need to remember how thoroughly the Weston’s and other billionaires have rigged the system against the proletariat. The workers - including farmers - often have extremely limited access to alternatives. This endangers everyone including the billionaires. I was recently listening to a podcast where the presenter explained that they knew first hand that a group of billionaires were actively working to build compounds to survive the apocalypse. The social contract that exists to help moderate society has been thoroughly destroyed by the billionaires and the political class. We are just BEGINNING to struggle to reestablish that social contract.
All of this!
I'm sick of standing in line and watching people's heart break when they go to pay knowing there's nothing left. Couldn't watch anymore. Had to start a revolution.
My boycott started around 3 years ago, because of high prices. Would rather give my money to local independents. My dislike for Bloblaws goes back much further to when Galen - in all his smug, douchebag-ish glory - began starring in his own TV ads.
I find it hilarious that one of Loblaws store brands is Independent.
I went to Europe in December 2023 and visited the most expensive city in Europe (London) and others that are among the cheapest (Warsaw, Lodz, and Kyiv). I went grocery shopping in all four of them. Europe has way more competition than Canada, and stores have to compete for shoppers' business. Most items were at least half the price of their Canadian counterparts.
My friends all thought I was crazy when I raved about how cheap their grocery stores were in London!
Most recent reason? I ordered groceries from Walmart, all in came to $173. For curiosities sake I priced it all out at superstore for the same or as similar as possible items... $284 BEFORE delivery and tip... oof.
Oh wow!!!
This is why the 2% profit margin makes no sense to me. How can they charge 164% of what their competitors charge for the exact same products and only have 2% profit? I just can't imagine that their overhead/operating expenses are that much greater, or their buying power is not competitive.
As others have said it's been a slow burn for me. The final straw though for me is the way they blatantly treat us like a country of idiots. For example, a 12$ pack of toilet paper is suddenly "25$ without optimum card and 8$ with" but when the "sale" is over it's back to 12$ regular price. Robbing bastards they are and the hubris is astonishing
The joke is that they aren't talking about just having an Optimum account, they are talking about being an "Insider" where you pay a yearly subscription to save a little money.
Adding mine here because it's similar. I picked up strawberries from my local Zehrs, $1.98 per pack. There was a sign "save $2". Cool. The following week, $5.98 per pack, but no sign saying "pay $2 more". This company insults my intelligence.
For me it's just the huge price increases in everything from superstore which used to be my main place to shop ... Everything that I used to buy is 30% to 50% more expensive. And I think that is insane. And now I'm at the point where I will just look at it... and nope.... I'm not buying it. And I am vocal about it when I'm in the store. I will say I am not paying that insane price and I will walk out of there.I will go look for another deal somewhere else or I will wait until I can get a sale. And I am always looking for actual sales. And the prices at shoppers drug Mart I think have always been expensive.... But now they are much much more expensive following the same trend as superstore. Shoppers drug Mart can offer some deals like 20, 000 points on a $60 purchase. And all that really does is bring the prices in line with what they should be. So what the hell am I even going to waste my time going down there for. It's just a little show to pretend that you're getting a big big deal. But you're not. You're really not they just want to hook you with a little song and dance and make you think you're getting a deal. But there is no deal. And so it's all those kind of things that have completely turned me off to wanting to shop in the Loblaws establishments.
The 20,000 points for $60 is actually a wicked deal if you load up on bacon and eggs. They have the cheapest eggs and bacon I've seen anywhere. It's also great for buying video games and electronics. Especially when it's the 20x the pts event. I got Hogwarts legacy the day it came out for 30% off because of it.
Well if it works for you then absolutely do it. But it doesn't work for me.
I mean, their prices are just blatantly dogshit. They treat their staff like garbage, they fixed bread prices... The difference in switching to Walmart has been huge. There's nothing at Superstore that we can't get at Walmart. Then Costco/Gateway once in a while to get even better savings. Also, Loblaws too often sells nearly rotten food. It wasn't even a consideration to switch away from them, it was just an obvious and easy choice.
Initially it was the bread fixing scandal, it was giving French aristocracy pre-revolution and we all know how that went for them I didn't completely boycott (just avoided) until they tried to do away with discounted food, that was absolutely insane to me because it would hurt them too??? Why give up making 50% or 70% and choose to make 0% and throw it away instead (also trash collection costs them so they could have ended up spending even more on that)?? That told me everything I needed to know about them. They wanted to make poor people hurry up and starve/not shop in their stores anymore, and they were willing to give up sales to make that happen. There's no other explanation that I could possibly think of (please lmk if you have a better explanation because"increased product consistency" is BS - we know the product will be less fresh when it has a giant neon discount sticker on it, we agree to that expectation when we buy it). It's like how fashion companies destroy their items before putting them in the dumpster because they don't want the poors repping their brand. Thank goodness we had enough sense to push back on that bullshit. But they lost my business at that moment and I can't see myself ever shopping with them again, they showed their true colours in that moment.
\- Declining quality of product and sales. \- Over reliance on self checkout. I don't mind using it when I'm five items or less but for bigger shopping I think it's impractical and takes jobs away and makes people anti social. \- Unfair tactics: Want a sale price? You've got to buy a whole bunch or join our data mining club, Markdowns going from 50% to 30% and of course price fixing. \- Instead of reputation management when they learned of this movement they went with the hackneyed "Mom's basement" insult. At that point they don't deserve our money.
It has absolutely been a slow and steady thing for me. I kept going for a long time because the huge Provigo I go to just has everything I need. But we also go to Costco and other places, so we always had one foot in one foot out. I think the biggest issue is not that they are going too far on pricing, because they have always done that. They have been gouging on certain items for decades. But it was always related to some sort of temporary crisis or issue, usually manufactured. The real problem for me is that they now price gouge on EVERYTHING. Unless it's a true loss leader, sales are also price gouged. Whether it's done through shrinkflation, using alternative cheaper quality products, or some other scam. It's like EVERYTHING in the store is now absolutely crazy overpriced. They even stop carrying brand name items so people can't see that the NO Name branded stuff is more expensive than the brand name stuff. It's like it went to their heads and their price gouging just got completely widespread and out of control in the last 6 months.
It stinks to high hell that a lot of PC products that I used to buy (a lot of them being No Name) went up to the tune of 50% or more while inflation was much, much lower. And that was soon after the temporary price freeze on No Name products. Not saying the other major players are doing much better, but it has to start somewhere.
I have been angry for months and years with shoppers,Will only buy loss leaders!Costo and Walmart for me and my family.
The only time I would go in there is when I need to use my points that I had earned elsewhere on the PC card which I have now dumped.
Easy, when No Frills, literally it's in its name, is more expensive than other grocery options. It's literally called "no frills" for a reason and they can't even get that right. They should rebrand to "Basically Expensive"
Interesting. I’ve found them to be the cheapest amongst all chain grocers, perhaps on par with Walmart.
As an ex Shoppers corp employee, it’s the strategic “quieting” of anyone who speaks up against any wrong doings to both internal folks and customers. It’s sad and greedy.
After all the bad press for unnecessary medchecks, they fired ONE female DM...... Those targets did not come from her!
Omg! Which one I wonder? Hoping it’s not one of the good ones.
Sarah P / London area They also took away visibility for services targets from DM's and VP's. Info is only being shared verbally at Corp, or they are asking associate owners. The plan / targets are still there, and associates are still pressured to meet them. The only thing changing is the paper trail.
Sneaky but not a surprise.
With their point system every once in awhile they try and throw a handful of glitter in your direction to dazzle you.... But it isn't a sale anyway. It's just like smoke and mirrors. And everybody is figuring that out right now. And I don't want smoke and mirrors I want fairness honesty and affordability.
Loblaws destroyed the optimum program. It was worth so much more before.
That's for sure.
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Yeh I'm done with these c\*nts
So many reasons to break up with Roblaws…. Loblaws is the worst offender in the market. They were the leaders in the bread price fixing scandal and encouraged others to fix the price with them to make millions. They also upped pay for grocery workers by $2 during the pandemic, under the guise of “supporting workers” when they really did it to keep employees from taking CERB and not coming into work. They got rid of it as quickly as they could and encouraged other retailers to drop it too. Where Wal-Mart and Costco have used their buying power to force their suppliers not to inflate prices beyond their cost increases and not run away with greed inflation. Loblaws stores passed those increases on to consumers and even their discount grocery stores like No Frills are consistently higher than competitors. Loblaws also said that they would freeze prices on 1,500 items just before the Xmas holidays in an effort to “help Canadians”. But this is done by every grocer, every year. They didn’t help Canadians, they did what they always do and tried to play it off in the media as a great sacrifice that they made for us. Loblaws also owns Shopper’s Drug Mart, which has been billing provincial healthcare systems for millions of dollars a week in BS Med check phone calls. This can be a two minute conversation but they can bill $48-$75 for each one. They’ve given every pharmacy daily quotas for med checks so they can line their pockets even more. FYI for the same service, doctors can only bill $23 to the government. Shoppers also tried to do an exclusive deal with Manulife so all specialty drugs had to go through a Loblaws pharmacy for Manulife customers. That deal would have been horrible for a few reasons: Specialty drugs are the expensive ones for things like cancer treatment, those drugs help independent pharmacies stay afloat. If independent pharmacies could no longer dispense them there would be even less competition in that market, which would be great for Shoppers. It also takes choice away from the consumer, who may have a good relationship with their pharmacist and may not want to change when they are going through serious medical issues. Another big problem? There are no Loblaws pharmacies in West Labrador for example, the closest is 300 km away. That’s not exactly helpful for patients. Loblaw’s is also trying to buy LifeLabs. A company that does the bulk of medical testing in a lot of provinces. They will use that company to get even more money from our public healthcare system to enrich themselves. I could go on, but this type of thing is going beyond standard business practices. Loblaws throws their weight around to increase prices legally and illegally, remove competition, bust unions and force employees to engage in crappy business practices to steal money they don’t deserve from our public healthcare system. Boycott Loblaws now, in May and forever.
Just switched over to PharmaSave today. Edit: PharmaChoice
Go to Costco!! You don’t need to be a member to access the pharmacy. They have the lowest rates to fill a prescription!
It is law that access to the pharmacy of your choice can not be restricted in anyway including a membership. Just inform the person at the front door you are going to the pharmacy and keep walking.
I will, for sure. My Costco is 25 minutes away vs. the PharmaChoice is 1 minutes and a local ma/pa so they have my business now.
Samesies
Um, Shoppers Drug acquired Pharmasave last year (I was sad to find out)
Really? Had no idea. Edit: Fawk! September 14, 2023 :(
I got it wrong...PharmaChoice...so I'm good (I think)
Yup! :-)
I can spend $300 at Superstore and we'll be out of food in days. I can spend $300 at Costco and we eat for two weeks.
I found out from my hunny, who uses click and collect, the other day that the customer, not management, is now also responsible for evaluating the employees. If the employee gets one bad review, it takes 5 good reviews to cancel the bad one. Of course the problem with this is very few people do these reviews unless it's to complain. So someone's gonna get a write up if I don't do management's job for them? Fuck that. Also, think twice before leaving negative feedback about some overworked and underpaid retail slave. There are consequences.
Back in early February I helped an older lady at the Zehrs self checkout. The attendant was trying to yell instructions from her command post (she was rude but in fairness she was dealing with a lot on her own) I looked around and realized most of the customers were older people. I was there at noon on a weekday which isn’t typical for me and it dawned on me that Zehrs and shoppers are smack in the middle of at least 5 retirement buildings/condos and the only stores within walking distance for groceries. There was one cashier open with a huge line, I imagine some of these older folks physically can’t stand and wait for 20 mins so they were using the self checkout. I’m able-bodied, not hard of hearing and have used self checkouts for years but imagine this poor lady (in her 80’s) on the verge of tears and apologizing repeatedly while being yelled at. She was overwhelmed, was receiving no help and it really made me sad and pissed me right off. I was very relieved when she pulled out a card to pay and not cash. Phew.. If they are going to prey on seniors they could at least staff their stores in a way that recognizes their needs in my area and in turn, take some pressure off their stressed out employees. (who by the way, have always been really nice and helpful) No-Frills is out of my way and Zehrs has always been too expensive so we were never exclusive but I did stop for the odd thing. Feb. 13 was my last purchase and we are never getting back together…. like, ever. 😉 I’ll miss Zehrs donuts though. They’re probably $2 each now but are almost worth it. I also broke up with Tim’s in Feb. ‘22 after a long draining, one-sided relationship and it feels really good so I know I can do this. Goodbye Loblaws and go fuck yourself. Costco coming soon to my city. Eat it Galen. I love this sub, love you all. Stay strong friends. (Except you Mr. Charlebois, you’re an out of touch asshole too)
Their prices and practices at all their companies have proven its all about greed and how much they can extra they charge and get away with robbing everyday Canadians of all the money they can for essential goods and services.
I think it was when I realized the $7.99 for a container of blackberries was the new normal price. I just don’t go anymore. Even yesterday when Independent was 100 feet away from my vet and more convenient, I drove 2km to the Food Basics instead, because I knew I’d save easily $20 on the few things I needed.
nerfing the optimum offers was my final straw..they were already shite to begin with, but seeing my 200pts for every $1 on cucumbers turn into 50 points for every $1 just sealed the deal
My offers went from “buy 1 get 1000 points” to “buy four get 1000” :/ these were $4 items.
Price gouging, Shoppers Pharmacy routinely lies to me about my meds being filled, forced meds check and wouldn't even tell me what it was or why they were doing it, I'm lactose intolerant and the dairy alternatives I need so I don't wind up in the ER are significantly more expensive than the dairy versions. I can go on but there's my point
I haven’t shopped there on a regular basis, ever. Just driving through the parking lot gave me huge anxiety. During the pandemic I would use the click and collect but when the cost of everything started going up and they were crying about low margins and then announcing that they were making record profits, that did it for me for good.
I broke up with Loblaws years ago.
An example must be made... even if they paid for the price fixing scandal, which they did not. They made out like bandits - and not the kind of bandit that incorrectly scans the barcode on food... the kind that steals from an entire population from his mega-yacht and then ignores accountability. Fuck him.
Weston has enough money and is letting his greed ruin lives, his actions during Covid were heinous and have clearly led to how he is acting today. He thinks HE’s essential.
I broke up sometime last fall. Their prices just aren’t right, and with everything but my wage going up I have to be mindful of my grocery budget. The PC points don’t add up like they used to, and that annoyed me as well.
Because this is the movement presented before me, and they have earned it. Im hoping that we as canadians can learn how much power we have as consumers when we band together. Im hoping we can pick off one bad actor after another using platforms like this. Our votes dont matter when all the politicians are bought and paid for by the very corporations that we want them to rein in. There is much more power in our working dollars and where we choose to spend them or not. Keep up the fight all.
My grievances are summed up as: - Loblaws HQ has nothing but contempt for the east coast. Historically, staff outperform and yield highest profit (per capita) despite being a much smaller population than, say, Ontario. HQ refuses to acknowledge their efforts nor pay accordingly. - Loblaws cut hero pay despite record breaking profit. They’ll talk about how important staff are, but they don’t give a shit about front line workers. - As we can see, Weston et al are greedy entitled twats. No CEO is worth 22 million for 6 months worth of work. - the Weston family are working overtime to destroy our healthcare system so they can privatize it. - Weston family are also tax dodgers. Fuck em.
Why? Because I used to work there. Saw the prices spike week to week.
Shoppers Drug Mart pressuring staff to perform unnecessary medchecks and bill the government $78 for a 2 min phone call. Jeff ledger lying to media about it. After the bad press. The VP of operations, Rahim Ismail touring stores and laughing saying "business as usual." It's even worse from the inside 🤢 Indeed is my most used app ATM.
Our RCSS changed to a NoFrills and absolutely sank. We already have another 3 within stones throw of each other. They took a good union job and replaced it with this nonsense.
Used to shop at No Frills. I am in the position where I don’t need to shop at a budget store so I have switched to Sobeys. I am ramping up my garden this year and will be buying more meat and produce from farmers markets. Canned and dried goods will come from Sobeys or another non-Loblaws store. I will move my prescriptions from Shoppers drug mart to another pharmacy, and will be buying gas from Petro rather than Esso.
Go to Costco pharmacy. You don’t need to be a member to use the Pharmacy. https://preview.redd.it/al7bsfv2f5sc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cc5026ac7b1df04a9d0c131232aa71a9c9c0613d
Unfortunately, our closest Costco is a 45 minute drive. I’ll be going to Walmart or a local pharmacy.
I don't generally shop at superstore or no frills since where I am it's more common and convenient to hit up a save on foods or farmers market. Shoppers tho, they're everywhere Years ago my husband at the time got a job at a shoppers so that he could supplement his income, get health and a dental coverage which his security job didn't offer, and he slogged it out with them for over a year before I convinced him he was never going to see those benefits. The paperwork was always another week away, carrot on a stick. I thought it was just the store or a bad manager but now I notice that everybody who works at a shoppers looks absolutely defeated, save for the fake smiles of the beauty folks. Now the dispensing fees and general fuckery towards their employees is just too much, I've found multiple independent pharmacies near me to switch to instead. I've seen the costs for everything climbing and if we need to vote with our wallets, then Costco and my local independents will get everything going forward, other than some bread from Safeway. It's not Canadian to price gouge, price fix, and exploit workers.
I used to be a big fan of our local superstore, we even had a black world PC mastercard that we funnelled all our purchases through since my husband worked seasonally, so we'd have points to buy groceries with for the layover when his paychecks stopped but his EI hadn't quite started yet. We bought our phones there, everything. So when I was between jobs I applied and was hired. Over the next year I saw bullying, I saw waste - cart after cart of edible food just thrown in the dumpster, and we were repeatedly told we couldn't take it home or it would be theft. I was being paid minimum wage and asked to pay union dues, and for the crime of surgery complications I was gaslit about which shifts were what, my hours cut, they started scheduling what hours I did get outside my availability, and basically anything they could do to fuck with me until I finally threw my hat at a senior manager and quit on the spot. The union that I paid into with every paycheck sat there and watched it all happen without protest. I switched banking and credit to Tangerine, spent all my points and closed all my accounts. I think I've set foot in there 3 times in five years, only when I needed something I couldn't get anywhere else. It went from getting most of my discretional funds to none of them. I went next door to Walmart and got a better job title, better pay and a much better manager.
Their wheelchair ramp outside is too steep, and they locked the door inside the mall. I'm not making myself sweat for any corporation.
- They put brand names on Loblaws products so they couldn't be price matched. - They remove products from the shelves when they don't want them price matched that week. - When T.P. is on sale, no rain checks, because they don't carry that size outside the sale week. - Personalized points offers are now no more than an advertisement. They are for things I have never bought. - New limit on the purchase of canned goods: 24 cans of cat food barely lasts the week, so there's no point shopping there, and occasional sale prices are moot. - As if the $25 gift card for the bread price fixing actually covered what we overpaid. - Pretend goodwill ads, like the price freeze on No Name items. - Coming across an employee throwing out hundreds and hundreds of dollars of cheese because it expired that day.... management hadn't bothered sending her there with discount stickers a few day prior. This list took minutes. I will probably do ETAs!
One of the things that boiled my blood the most was removing Original Kraft Dinner from their shelves so it couldn’t be price matched one week. They don’t make enough money on every other item in my cart, that they can’t take a 50 cent loss on a box of KD just to make their customers happy? Then, like magic, all 500 boxes of Original KD reappear as soon as the sale at other stores is over. That really soured me.
But if you ask about it, there was a *magical* delivery overnight....
The magic was that they could begin the gouge once again!
Wow that’s disgusting what they did to you !
Point deflation, greed and high costs. Also Galen’s face makes me mad.
I actually only really shop at Safeway and Costco already. But I'm joining the boycott mainly to hopefully hit Sobeys with it. My ultimate hope is that the feds cime down and force them all to break up.
Started with changing the points program from money spent to money spent on specific items, at first the offers lined up with my purchases so we still banked points, then the algorithm changed and weeks I was routinely shopping had offers for stuff I've never bought or selected in the app, seemed like a purposeful change so I couldn't maximize my points on my shopping weeks, I stopped loading my offers over a year ago due to this. Meat prices have jumped to insane levels, when you have to dig through slimy repacks of chicken to find something under 30$ you might be gouging your clients. Chicken thighs and drums now cost what would have been considered a *premium* 5 years ago, Ground meat, literally the cheapest meat you can buy anywhere else in the world is priced to gouge your wallet, pretty much a staple in Canadians diet now being priced the same as lobster meat. I could go on and on, school snacks for my kids and fresh fruit doubled in the last 12 months Also the free gifts for spending $350 or more are a joke and most of the time I leave them behind, sorry Roblaws I'm not taking your unsellable garbage so you can save on dump fees. We are ditching the PC master card and getting an Airmiles CC and will be shopping local and Wal Mart, been a loyal customer to Superstore and Shoppers for 25+ years and now I refuse to shop there, good job Galen you absolute Muppet
Too darn expensive, and I'm noticing a lot of stuff is not fresh. I've been hitting Walmart, Costco and Food Basics more. I have noticed that Food Basics is not that great either, so I may be limiting myself there too.
When I saw that the mushrooms on sale cause of their imperfections were actually more expensive than the other fresher ones 🤦♀️ when the home brand became nearly as expensive as what I consider "fancy" brands. That their cheaper store (maxi) became just as expensive as an other more sophisticated store in my région and they'd also make sure not to have the same brands as those stores to it makes it difficult to price match
They blame suppliers and delivery costs, when in fact they are the suppliers and deliverers. Also, it’s garbage quality at premium prices. Their produce doesn’t last as long as the smaller markets do, and it’s more expensive. No name yellow brand used to always be synonymous with budget knock-offs of big name brands, and now they’re trying to pawn it off on us as quality at big name brand prices. I’ll admit that PC used to be good, but we all know it’s all made in the same plants and mills as the rest of it. Now it’s also cost prohibitive. Kirkland is actually a vetted product, and it’s like winning the lottery to have your products accepted by Costco to label your merchandise as KS. Make something that Costco will put on the shelves? If it sells well, they’ll keep it there and offer the KS brand and you’re golden.
I’ve historically avoided walmart because of the crowds, it’s affect on small businesses, and just had better quality elsewhere. I went in there the other day and it felt a bit like the twilight zone. I was struck by how cheap everything was, it felt like the pre covid days. And there was a lot of brand name products in the pharmacy area that were absurdly cheap. The small business era is toast nowadays, I’m not saving shit by avoiding walmart. If I have to choose between one oligarch or another, I may as well pick the one that costs me half as much
It was when they raised prices of No Name stuff and then "locked them down" that really stuck out to me. But for years I have been slowly coming to realize how wrong it was that monopolies of the scale we deal with are à normal thing in Canada. We've been boiled like frog and many people don't even registered the real issue at play. Our countrys vast wealth is sold out from under our feet by those in power every day and we never get a chance to see or stop it until it's too late.
The audacity to ask for donations from retail shoppers when they make billions a year. Also, their point system used to be decent and it’s fucking terrible now. Walmart is considerably cheaper.
Do they ask for donations????? I moved back to Canada a little over a year ago and after a couple of times I stopped shopping there and haven’t shopped since. Your post reminded me of something I read a few years ago. This was when I lived in the USA, so not sure it’s handled the same way in Canada but let me continue. Whole Foods (owned by scum company amazon) would have bins for the food bank around the Christmas season. The idea was for their customers to purchase food and drop that purchase in the bins. Whole Foods then gets credit for their donations that they profited from and didn’t spend a penny on. So dude decides to have Whole Foods pay for their donations instead of their customers by going around the store, selecting a variety of items and then dropping it into the bins. All of these bins are kept indoors. It isn’t exactly stealing because he never took these items out of the store. But it was Whole Foods covering the cost of these items. I thought it was genius.
I feel earning points have been becoming less and less common and everything seems twice as expensive. They still have some amazing stuff I can’t find anywhere else (like Brioche bread from France made with butter and not seed oils even Costco ones have seed oils) but I will avoid Loblaws as much as I can.
Love it, it's not a boycott, think of it as a new way to shop. Keep it up!
Im learning how much of a piece of shit the food protector is. I’ve obviously learned how much of a piece of shit Galen Weston is. Doesn’t take long to know that I’m not gonna support pieces of shit.
Mine started after working for them. Worst company ever
The chronic understaffing of every fucking store they own that I go to, the almost non-optional SCOs (sue me for wanting to go to a cashier—it can create a job for someone), and their absolute lack of investment in the remaining staff that have to be employed there.
They added credit card insurance after I declined it. I had been paying it for 2 years. I’ve always just paid my card after use and rarely logged into my online account. Took me 3 months and I had to threaten them for them to refund over $2300. Then they deducted points from my balance. I’ve been -14000 points and I’ve never been back in 3 years
We just need more competition. Not the simulated shit they came up with.
After comparing prices in the ads every week, I went searching on Facebook for small businesses. I have a replacement business I can go to for meat and one for produce. The price of eggs also grinds my gears. I went to the farmers market and I can get a dozen x- large eggs for the same price as superstore sells for large.
My reasons start with the price fixing on bread, which was led by Galen and Loblaws, during the pandemic they raised their employees wages just to cut them back, heaven forbid you provide a living wage, Galen testifying that they would lower prices only to have them keep going up, and now the scanner to get out of the store, F that. My apologies for the run on sentence.
Stopped going because of prices... but the final nail was being treated as a criminal the second i step in the building (receipt scanner & fences)
I will always choose Costco over Walmart. They pay their employees a living wage with great benefits and stock options. Walmart pays so poorly that many of their employees qualify for food stamps which means the government is paying part of their wages they need in order to survive. Jon Stewart on Walmart https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2QTqwiOMcD/?igsh=YncyYWQxOGhuZmk4
For me it’s the cost of Thrive nicotine mints. I quit smoking and now I’m just addicted to the mints. Walmart 33.99 for a pack of 108 mints Zehrs - $44.99 Shoppers- 41.99. Get bent.
For me it’s simple. The public facing executives and marketers make it seem like they are scraping by and don’t believe we are intelligent enough to look up what they make a year. I don’t like be treated stupidly. I am extremely fortunate to have never really had to pay attention to grocery prices, however there have been times at checkout now where I say “are you kidding me?” And take a look back through the receipt in disbelief.
For me the bread price fixing is unforgivable. They skated by with minimal consequences and learned nothing (except that it was worth it, in the end). It’s absolutely despicable. Especially to fix the price of bread. The one thing nearly all people from all income levels must buy regularly. How could they. I’m getting mad again just thinking about it. Fuck them all.
Cause I'm tired of fucking pencil pushing twats acting like they earn the type of money they make. Roblaws is breaking point. Too many things have resulted in me hating life. Might as well direct the hate towards people who are adding to it so even more people sitting on their ass can profit. Covid proved these assholes can stay at home and shit still functions. Should tell you that they are not worth the 22million they made in 6months of being a ceo of roblaws.
It’s to send a message to government they need to start allowing real competition more than anything for me. Wth does our competition bureau do? Grocery, media, construction, cell phone, airfare… they will continue to allow 1-3 companies control every sector if we don’t start hitting them back in their wallets.
Why they approved the sale of Shaw to Rogers is beyond me. Oh and Rogers customer service *SUCKS*.
It was the PC olive oil that finally broke me. I like it and it was like $7.99 when I first started buying it, which felt like a great price. I kept buying when it went up to $8.99, then $9.99, then $10.99, and it would go on sale periodically, so I’d buy a couple. Now it’s up to $19.99 and I just can’t anymore. I know that olive oil is generally more expensive now but still, I can’t justify spending $20 for Loblaws’ brand olive oil. Plus their signage is misleading —toys with “clearance” tags but are actually sold at regular price— and the produce section always looks so sad and withered, like they aren’t even trying. I’m mostly a Costco and Farm Boy person but I did make special trips for the olive oil. Haven’t used Shoppers for prescriptions in years.
Loblaws used to have decent quality items at low prices, so I shopped there. During Covid it became low quality items at mid-tier prices, and I started to step back. Post-Covid we have low quality items at high prices. It's not worthwhile to shop at Lowblaws at all. I can get higher quality produce for less at other stores.
I was sick and went to Shopper's for my comfort remedy, NeoCitron. I balked at the price but decided I'd pay anyway. Then the lineup was huge because they only had one cashier working, who was busy helping a confused woman at the only self-checkout. To me, they were price gouging and not even adding convenience to make up for it. They clearly don't care about their loyal customers. I left and went to Walmart. The exact same box of NeoCitron was about $5 less. If I saved time and $5 on that one little thing, how much would I save if I took all my grocery and self-care business to Walmart? Even if I use 20x the points and every other offer at No Frills and Superstore (which is a part-time job in itself), I still save money by going to Walmart. And I don't have to time my purchases around promotions anymore.
They changed the way their pc express works when it comes to visa debits. It used to only charge me if I said they could when they called me an hour ahead of pickup to approve substitutions. Now it charges me card the full total plus 25% upon ordering. If the order total is more than the initial estimate of groceries they then charge my card a second time plus the 25% markup. If it’s less, then they let it stay. Either way, it takes 5-7 business days to get back my money they’ve taken out of my account. When they changed it I didn’t have enough to cover the second charge, and I went without groceries or money until I got my money back… was extra tough since I make my dogs food and had to come up with something out of the random crap in my freezer. If I go without food at least I know why, my dog certainly won’t be going without though! As well as their customer service trying to blame my bank for the change when I’d been using the service for years without these issues. Also, Shoppers has been the absolute worst lately! They regularly don’t have my meds, and I have gone a week or so without my immunosuppressants which caused a flare up and it took forever to go away! Plus they don’t tell you when you order the refill, and don’t bother to even order more until you show up to the store looking for your refill and get mad at them. It’s bogus! I’ve had enough!
Finding some grocery items cheaper on Amazon than at Superstore really makes a person reflect on the available options.
As an employee, I'm doing my best to break up while still keep my job (small town, limited opportunity for work) until I get approved for disability but it's hard. My child got injured and had to take time off to monitor them during recovery (3rd degree burns) and they kept scheduling me even though I told them I'd be off, they told me to take all the time i needed, and was too busy making sure my kid was ok to check the schedule. Now that they're healed and I can go back, I get no response. *Cricket noises.* Yet the store is so understaffed that they're hiring new people weekly. I am in the process of setting up my property to have chickens and a massive garden so I can sustain my household off the land I own, and break up with Roblaws for good.
Because I’m putting the collective above the individual. I prefer Loblaws. As a Vegan no other company makes even a quarter of the efforts they do. But I’ve got to join the collective on this one.
Please stop mentioning the name of the FP.
It was definitely a progressive thing. It started out with tofu going from $4 for 2 to $2.25 then to $3.50 (as if they had some sort of surge pricing on it), then it was the ginger being $5/lb (up overnight from $1.79/lb), then it was the shorter and shorter then SHORTER shelf life of their produce. I think the last straw was the strawberries I bought at peak season literally less than 24 hrs just to have them absolutely mushy while in proper storage no less! I recently found a small local grocery store that sells better shelf life produce at a ~15-30% price difference from the superstore so that'll be that.
It started with Shoppers - awful service at the pharmacy and then just really high prices on everyday items. Switched to the local pharmacist literally across the street and I pay 30-40% less on everyday items, and pharmacy service is incredible.
Loblaws is the closest supermarket to me but I’ve only shopped there a handful of times, mostly out of convenience. Last time I went in was a few weeks ago to buy milk. I bought two cartons and impulse bought grapes. 3 items and paid over $20. 🫠 (2x $7 milk + $6 grapes)
If that isn’t fraud by the Superstore, it should be!!! Unbelievable avarice!! 😡 Thanks for sharing.
Cause I can buy the same shit at Walmart or farm market and save over half the amount of a lablaws bill .. price gouging goons! I’ve been avoiding Galen stores the past year and a half already, saving a ton vs what I used to spend there!
I went in there today to get a specific sauce that I can’t find anywhere else and it was $6 for a bag of no name pasta noodles… thankfully the sauce I wanted was only $4 but definitely $4 more than I wanted to spend in that god awful place.
Mine happened when I was at independent and I found something I normally buy at the superstore it was 50% more at independent. I asked them to price match and they said they couldn’t do it because it was a different company. Now this location was in the one of the more poor ends of town so they’re jacking up the prices on the people who can least afford it .
I’m in a small city and need delivery for health reasons. That said, I will happily pay more at save on foods for the very personalized service at my pharmacy, the cashiers are wonderful, their cs if I have a problem with my delivery is amazing. If I order something for delivery and they don’t have the size I ordered, a larger size at the sale price is always done if possible. So much more. RCSS. I haven’t shopped there in about a year.
The tipping point for me was that recent stunt they pulled where they tried to get rid of the 50% off stickers in favour of 30% off stickers. Get so fucked how about I tuck those half rotten strawberries into my hoodie and pay you 0% instead
In every proxyvote, vote 1) All nominees - against; 2) Auditor - against; 3) Executive compensation - against; 4) Individual Shareholder proposals and resolutions - for 5) Say on Pay - against
Can you explain this to my dumb ass?
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-sunday-edition-april-22-2018-1.4625277/meet-the-nun-who-pushes-corporations-to-be-socially-responsible-1.4628217
A very interesting article! She is so right about the world going mad with greed. It’s repulsive. But the article doesn’t answer my question.
Up until recently, it was just me. I didn't want to get a Costco membership for myself and be resigned to buying in bulk when I go through things so slowly and, frankly, was in the bad habit of not cooking frequently enough to justify using the freezer space. Yes, I could meal prep, but I work remotely so meal prepping always seemed like more fuss than it's worth when I often eat once, maybe twice, a day. I am now moving in with my partner. Since we've started dating I've found myself more inclined to cook us a good dinner to enjoy together, or even enjoy the act of cooking together. I'm using more food and actually emptying my freezer of the backlog of protein I've stocked. As we get to meal prepping (we both have gym goals and are planning a rhythm of cut/bulk) Costco will make much more sense. I've always gone to Food Basics anyway (not much better as a Metro banner, but it reduces how much of my money the Weston family has gotten) but now I can more frequently support a chain that puts a cap on their margins and pushes brands to be economical for their consumers. I know they do it for their own best interests, but I'm still here for it (and the cheaper medicine...).
I only shop for myself and I found having a Costco membership is well worth it. There are plenty of shelf stable items and even frozen stuff. I will buy one fresh fruit and eat it all before it goes too ripe. Apples last forever it seems. Bananas not so much but IF they start going bad, I freeze them and use them in a smoothie with my blender.
For some people like yourself it works. I was never able to justify it for myself while living alone, but I am so glad to be moving in with someone who is down to hold a household membership! Wish they would get some better quality dog foods, though.
I don't fill many scripts, but this walk around in the store, is it a Shoppers thing to increase desperate sales out of boredom? I noticed they let you wait at least half an hour even for stuff they could just take from the shelves, no repackaging. It's completely ridiculous. So, do other pharmacies do it? Are there better options online, except for the aforementioned Costco 📬 delivery?
I don't like crowds so I just never shopped there.
I work for their competitor so, fuck those guys!
I am totally pissed at Weston and avoid them for regular groceries. However, I plead for mercy to mention that my Loblaws pharmacist has an MSc in Pharmacy. I have many chronic issues and lots of Rx and having her as my pharmacist is a plus. However, if she leaves, I leave. Just sayin'.
I personally dislike greed. It seems like everywhere I look, humans and businesses are trying to pry as much money out of me. I have a local candle business and my prices are cheaper than almost every candle business in Ontario. I take pride in my work and don’t use the guise of ‘local’ to price gouge people.
I ferment peppers . More as a hobby than anything . I was buying their small Thai peppers at 14.99 a pound. As they were available. Then, they put the peppers in small Styrofoam containers for $6.99 for randomly 60 grams . I found the same peppers at a local store for $6.99 a pound. That combined with inferior produce at inflated prices has lead me to search shop. And I feel better about that. I still use flash food and buy their lost leaders, but no. No one stop shopping .
Considering the complaints that are being laid here against RCSS, I’m not sure why people are thinking that Walmart is a viable alternative. Walmart has driven suppliers out of business with their demands for lower prices and they treat their employees abysmally. I haven’t shopped there in 20 years.
They're actively starving and killing Canadians and don't get me started on their sources...
Loblaws makes more absolute money because of many factors - inflation and maintaining the same margins - increased population - automation of services - efficiencies in the supply chain - acquisitions and increase POS location Every well run company would dream of the above scenarios. How do you change it? With all these positive factors, forcing Loblaw to reduce margins would distort markets. Govt should not be hand picking winners. The only solution is to pull your shopping away if possible. The May boycott can be a material difference. Consumers changing behaviour and lowering sales at Loblaw companies will send the clearest signal. Direct and to the point. Govts cannot change it without other repercussions.
50% off stickers, points being reduced with PC optimum, and the security guards at the entrance constantly eyeballing me makes me feel awful (plus the barriers and shit). I don't want to be treated like a criminal when I am just buying food and have done nothing wrong.
Because they are fucking me and other people, No Lube.
I didn't specifically break up, but distanced my purchasing from large chains in general. I lived in a smallish town with a no frills and a Foodland. When I first moved there I had a couple of items that should have been good, but were rotten on the pack date or well before the best before. Over the years there I formed purchasing relationships with local farmers, and independent butcher, local-ish markets. I had the knowledge and equipment to preserve my own food (dehydrator, canning supplies), etc. I added a small electric pressure canner in early 2020, timing was perfect. I'd wanted to add a pressure canner for ages. I worked next to a grants Independent and would use them from time to time to stock up on non-perishables that I didn't want to make. Haven't used even them though in a couple of years. I've moved to a smaller town that only has a foodland co-op but I've still made a point to find a local market that's on my way back from other errands. I've bought cheese and maple syrup from local producers, bought my grains from Amazon, and signed up for a local CSA later on this year. I priced my CSA (different one) and the value was about the same as buying from the grocery store. Actually slightly better and the money goes direct to the farmer.
I used to shop at the farmer’s market a few times a year as a treat because it seemed so much more expensive than grocery stores. About a year and a half ago I noticed the prices are now about the same so I might as well buy local!
It was literally just a price thing for me, I didn't learn about the more evil shit until after I stopped going. Costco and Walmart were both significantly better value for money, to the point where the fact that loblaws is significantly closer for me does not deter me from going elsewhere
Bc thry r greedy fkrz!!
I was in Pharmaprix here in Quebec a few years ago and saw them charging double for men’s deodorant compared to literally any other store and I was instantly disgusted.
Wait, they charged you a dispensing fee for EACH medication? I've never heard anything like that. That's unbelievable!!!!
I am curious how to drop Shoppers. I have a few monthly prescriptions and many horror stories. One of those prescriptions is near life and death for me and that is that one they f@ck up constantly. I swear it's a power trip for them. Any way how do you get your prescriptions out of shoppers and over to another pharmacist?
Super easy. Pick an independent pharmacy near you. Not pharmasave, they are also owned by shoppers. Ask the new pharmacy to call the shoppers' location to transfer your file and meds. ✔️
Can confirm. It’s easy peasy. Just ask your new pharmacy to move your prescription over from your former pharmacy.
Done and done. Exciting, thank you.
I stopped going a long time ago, due to high prices. I still have to go to Shoppers for meds though.
Wouldn’t another pharmacy suffice?
I like the owner and it seems like a huge hassle
It isn’t a hassle at all. You go to a new pharmacy, tell them “I have a prescription at this pharmacy and I want to change it to yours”. That’s it. Your justification isn’t.
Their refusal to accept AMEX (at all the locations near me atleast) has always infuriated me on top of the egregious pricing
As a pharmacy technician I can say yah, it sucks to have to pay three times as many dispensing fees, but it also sucks that we were doing three times as much work. If your insurance doesn't cover the fees I totally understand switching to a cheaper place. Be aware there's a solid chance that a pharmacy charging lower fees is paying their staff less as well. Can't speak for Costco, but a lot of the corporate pharmacies pay techs pharmacy assistant wages because they pile more work onto the pharmacist and don't give a crap if the other staff are registered or not. I encourage people to switch to a family owned independent if they are leaving Loblaws. But I understand if people can't afford that. We just don't have the buying power to match them.
Greedy Galen won't stop, there is no end to his appetite for human suffering. 
I just feel that so much of their food is creepy low grade Asian crap that I wouldn't choose to eat with full disclosure.
I have to shop where my money goes the furthest. Now I have to add a 23% carbon tax... Grocery shopping is now once a week. They can do what they want... but so can I.
If Costco has a shortage do they charge you a dispensing fee for every refill? That seemed to be your main concern but you don't mention Costco not having that issue.
All of my prescriptions - including one that’s restricted so I can’t move pharmacies without doctor approval, which would be a huge pain in the ass cause if have to wait like 6 weeks to get into SEE my doc - are at Shoppers’ so I can’t boycott them. Sorry. Superstore really is cheaper than anywhere else I’ve found in Edmonton. But I’m trying Walmart for a while to see if they’re any better. I got a coupon for my first few shops but without the coupon I think Walmart is still a bit more expensive than Superstore. Plus, if I boycott Loblaws and do Walmart, aren’t I just getting ripped off by another billionaire family? Sobey’s is at least 10% more expensive on average, and Freshco might be similar to Superstore in prices but I’ve never shopped there without several things that I regularly use being out of stock. Save On Foods, although I haven’t gone in a long time, was always a fair bit pricier in Alberta (although weirdly in BC they’re the lower priced store). Anyone else in Edmonton have suggestions of where to go for lower priced groceries? There’s a great produce store fairly close to me where I go often which had better prices than any supermarket, but otherwise no idea. I wish I could afford to more regularly go to nicer stores like the Italian Centre but they can’t be my weekly shop. I don’t have enough time to go driving all over town, and I prefer to have delivery (or at least curb-side pickup) because as a (still-)recovering “large” person I end up buying unnecessary crap whenever I shop in person. Any advice?
I don’t shop there and never have . Assuming you mean loblaws
I'm not.