I don’t have to wait for Christmas to get presents. You send it to me every day in my inbox. I discover them, failing to unpack them, with great curiosity, even feverishness. Because most of the time, your relevant observations, your questions and your indignation will dictate my agenda for the day and the following ones.
For this series entitled “With hindsight”, an idea from the boss, I went back to consult the thousands of messages received – and all read carefully – in recent months. But which, for one reason or another, did not turn into chronicles.
You told me extensively about your despair after waiting hours and hours to speak to your bank’s customer service department. Lots of emails, too, about tips, stagnant incomes in retirement, and food prices.
But looking back, then, what messages would have been noteworthy here?
Let’s take advantage of the holiday season to start with a chocolate story about the giant Hershey, known for its Reese’s and its Chipits. The company quietly started selling… imitation chocolate, the watchful Sarah M.
“I have just discovered, to my great surprise, that the Hershey ‘white chocolate chips’ I purchased are not real white chocolate, but rather ‘white cream chips’. I’m all the more amazed at this since I had an unfinished bag of white chocolate chips left at home and the packaging is exactly the same. Same color, same typography, same photo of cookie. Even the recipe on the package is identical. »
However, the two products do not taste the same and do not have the same list of ingredients at all, complains Sarah. Worse, the new product is “made from palm oil”.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY SARAH M.
Old packaging of white chocolate chips
“In my opinion, this is misleading the consumer! In any case, me, they had me since it is a product that I buy regularly and that the packaging is identical to the old product. »
Pure coincidence, I had also been caught, shortly before, buying a big bag of “dark chocolate pastilles”. The price was abnormally low. I even asked the cashier if it was a mistake or the deal of the week. Neither, she replied. Once home, I did what I should have done before: I read the ingredient list. It contained palm oil and no cocoa butter. Grrr…
Thanks to Google, it’s pretty easy to find out what chocolate absolutely must contain and what it can’t contain. But the site of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), which regulates the thing in the country, is less clear. So I contacted her. Could what I bought be called chocolate?
While I waited for the answer, the bag stored in the closet was slowly emptying. As if by magic. Palm oil or not, chocolate or not, the lozenges appeased some cravings!
After five or six email exchanges, the CFIA sent me their entire regulations, forcing me to decipher them myself.
No one was able to tell me whether or not my bag of “dark chocolate” pastilles complied with the rules.
I then turned to the Ministère des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation du Québec (MAPAQ), responsible for verifying the foods sold in the province. I was confirmed that chocolate is a “federally regulated food” and sent the regulations back to me. No one could say whether palm oil can be used in the composition of chocolate. Same cul-de-sac at the ITHQ.
At this point, there were only two pellets left in the one kilo bag at the start. And the flood of news made me drift towards other more urgent and important subjects.
David wrote to me after discovering Interac’s automatic deposit option, which allows you to receive funds without having to answer a security question. He bought a property on Marketplace and, even before going to meet the seller, he registered the transfer to facilitate things on the spot. If the coveted item was his business, he would only have to give the answer to his secret question to the seller. Surprise, the payment was cashed during his trip!
“I am very perplexed by this, because as a consumer I had the impression – and I believe this is legitimate – that if I indicate a password, it is so that it is necessary in order to conclude a transaction. »
Well no, we can all avoid the step of entering the password to receive our funds by activating this function. Readers of this column are now warned to be vigilant.
In closing, here is a question sent by Rosaire G: “Do you know that we cannot return goods to Dollarama? »
That’s what he learned when he returned to the store to get a refund for an unnecessarily purchased storage box. Without success. “I was told that we do not take goods in return. I said they didn’t respect the Consumer Protection Act, the employee tells me that it is written on the invoice. »
It turns out Rosaire was wrong. No merchant is obliged to take back or even exchange the goods sold, unless they are defective. Those who have generous policies do so primarily for marketing reasons.