This is why Galen West is a card-carrying member of the Parasite Class.

And yes, I confirmed the no-shipments, zero-stock with the store manager. 5 days and counting with no stock so far, when the sale started there was maybe 12-24 bottles for 128,000 residents in the city.

  • prodigalsorcerer
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    1 year ago

    Isn’t there an ongoing strike at Loblaws distribution centres? I legitimately can’t find any news as to whether it ended, but I also can’t find very much news on other strikes that I’m pretty sure did get resolved. Fuck Loblaws, and fuck Google’s ever worsening search capabilities.

    • nova_ad_vitum
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      1 year ago

      Isn’t there an ongoing strike at Loblaws distribution centres?

      Sounds like a great time to issue a sale on products that you know you won’t have to actually sell at the discounted price, and then blame it on the union.

      • Truck_kun@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Do stores do rain checks there if you ask for them?

        I’ve seen it at some stores in the US in the past, but not something that would be advertised, just some people getting a rain check if they specifically ask for it.

        • Jessie
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          1 year ago

          Yes but it varies store to store. you could also submit a corporate complaint and hope they reply with a coupon of some sort…

      • brax@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        If they’re so concerned about cost savings, they should consider firing Galen Weston. The amount of money wasted on paying him is astronomical. Pack his box and show him the door. He won’t be missed by anybody.

      • prodigalsorcerer
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, I could only find old articles about resolutions, or the more recent articles from a month ago when it started. I’m not sure anymore if this is Google’s fault - it seemingly hasn’t been reported on since it started. Too much news about strikes might give the population too many ideas.

  • SpermHowitzer@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Not that I’m disagreeing with your anger, but I feel like that much emotion at least warrants using the person’s correct name.

  • Treczoks@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I saw this kind of behavior in many places.

    We had a LIDL discount store on the other side of the road in my old location. One day they offered a top-of-the-pop GFX card (25 years ago!) for an incredibly low price. Before opening times, there was a queue from the door across the parking lot to the street. I was there when the shop opened (not in the queue, just on the way to my car), and people stormed in. I saw people jumping over the checkouts to bypass the crowd. Later that day, I talked with a cashier. They had had serious problems that morning, because their allotment had been a total of three cards.

    Many years later, a superstore offered a high-priced LEGO set for a dead cheap price. So I was there when the doors opened, ran towards the toy aisle, grabbed one of the two sets on display. I thought for a moment to buy the other one, too, but some other guy just took it. At the checkout I asked if they maybe had another one in stock, but they admitted they only had gotten those two sets.

    • rekabisOP
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      1 year ago

      It’s not about the soda, it’s about the corporate hypocrisy, gratuitously fake goodwill, rampant greed, and bait-and-switching of hard-working Canadians.

      If you’re going to be defending Galen West in any way, I strongly suggest you find elsewhere to be licking those boots.

      • Pyr_Pressure
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        1 year ago

        I’ve found most stores stock very minimal amounts of whatever gets I to the flyer as a pretty good deal.

        They just do it to trick you into making the trip so you spend your money on the over priced stuff since you’re already there.

        • rekabisOP
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          1 year ago

          Except in this case, the store was out of stock 24hrs a day from the day the sale started. It’s now the sixth day of the sale, it ends on Thursday.

          Those shelves usually have about 48 rows of 7 bottles across 5 different flavours of PC Cola. It tends to have some stock at all times, the only time I ever saw it totally out of stock was during the first COVID lockdown. Never before, and for the first time since.

          I had talked to the store manager, who confirmed ZERO DELIVERIES since the sale started. Not one delivery in any of the five days, and I’m betting this sixth day will be more of the same.

          That isn’t just gross incompetence - it’s intentionally malicious.

          • gila@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Surprised to hear Canada doesn’t have laws against bait advertising, I know the UK, Australia & New Zealand all do.

            • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              They’re provincial laws but I’m pretty sure that’s not covered by the law since it’s pretty much impossible to prove it was intentional/it affects all stores.

              • gila@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                Unintentional bait advertising is just exploitation via neglect rather than with intent. Here if the bait advertising happened and customers were exploited, the retailer is legally obligated to remediate regardless of their intent.

                • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  Considering they give rain checks I don’t think much can be done, how do you prove they intentionally had a sale on a product they knew was going to be out of stock vs any other sales where something just naturally goes out of stock as people buy all the store’s supply until they get more in the next few days?

            • ILikeBoobies
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              1 year ago

              Deliveries are usually done once a week and flyers aren’t typically store specific

              But I appreciate they needed pop so badly that they checked every day and talked to the manager

              • rekabisOP
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                1 year ago

                Deliveries are usually done once a week

                Sorry, no. I see those racks being re-stocked at least twice a week under normal circumstances. There are 3-5 full trucks coming in each and every day to this particular RCSS. This is not a tiny town, we have more than a quarter-mill residents in the overall region, about half of which live within city limits.

                But I appreciate they needed pop so badly that they checked every day and talked to the manager

                You can turn that negative sarcasm off, now. I was making a comment about the Parasite-Class greedwashing first and foremost, the fact that it was soda was just incidental.

                And when soda is normally $1.50 to $2.00 per 2L (yes, even the PC cola stuff), it’s a pretty big deal when it’s 68¢ apiece.

                Plus, we’ve been out of soda for a month-plus now. Just wanted to stock up for the next half a year (and have some at Christmas) at that price. Is it wrong to take advantage of a deal and have something special to drink for Christmas?

              • gila@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                National retailers here do weekly flyers by state - usually one each for regional and metropolitan area stores per state. As long as they haven’t overextended locations beyond that which they can reliably supply to, it’s really not hard to ensure availability for a product before you put it on sale, or vary the sale conditions according to availability in a way that’s totally fair to consumers.

                In areas too remote for reliable supply to a national chain location, e.g. remote Western Australia, you just have co-operative independent retailers with their own prices. There needs to be a certain level of suburbia before a national retailer location becomes viable

      • alabasterhotdog
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        1 year ago

        I’m quite certain there’s ways to bring attention to your point without sounding absolutely insufferable, hopefully it doesn’t continue to elude you.

    • rekabisOP
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      1 year ago

      PC Cola is a house brand. No-one else carries it.

      And the rain cheque limits you to two. I like to use the self-checkout and stock up by making multiple checkouts.

        • rekabisOP
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          1 year ago

          PC brand stuff is sold at like 3 different stores in BC.

          All owned by the same parent company, and thereby Galen Weston, and they do not do price matching between those stores.

          There is a Wholesale Club in the city over, I tried to get something else from them one time, where their price was nearly double that of the RCSS I normally go to. They refused to match the price.

          • pbjamm@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            I knew they were all the same parent company, I was unaware they would not match.

  • ares35@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    the kmart in the town i lived in back in the early 1990s did this all the time…

    and since they knew ahead-of-time of upcoming percent or dollar-off promotions, they would jack the shelf price up on those items the week or two before so they could go ‘on sale’ (and sometimes even at a higher price than the usual regular selling price).

    ya. that store was bulldozed a few years later.

    • rekabisOP
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      1 year ago

      Did. Sale was limit: 2. At least normally I can pile 8 or so into my cart and process them in batches of two, not so much with rain cheques.

      • rbesfe
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        1 year ago

        My friend, you need to drink less soda

        • rekabisOP
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          1 year ago

          A good stock-up lasts us months.

          • rbesfe
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            1 year ago

            Oh ok good, I thought this was like a 3-4 week supply you were talking about. I don’t have that much pantry space lol

            • rekabisOP
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              1 year ago

              We had snagged two of those bottle holders from the Wholesale Club a few years ago, so we’re talking about maybe 16 bottles for a half-year’s supply.

      • Grass@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Did you try asking at customer service desk? Back when I worked at one of those stores and dinosaurs roamed the earth, I would have put that through for anyone that came up to the cs desk and asked, as long as they didn’t do a mountain that draws attention. Around the time I left though they took away the ability to enter quantity multipliers without an override, and while technically cs reps have override auth they generally aren’t allowed to use it on themselves without permission (which would be granted if no other super or cs rep was available in a timely manner). Before that change it was possible (as a cs rep at a cs terminal) to do any number without override as long as the current price wasn’t also a limit price which would make it require two for some reason. They also got really annoying about the override logs around the same time.

        Edit: I mean asking to have more than the limit at that price on the basis that you would have bought them multiple days, rather than a raincheck.