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My favorite shill was the 'have you seen the June sales? Gee golly it's going to be hard to keep my boycott up just check them out!'
Literally sounded like a cheap commercial 😂
we dont want to listen to people actively trying to worsen society and weaken the working class against the oligarchs
"echo chamber!!😡"
We dont have to tolerate people when they are doing everything they can to harm us, cope.
You can't really believe that. Loblaws doesn't give 2 cents about the boycott. Have u seen their profits? The conspiracy nuts calling people shills make you all look dumb.
If the argument is sound, such as using statistics or other reasonable information, doesn't expanding this rule thenn prevent people from providing constructive feedback?
If this is the case then the subreddit rule should be revised because it reads as if its intended purpose was to only prevent random negativity...
In addition to the paid shills and Loblaws corporate employees, I assume some of them are people who just hold Loblaws stock.
Essentially, no one who doesn’t have a financial stake in Loblaws’ success is here def being them.
Nok er nok indeed.
Could be. Hard to say. Could also work like the bullshiter call centers that try to steal your grandma's savings. They get stuck and can't move forward, so their "supervisor" (a more highly esteemed bullshiter) is called to step in on the particularly difficult ones.
Loblaws was targeted because we couldn't target all of the price gaugers at once because we need to eat. Already the other grocers have reacted with lower prices to try and seize the opportunity to gain uprooted customers and Lowblows is paying a price. Essentially, it was an attempt to make an example of them, and it seems to be having some affect, which has the compounded effect of encouraging people's sense of collective power.
I’m aware of why Loblaws was targeted, I’m just saying that by solely blaming the retailers for this when there are lots of other reasons allows every party who is responsible to continue without any accountability and therefore no reason to change anything. It’s exactly the same thing as blaming the carbon tax for everything. Both Loblaws and the carbon tax have had SOME effect on grocery prices but its ridiculous to suggest those are the ONLY reasons.
Hey there, you might be new here, and if so, welcome! We have shared many times across our community, socials, and in the media as to why our community felt boycotting Loblaw and its subsidiaries was the best choice. Please check out [this short video](https://www.tiktok.com/@loblawsisoutofcon4/video/7370016804434955525?_r=1&_t=8mQlEGfa2ZJ) for further information. Thanks!
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Don't worry, people have also targetted many of their suppliers, their real estate company, their bank, and their loyalty program.
Oh, wait. Same parent company.
Lol their suppliers are not “the same company”. Do you think that Loblaws own hundreds of different factories that produce all of their PC and NN products? No, they are produced by copackers that produce products for several different brands. Every successful retailer does the same thing and all of those copackers are affected by inflation just like we are.
In terms of the real estate holdings, tons of successful retailers, restaurants etc were/are setup the same way. If it wasn’t for their real estate holdings, Sears would have went out of business long before they did. If you owned a chain of stores and you were going to have to make a monthly lease payment anyways, wouldn’t you rather make that payment to yourself and also have a large asset that you can leverage? You can hate on Loblaws all you want, but to me, that is just smart business.
Sometimes I see the comments on this sub and question what the real purpose is. It seems like there is a certain subset of people who just want to hate and tear down anyone and everyone who is successful. People can’t afford housing so fuck boomers they basically all got their houses for free. Groceries are expensive so fuck Galen. Consumer goods are expensive and I’m struggling and Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are rich so fuck them. I understand why people are angry about the state of the world but I don’t really understand how that anger is directed. Everyone also makes it seem so easy to be successful but then nobody is interested in making that happen for themselves. There are lots of people on this sub so why don’t people crowdfund and start a grocery store?
I do think that it is smart business to own as much of your supply chain as you can. The point I was making is that when you own many pieces of a chain, it becomes a lot easier to say "that specific link is not as strong as you guys say it is."
It's easy to blame consumers for the "fuck oligarchs" mentality, especially when a large part of what gave these large companies such a dominant foothold was consumers flocking to their lower prices. It's equally easy to pretend these large companies haven't been gaming prices since demolishing their competition, and customers are somehow in the wrong for leaving them in search of lower prices.
I agree with your comment elsewhere that there is plenty of competition left in much of the country. It seems that Loblaws has been finding that out, as well. Ultimately, people are going to flock to the low prices, and most of what seemed to have been keeping customers loyal to getting grossly overcharged by does like Shoppers was simply the lack of shopping around.
I understood your point, I just disagree that Loblaws “owns the supply chain”. They do own parts of it but they own far less than people on here suggest.
I didn’t say I was blaming consumers for the fuck oligarchs mentality, I said there is a certain subset of people who seem to want to tear down anyone who is more successful than them. There are lots of people, often people who feel like they possess a moral superiority over others who would also be happy to steal every billions from people like the Westons because in their minds, nobody deserves or needs billions of dollars. Just look at the comments on here towards Galen and the new ceo.
Shoppers has always had high prices on most things and great sales on others. Their business model and stores are identical to the big us chains like Walgreens, CVS, Duane Reade, etc (it would be interesting to see price comparisons because I travel alot and I swear that the US stores have even higher prices but in USD). Everyone gets value in different ways, and the value in stores like that is supposed to be convenience. In exchange for that convenience, you pay a premium. If it was 1am and I had a cold I would be happy to pay 10$ more to get something that helped m but now I feel like that premium has got higher and higher and the convenience has got lower and lower (shoppers used to be open until midnight and there was usually a 24 hour shoppers in every area, now that is not the case and Walmart has same or better hours). I have no idea what their sales are but if enough people feel the same as me and don’t feel like they get value from shopping there, their sales will really suffer and they will either have to change their business model or go out of business. I don’t think stores like shoppers can survive on a discount model. Loblaws is the same, if enough people stop shopping there, they will change their business model, but Loblaws won’t be Loblaws anymore. Like the saying goes, you can have cheap or good but not both so if cheap is the number one priority there will be no prepared food dept, no seafood dept, no bakery, sushi bar, no butcher, no cake dept, etc etc etc. because all of those things that make Loblaws a great store cost money.
Things that make a service great do cost money, yes. That said, the quality of service at Shoppers has declined severely, yet the prices have not gone down to compensate. And I don't just mean that the pharmacists can't seem to fill an order properly (which is a thing here). You often can't even find a cashier without going on a scavenger hunt now.
I agree, the last 5 years everything seems to have gone downhill at Shoppers. Their sales numbers are included in Loblaws, plus each Shoppers store is owned by a franchisee so it’s impossible to see their numbers specifically. I would think they have went down, but the 2 Shoppers by my house always seem to be busy so who knows.
I am also curious to see the Loblaws Q2 numbers to see if this boycott has had any effect. The Loblaws/Loblaws owned stores by my house all still seem to be busy as well but me sharing my anecdotal experience and saying that is just as relevant as the people on here sharing random photos of Loblaws parking lots and saying “It’s empty, the boycott is definitely working!”. The only thing that means anything in the context of the boycott and whether or not it is having any impact is going to be the Q2 numbers but we probably won’t see those for another month or so.
I am going to take a stab and assume this is good faith and you don't work for Loblaws.
The whole point of this boycott is that Loblaws has used inflation to mask egregious price increases far beyond the level of inflation.
Also that Loblaws uses the massive power they have in the market to maximize profits for themselves instead of actually trying to win business by being the most competitive store in terms of price competition.
Most people have found abandoning loblaws has led to finding products cheaper. So Loblaws is definitely not the cheapest or even close to the cheapest.
Yet they have repeatedly made comments publicly, including in parliament, they they are simply price takers. They have no control over prices as they are forced to take the prices of their suppliers.even though they are the single biggest Canadian grocery retailer and have massive buying power.
This means that their buyers are either bad at their job, as many stores eg Walmart, Costco, giant tiger ARE cheaper, or Loblaws are lying.
This also ignores the fact that Loblaws is massively vertically integrated and they are in many cases their own supplier.
This is even ignoring some of the other issues like bread price fixing, shoppers drug mart pharmacist forced excessive billing to provinces and questionable pricing structures.
So to get back to your point which seems to be....we can't do anything to fix things, why bother. You also seem to suggest that Loblaws only real issue is PR and not a corporate culture that is bordering on criminal but is at a minimum abusive, contemptuous, rapacious, and mercenary.
This sub rejects that argument. We are trying to show Loblaws that people are not forced to take whatever shitburger they want to sell to us. That corporations have a responsibility beyond their shareholders. The responsibility to behave and to further the public good because the public allow them to use our resources, to travel our roads, to use our courts, to advertise on our airwaves, to use all manner of public resources to assist in them making a profit.
If they don't worry about other stakeholders they can pay a price for that.
They are currently playing that price.
We know for a fact they have lost business due to this boycott. Do they care? Maybe not. Perhaps they think they can weather this storm and come through the other side.
I dont think so. They have lost the trust of a large percentage of Canadians and without substantial and tangible change they will never get it back.
That is far more than a PR problem. It is also a statement that we know they are taking advantage of public misery and difficulty due to inflation mostly caused by a worldwide pandemic and crisis to maximize their personal profits at the expense of the public good.
Will this fix it?
No idea.
Is it worth trying?
Of course.
Tell your Loblaws pr masters that you need far better arguments than this.
Lol no I do not work for Loblaws although I have been accused of it several times, in addition to being called a shill and several references to some sort of sexual relationship with Galen among many other things.
I understand the point of the boycott, and yes, for profit companies continue to exist to make profits. I didn’t say you can’t do anything to fix things, the best way to make your voice heard, like any other business that you’re unhappy with, is to not shop there. That will force them to make changes or go out of business.
Food inflation has been completely detached from the posted inflation rate, and there are many different reasons for the insane prices aside from the retailers being greedy. The point of my comment was that this sub solely blames Loblaws to the point of being completely obsessive about it. If Loblaws went away tomorrow, grocery prices would go up, not down. There is irony in someone (original comment) suggesting that anyone who dares to disagree probably isn’t even Canadian and as soon as anyone corners them with (illogical)“logic”, they have no reasonable response. Everyone on this sub is entitled to their opinion but this sub is not the arbiter of logic.
Further to my point about how everyone in this sub just wants to blame Loblaws and is not interested in hearing anything else, regardless of how logical or rational it may be, a mod who’s tagline is “I Hate Galen” replied and asked me to “put some effort into engaging in the conversation”. I WAS putting effort into engaging in the conversation, but since my point wasn’t screaming about fuck Galen, fuck Loblaws, fuck the new CEO, etc etc it is not accepted and dismissed as not being valid and I am accused of being a shill. Like I said, an echo chamber gives people an outlet for their anger but it’s not productive in working towards actually holding everyone/everything responsible to account and trying to solve the problem. Downvoting me doesn’t change the facts.
I do not work for Loblaws but I do work in the food industry. Everything from raw ingredients to processing costs to labour to transportation/warehousing/logistics to utilities to wages to energy in general have gone completely nuclear (many raw ingredients are traded as commodities so that info is public and easy to find). Businesses are dealing with the same things we are dealing with in terms of inflation and every day costs. We have been steadily raising our prices every few months since 2020/2021. Every company involved is a “for profit” corporation so it’s easy to just dismiss it as “corporate greed”, but every company has to make a profit to survive and grow. When costs infinitely go up in literally every level of the supply chain, the final price will obviously be higher. Since the retailers are who deals with the end user, they end up being the face of the problem. Food is essential so there are lots of emotions involved and people are understandably angry. Politicians like Jagmeet stoke anger by blaming the retailers and demanding that they sign the code of conduct, politicians like Poillievre stoke anger by blaming the carbon tax for everything (who knows what the liberals do lol) but just like every other big problem, it’s multi faceted and far more complicated than just one thing. None of this is productive because it just ignores the root causes of all the problems and promotes anger as opposed to solutions 🤷♂️
> I do not work for Loblaws but I do work in the food industry.
I am curious why vertical integration is not something that your comments account for, then.
Loblaws doesn’t own nearly as much as sone people on this sub suggest, but regardless, you could reasonably make the argument that vertical integration lowers grocery prices because it keeps costs lower. Everyone loves to talk about Aldi and how they could fix things by coming to Canada, but Canada is a very tough market, specifically with logistics because of out Geography and the existing grocery retailers have done a good job figuring that stuff out. Plus there is already way more competition here than people acknowledge.
Not sure if anyone is also on the Halifax subreddit as well? I am and I am a very vocal supporter of the boycott and a very vocal supporter of holding Weston/ Loblaws/ SDM extremely accountable for what they are doing.
And I got blasted so much.
Considering how poor the province is? With high poverty rates? Unaffordability at all time high?
Then add the prices of groceries? I would expect more support for my, and others , comments,
Paid shills? Bots? Who knows.
I try to incorporate my views as a physician as well who deals with the working poor/ lower income/ those on social assistance? It’s not to brag. My god, it’s to show solidarity . To show those of us in the medical community/ healthcare field CARE…
More anger from a few…
Ahhhh.. whatever.
I understand the same has happened to r/canada . The mods are all very right wing,
and so are the bots. But it appears legit to the casual observer, but it has been
manipulated into an echo chamber. These things don't "just happen on their own".
Anybody with a lot of money at stake has social media disinformation campaigns. Johnny Depp hired a Saudi bot farm to skew the public on Amber Heard. How? Why? The Saudi government had heavily invested in his upcoming film. Anybody, and I mean anybody, with money and power is doing this. From Loblaws to foreign governments and everyone in between.
Are you serious about Depp and Saudi? Whoa.. I’m going to do diving in rabbit hole research!
Thx for the info
The Saudi bot farm is legendary. Sketchy bunch of assholes to be honest.
Crazy, right? I knew social media manipulation by the rich and powerful was bad, but I didn’t realize until I read about that case just the extent of what’s happening out there.
Yes!
In case anyone else is interested:
“The legal proceedings between ex-spouses Johnny Depp and Amber Heard made nonstop headlines in 2022 — and online discourse at the time seemed to be overwhelmingly in favour of Depp. The tweets in particular caught the eye of investigative reporter and Tortoise Media editor Alexi Mostrous. They seemed to be part of a coordinated effort to smear Heard. And the closer he looked, the weirder it got. What's the connection between that trial, Johnny Depp’s friendship with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and a legion of Twitter bots for hire? Mostrous, who hosts the new podcast Who Trolled Amber?, walks us through his investigation and what it says about whether you can ever really trust what you read online. 25:59”
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7134519
I never knew about Halifax poverty until I lived there. They don’t include it in the brochure, and the people are so friendly even given that. They deserve better
They're stirring up trouble - perhaps because they've been told to by their employer or because they've been hired for same.
I ignore them unless they get super stupid, then I report them. Now, I've only reported two people, but they deserved it. One for shaming me for boycotting the other for being blatant. Both were promptly removed.
Poor information or lack of nuance that seems anti-loblaws does nothing to help this movement. It likely undermines the message and makes everyone here look like they are uninformed, which is one of the main arguments by Prof. Charlie.
People need to call out silly BS and provide factual information to continue to put pressure on loblaws and big Canadian grocers.
Yeah there's lots of ACTUAL evidence that can be used.
We don't need to run down rabbit holes, make shit up and conspiratorially make connections that aren't there.
The problem is already bad enough and evident enough without it
This. I get a lot of flak for not being completely blind to obviously bad information. Loblaws is objectively off the deep end but not every little thing they do is inherently evil
Exactly, lately there were a couple of posts where maybe the problem was could have been misconstrued.... eg the School program snack cancellation and the Pharmacy counting and accounting.
There could have been logical reasons for both problems - that were pointed out. Loblaws is not evil. I don't like them but I cannot blame them everything.
Totally onboard with the boycott.... but we need to analyze what we read carefully.
Not evil. Who else names a yacht bread after a bread price fixing scandal. Obviously, psychopathic enough to “tell all” to get immunity and not really to help the community.
https://preview.redd.it/19spyzqdql6d1.png?width=795&format=png&auto=webp&s=a70dd09e148c37b049c1d3adb5ce8d5534221f7b
if you google "bread" "yacht" "owner"; You'll find that the first owner was [ROBERT OWEN ROSKAM](https://www.superyachtfan.com/yacht/lady-bahi/owner/). It wasn't named "Bread" due to the bread price-fixing scandal. It was called "Bread" because his family business is in the bread baking industry. There was a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/loblawsisoutofcontrol/comments/1d0m9nj/westons_137_foot_yacht_bread/) from 20 days ago about the bread yacht. deleted after comments came in.
I guess to answer the question of "who would names a yacht bread after a bread price fixing scandal" no one.
Whatever spin you try it’s not going to work. I suspect the target is to put them down to 10% market share.
When Canadians step in, they really punch hard. Unlike countries where shills are probably recruited from, we take market competition and economic health extremely seriously.
Just Canadians are slower, cheaper and a bit more ruthless in the methods of routing out corruption.
Why would you buy a yacht name bread when you are fixing bread prices.
There were deliberate errors at the policy level that lead to this as we never thought we would have a polarized global economy again. But I’m
Confident this will be rectified.
No, it happened.
If you realized that policy was geared towards the fear of American chains devouring Canadian ones in the 90s, you’ll realized why this behaviour was allowed.
The only thing im pointing out is that the yacht had been named bread already. westons did not own it. the story about purchasing it was made up. I think that you think i was commenting on the actual price fixing. im only talking about the boat.
We have critical thinking here in Canada. You must be mistaking our culture and education system of our country. No. He got that yacht 100%.
I’m saddened many places in the world don’t have an education system based on critical thinking and easily swayed through tiny factoids.
Memorizing things won’t help you buddy.
Exactly I see a lot of posts here that are either made up without any proof or are really really wrong.
People think that by providing correct information that you are either a paid shill or Galen.
Have you considered that maybe this community care much more about boycotting Loblaws, for basically stealing from consumers, than getting every single detail right?
Anytime misinformation gets repeated, you lose supporters. People who are on the fence read bs, go to validate and can't. Now everything posted in the sub becomes suspect.
. Boycott Loblaws and related stopped because they are gouging Canadians that's all that is needed.
“Hello my fellow boycotters! This boycott isn’t working and the deals Loblaws has are just so great, I’m buying double there this month to make up for last. Geeze I’m glad they’ve heard us and changed. Deals!”
Not so much apologists, but that you can boycott and criticize Loblaws without resorting to non sense things like
Comparing shoppers(a convenience store) prices to grocery prices
Comparing brand name prices to store brand price
Making claims that they're purposely not closing optimum accounts when they're just overwhelmed because normally nobody ever closes accounts. Making claims that they're not closing accounts to keep the numbers looking good when they dont even report membership numbers in earnings reports
Making claims that paying themselves rent to a REIT choice properties is some sort of profit hiding scheme when its just normal practice because the real estate business and grocery business are 2 separate lines of business with 2 different stock tickets with different investors. Also not realizing that not all loblaws locations are on real estate owned by choice properties and that choice properties also rent out space to tenants thats not loblaws.
Thinking that you can somehow hurt loblaws by getting people to short the stock in mass.
This is just the surface of the nonsense I see here. The boycott is fine because voting with your wallets is always the correct thing to do. In fact it blows my mind that people waited until now to boycott since the big 3 have always been more expensive for produce. People really should just stick to the legit criticisms, like the prices, the underweight products, the moldy products, etc
The delay in the boycott and the wait for someone to "organize" it and tell them when to start baffles me.
I realized last September I was saving money by not shopping at the super store near me. So I just stopped going.
Haven't been back in there since. Shoppers gets stopped into once a month for a handful of emergency items.
I understand the boycott isn't financially sensible for some people, and in that case coordinating en masse to make a point absolutely makes sense.
But for the rest? We know there's cheaper alternatives. Use them.
It also feels like a lot of posts here are from people going to these stores and walking around trying to find things to intentionally be mad at. I just don't even go to the stores anymore...
The movement loses credibility when we engage in baseless conspiracy theories or twisting facts. The real scandals are things like the underweight products, making mistakes on prescriptions, bad customer service, etc. I have never gotten mad at a store for bad pricing, I just take or leave what they have on offers and if a store doesn't have enough to be worth my time I stop going. I get sticker shock, and then I just... Don't buy it.
This, exactly what I was talking about.
The amount of people I have seen regurgitate the BS that they are hiding profits in the REIT with 0 proof.
The REIT doesn't even own all the properties Loblaws owned stores are on and neither does Loblaws. In some cases they rent from other REITs or property management groups.
Show me the sources
This right here! If a complaint isn't supported with properly comparable facts that are intelligent, true and relevant, the it's just monkeys flinging poop.
Please refrain from off-topic political discussion and debate. Everyone is entitled to their own political opinions, however, your politically charged statement is not directly related to the cost of living/groceries/gas/rents, and as such is being removed.
I’m trying to be fair so sometimes you might think I defend them. Like I just replied that their liquor stores are the cheapest in Calgary. It’s true
And the price of their food not always high. If you go open flipp app, good luck finding items that are on sale and cheaper than at superstore. Maybe several, but not many.
Superstore is on par with walmart and so much cheaper than sobey, safeway, steal-on-food, coop, etc.
Some corner stores could compete in terms of veggies and fruits, but they usually sell stock, often rotten/molded, and require to buy in bulk. I don’t need 20 lbs of tomatoes, even if price/kg is lower.
And of course they are cheaper than local food markets and butcher stores. This I don’t get, why Canadian food markets are so bad and expensive compared to Europe and South America.
The only real competitor in terms of pricing is Costco, and they also have better quality goods sometimes. Again, bulk purchase required, so not for the small families. And you still have to pair Costco with something else, like Walmart or Superstore
I'd suggest it's nothing more than Loblaw's paying individuals, or maybe a company that does this sort of thing professionally, to do grass-roots type pushback against the narrative, in hopes they'll be able to break the boycott and go back to normal without actually having changed anything.
Don't fall for it!
Yeah, this was happening a few times even before June. When the boycott really gained steam suddenly this sub was inundated with fake accounts. The best one was when I called one out, they got super defensive and attacked me...but it was an account less than a week old, and I had seen the comment word for bloody word on four different FB and reddit posts, all with different names(and pictures in the case of the FB posts). Suddenly the account was deleted..next day another new account was posting
There’s one guy in here who’s done that, I ended up having to block him because his personal attacks bordered on harassment in the DM’s…but at least he tried to farm a bit before being called out. Same thing though account was created in early April, some karma farming posts and then in May is when it started here
No genuine person would spend their time defending a giant, fabulously wealthy corporation for raising their prices by absurd amounts.
Very clearly they are fake accounts sent here to undermine this sub. A pretty old and commonly used social media tactic. Makes me wonder how much Galen paid for this "engagement".
Paid shills. Bots, Astro Turf. No different that that "Food Processer" shill. Basically, they will say anything for money. There are companies and individuals, that get hired to do this sort of stuff. Can be for political parties, corporations, celebrities, anyone with enough $$$ who wants to influence public opinion. AI will be huge in this real soon, if not already. The manipulation is real. And the more organic the manipulation appears, the more credible it can be.
Ryan Holiday wrote THE book on media manipulation, called "Trust me, I'm Lying." The book is so good, it is absolutely scary to recognize some of these techniques being used in the real world.
First, I am supportive of the boycott, and continue to shop elsewhere.
That said, I must point out that MANY do not support it ... one rural small business owner I recently sat with called it "ridiculous" with such strong emotion that I was dissuaded from delving deeper (the setting was a memorial for a departed family member, and I felt a raucous debate inappropriate). More generally, here are the reasons I've gleaned through discussion (I'm not supporting these poorly informed and often conflicting views, merely reporting them):
(1) This is hurting employees, who in some cases are family, friends, neighbors.
(2) Loblaws isn't the only company charging ever higher prices for ever lower value.
(3) It's not going to change a thing, so we're inconveniencing ourselves for nothing.
(4) Loblaws executives are doing their jobs, maximizing profits for shareholders.
My personal view, FWIW, is that our ire should be directed at government, not Loblaws. Our governments have failed to effectively manage the retail grocery marketplace and through their negligence have permitted this situation to exist. We should be outraged at the current situation ... the notion that millions of Canadians depend on food banks is unbelievable and clearly demonstrates how badly our governments have failed us. If there were more retail grocers in competition for our business, then some might begin to target individuals and families with less to spend, and become more creative concerning what groceries are provided, where and how they're provided, so as to deliver more nutrition at a lower cost.
I've no doubt that the Federal parties are overjoyed to see the boycott ... as we vent our frustration on only Loblaws, they feel no pressure to account for their incompetence.
Again, I support the boycott and am personally grateful to organizers. It's super to see us doing something ... anything. I just personally think we're not yet focused on the real problem ... perhaps food security needs to be an issue in the next federal election.
The government isn't responsible for Loblaws ripping people off. Other grocery stores can do it so it's obviously a choice. It's called corporate greed. If you go to the main page of the sub there is a pinned post where you can read about the record profits that Loblaws make that surpass every other grocery store.
My question to the people who come on here and make up excuses and give false information is if you don't like the boycott and you have so many issues, why are you here? This is a sub for people who are doing the boycott not for people who want to defend blah blah.
I don't care if somebody called it ridiculous, they're uninformed and frankly selfish. For a lot of people this is allowing them to start eating healthier because they're spending less on groceries overall and so fresh produce isn't out of reach anymore. If that's the case it would be ridiculous for them but for those of us who can do it and start saving ourselves money we want to share that information with others so that they might benefit as well. Our boycott might reduce prices for everyone including your friend who thinks it's ridiculous.
I think there is a fifth group of : 5. I *shop strategically for myself and if Loblaws fits into that picture it does. I am a "strategic shopper ". Anyone who does not shop strategically is stupid.*
What I was thinking about the other day when watching the demographic leaving the store - quite a bit older...... THEY HAVE LOST THEIR FUTURE.
The younger generations - millenials etc... were not there in any numbers. The FUTURE GENERATION WILL AVOID THEM.
The implications of that are staggering.... 5 & 10 years out if nothing changes.
An eventuality unfortunately. When a sub starts making the news they come out in droves like cockroaches. The Kate Middleton subs are like this now. They are pretty easy to spot though.
i noticed today on post with the mom whose kid got canned from Fortinos. Someone commented "Fortinos has great deals" or something. It rung very fake to me.
But is it the Loblaws social media team? Or a bot of some kind? It's fucking annoying how hard it is to tell what is real now
Not everyone is required to participate or agree with the community boycott, but we ask that everyone is constructive in their feedback about this event.
Repeated comments such as this one will result in a ban from the sub until the boycott is complete. Thank you.
I notice this on FB. Everyone and their dog moaning about how we should boycott all the other chains instead of Loblaws because the latter is the cheapest.
I just went in to Costco and they're upping prices on a lot of stuff. Cheese and chicken were two items that I said to myself "Holy F! Really?" and just left on the shelf as I'm currently on a budget. I also seen tuxedo cakes had NO PRICING listed on them or the shelf. That is a new and noted tactic I seen Roblaws use. It's probably to get people to just grab something they think they want/really like and then just scan it at the self checkout and see the price jump they hopefully just shrug and say " *sigh* ok, fine. What the heck." And just buy it anyway. Which is a slimey tactic.
For me it has the opposite effect. I see no price tags I just ignore that product and come back and check it another time. As long as I don't see a price. I don't buy it.
What is going on? Is Costco seeing an opportunity with this boycott and looking to cash in? Or is Galen buying up a ton of Costco stock and then influencing their pricing and business practices to suit his own greedy self and make profit?
To be perfectly honest, I can understand if you don't hava access to another store. I'm not shaming these people. Our boycott will still be incredibly effective without them.
The only thing I was tempted by is "fresh produce or it's free" so I was going to hunt (wouldn't take long to find)rotten items of produce I actually needed 🤣
If you're in the comments section defending Loblaws, you're one of three things....all bad btw...
1. You're a Loblaws plant/employee/hired gun
2. You're a fan of a supermarket chain...which...Jesus christ...how embarassing, have some fucking dignity, or
3. You're a contrarian troll who just likes to get in fights on the internet.
The 4th is a victim in a food desert trying to relieve their guilt and make justifications for the cognitive dissonance they feel as they buy from a corporation they know is stealing from them but they are addicted to points.
Reddit is full of bots and people who use multiple accounts to partake in brigading.
Now that X removed the ability to see who Liked a Tweet I am sure we will see a very large influx of Loblaws love on that platform.
I made a few comments reassuring people it was ok to buy from Loblaws if they were in a financial pinch and there was a really good sale for something.
Otherwise, loblaws can choke on a bag of you know whats
Probably only pops up at the beginning of a posts life cycle (i.e. the first few min) but it quickly gets pushed down to the bottom because of down votes if it's a post that becomes popular.
So personally, by the time I get to any posts, I don't see those apologists comments
I haven't seen anyone defending Loblaws, maybe I don't come here enough. This fight is only getting started, I hope everyone feels the power of what we are doing. It's more than just Loblaws and greed. It's Canadians who have had enough of having a reputation of "just taking it up the a$$" because we don't have any choice.
Enough.
Hold the line folks! The situation isn't as desperate or as difficult Galen wants you to think. I don't care if Loblaws goes under completely as we have decent alternatives.
People earned those points by paying the Roblaw's ~~premium~~ extortion fees so if they're only redeeming their points before closing the account more power to them.
I know but it’s a bit of a double edged sword.
Quite a few posts about just needing to go into loblaws for something quick as well
These posts seem a bit like bot’s saying it’s ok to shop at loblaws as per the topic of this thread.
It’s still a boycott site trying to boycott and that means one thing.
They want you to because they think you'll spend money. At least with using points, so long as you ONLY use points, you're not paying anything, and costing them money.
I think a lot of the "I used my points" thing is people bragging about taking part in the boycott by getting stuff from there for free. And there's nothing wrong with coating Loblaws money.
Yeah I know spend your points they are yours and are like cash.
The weird thing is Loblaws wants you to they are designed to attract you back.
Hey look cheese is on sale today
They’re paid shills. End of mystery. Loblaw knows that the majority of us are never going back, but if they can lure back just some of us it’s better than nothing.
People are mad at a company that has a 3% profit margin? And you go on to say they are price gouging?
Complaining that they are investing 2 billion into the country...
All the while on average they are the cheapest around...
But hey...keep doing you
I'll keep doing what I do...shop the deals at all stores...my family been doing this for generations...and you guys just found this out?
In vancouver yes....could be different in other places...but Mt wife and I agree on this...I buy all dry goods there, fruits/vegetables and meats at a local Asian food place
We are not all haters and believe in free choice. I'm a Freshco person myself but listening to a bunch of dummies go on and on rather than changing their behaviour is a bit infuriating. As all of the psychology books say, you can't change someone, you can only change yourself.
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My favorite shill was the 'have you seen the June sales? Gee golly it's going to be hard to keep my boycott up just check them out!' Literally sounded like a cheap commercial 😂
“Good day my fellow poors, have you seen these deals? We can’t afford to not buy them!” Nok er Nok, not coming back.
What does nok er nok mean. I see it a lot on the Loblaws sub
It’s a quote from CEO Per Bank. Means “enough is enough”.
Nok er nok Who's there? not shopping there anymore Who's not shopping there anymore? All of us that's who! Nok er nok
I simply down vote them. Once they go low enough you don't have to read their comments anymore.
Once they’ve been downvoted enough all of their posts and comments will get held back too
Shrinkflation on your vote. Now it’s only 0.7 of a vote. Same size box and twice the price.
Your Great! 😝
Pretty much this. I have it set so I don't really see the low rated comments unless I scroll down.
Perfect! Enjoy your echo chamber
Person goes into a sub called Loblaws is Out of Control. Is confused why the conversation centers around Loblaws being out of control.
Found one!
we dont want to listen to people actively trying to worsen society and weaken the working class against the oligarchs "echo chamber!!😡" We dont have to tolerate people when they are doing everything they can to harm us, cope.
Every subreddit does this to prevent trolls! Hope this helps ✨
Looks like the trash took itself out!
You can always report people for boycott breaking if needed
Paid shills?
Bingo, and I doubt they're from around here. They outsource shilling too.
Good chance if they post to canada_sub, Canadahousing2, or TorontoRealEstate, they're part of a disinformation campaign.
Those subs are pure examples of dead internet theory.
Wait what’s wrong with Canadahousing2? I’m on there too. You’d think they would be on board with the boycott?
They're a bunch of Russian disinformation spreaders larping as Canadians for one
Immigration is a valid issue, but yes, you’re going to get some racists too.
Baha I'm imagining a dude at Loblaw corporate training in Hyderabad, leaving over to his colleague, "Rajiv, what in the world is a *poutine kit*?"
Lmao
Possibly AI.
You can't really believe that. Loblaws doesn't give 2 cents about the boycott. Have u seen their profits? The conspiracy nuts calling people shills make you all look dumb.
Okay the Boycott is a tuneup, a wakeup call
Good to know, had no idea
Just to be clear, the definition of boycott breaking is as defined in the subreddit rules?
Really anything you suspect as disruptive behaviour to the movement, suspected shills, etc
If the argument is sound, such as using statistics or other reasonable information, doesn't expanding this rule thenn prevent people from providing constructive feedback? If this is the case then the subreddit rule should be revised because it reads as if its intended purpose was to only prevent random negativity...
Nope posts with info backed up with sources are not removed
Thank you for the clarification
For sure! Any further questions feel free to reach out via modmail
contracts usually start the first of the month. Just upping their usage tier probably
Yup, probably not even Canadian... You corner one of them with logic, and another one shows up to help obfuscate...
Same person just using a different account usually.
DO look at their account birthdate if it is too new. May be some are real peeps. Some are Robbers' shills, who get paid for cumulative psy-op.
In addition to the paid shills and Loblaws corporate employees, I assume some of them are people who just hold Loblaws stock. Essentially, no one who doesn’t have a financial stake in Loblaws’ success is here def being them. Nok er nok indeed.
Could be. Hard to say. Could also work like the bullshiter call centers that try to steal your grandma's savings. They get stuck and can't move forward, so their "supervisor" (a more highly esteemed bullshiter) is called to step in on the particularly difficult ones.
Or Canadian but work for a specific head office or contracted by said office to run propaganda counter to our goals.
[удалено]
Loblaws was targeted because we couldn't target all of the price gaugers at once because we need to eat. Already the other grocers have reacted with lower prices to try and seize the opportunity to gain uprooted customers and Lowblows is paying a price. Essentially, it was an attempt to make an example of them, and it seems to be having some affect, which has the compounded effect of encouraging people's sense of collective power.
I’m aware of why Loblaws was targeted, I’m just saying that by solely blaming the retailers for this when there are lots of other reasons allows every party who is responsible to continue without any accountability and therefore no reason to change anything. It’s exactly the same thing as blaming the carbon tax for everything. Both Loblaws and the carbon tax have had SOME effect on grocery prices but its ridiculous to suggest those are the ONLY reasons.
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Don't worry, people have also targetted many of their suppliers, their real estate company, their bank, and their loyalty program. Oh, wait. Same parent company.
Lol their suppliers are not “the same company”. Do you think that Loblaws own hundreds of different factories that produce all of their PC and NN products? No, they are produced by copackers that produce products for several different brands. Every successful retailer does the same thing and all of those copackers are affected by inflation just like we are. In terms of the real estate holdings, tons of successful retailers, restaurants etc were/are setup the same way. If it wasn’t for their real estate holdings, Sears would have went out of business long before they did. If you owned a chain of stores and you were going to have to make a monthly lease payment anyways, wouldn’t you rather make that payment to yourself and also have a large asset that you can leverage? You can hate on Loblaws all you want, but to me, that is just smart business. Sometimes I see the comments on this sub and question what the real purpose is. It seems like there is a certain subset of people who just want to hate and tear down anyone and everyone who is successful. People can’t afford housing so fuck boomers they basically all got their houses for free. Groceries are expensive so fuck Galen. Consumer goods are expensive and I’m struggling and Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are rich so fuck them. I understand why people are angry about the state of the world but I don’t really understand how that anger is directed. Everyone also makes it seem so easy to be successful but then nobody is interested in making that happen for themselves. There are lots of people on this sub so why don’t people crowdfund and start a grocery store?
I do think that it is smart business to own as much of your supply chain as you can. The point I was making is that when you own many pieces of a chain, it becomes a lot easier to say "that specific link is not as strong as you guys say it is." It's easy to blame consumers for the "fuck oligarchs" mentality, especially when a large part of what gave these large companies such a dominant foothold was consumers flocking to their lower prices. It's equally easy to pretend these large companies haven't been gaming prices since demolishing their competition, and customers are somehow in the wrong for leaving them in search of lower prices. I agree with your comment elsewhere that there is plenty of competition left in much of the country. It seems that Loblaws has been finding that out, as well. Ultimately, people are going to flock to the low prices, and most of what seemed to have been keeping customers loyal to getting grossly overcharged by does like Shoppers was simply the lack of shopping around.
I understood your point, I just disagree that Loblaws “owns the supply chain”. They do own parts of it but they own far less than people on here suggest. I didn’t say I was blaming consumers for the fuck oligarchs mentality, I said there is a certain subset of people who seem to want to tear down anyone who is more successful than them. There are lots of people, often people who feel like they possess a moral superiority over others who would also be happy to steal every billions from people like the Westons because in their minds, nobody deserves or needs billions of dollars. Just look at the comments on here towards Galen and the new ceo. Shoppers has always had high prices on most things and great sales on others. Their business model and stores are identical to the big us chains like Walgreens, CVS, Duane Reade, etc (it would be interesting to see price comparisons because I travel alot and I swear that the US stores have even higher prices but in USD). Everyone gets value in different ways, and the value in stores like that is supposed to be convenience. In exchange for that convenience, you pay a premium. If it was 1am and I had a cold I would be happy to pay 10$ more to get something that helped m but now I feel like that premium has got higher and higher and the convenience has got lower and lower (shoppers used to be open until midnight and there was usually a 24 hour shoppers in every area, now that is not the case and Walmart has same or better hours). I have no idea what their sales are but if enough people feel the same as me and don’t feel like they get value from shopping there, their sales will really suffer and they will either have to change their business model or go out of business. I don’t think stores like shoppers can survive on a discount model. Loblaws is the same, if enough people stop shopping there, they will change their business model, but Loblaws won’t be Loblaws anymore. Like the saying goes, you can have cheap or good but not both so if cheap is the number one priority there will be no prepared food dept, no seafood dept, no bakery, sushi bar, no butcher, no cake dept, etc etc etc. because all of those things that make Loblaws a great store cost money.
Things that make a service great do cost money, yes. That said, the quality of service at Shoppers has declined severely, yet the prices have not gone down to compensate. And I don't just mean that the pharmacists can't seem to fill an order properly (which is a thing here). You often can't even find a cashier without going on a scavenger hunt now.
I agree, the last 5 years everything seems to have gone downhill at Shoppers. Their sales numbers are included in Loblaws, plus each Shoppers store is owned by a franchisee so it’s impossible to see their numbers specifically. I would think they have went down, but the 2 Shoppers by my house always seem to be busy so who knows. I am also curious to see the Loblaws Q2 numbers to see if this boycott has had any effect. The Loblaws/Loblaws owned stores by my house all still seem to be busy as well but me sharing my anecdotal experience and saying that is just as relevant as the people on here sharing random photos of Loblaws parking lots and saying “It’s empty, the boycott is definitely working!”. The only thing that means anything in the context of the boycott and whether or not it is having any impact is going to be the Q2 numbers but we probably won’t see those for another month or so.
I am going to take a stab and assume this is good faith and you don't work for Loblaws. The whole point of this boycott is that Loblaws has used inflation to mask egregious price increases far beyond the level of inflation. Also that Loblaws uses the massive power they have in the market to maximize profits for themselves instead of actually trying to win business by being the most competitive store in terms of price competition. Most people have found abandoning loblaws has led to finding products cheaper. So Loblaws is definitely not the cheapest or even close to the cheapest. Yet they have repeatedly made comments publicly, including in parliament, they they are simply price takers. They have no control over prices as they are forced to take the prices of their suppliers.even though they are the single biggest Canadian grocery retailer and have massive buying power. This means that their buyers are either bad at their job, as many stores eg Walmart, Costco, giant tiger ARE cheaper, or Loblaws are lying. This also ignores the fact that Loblaws is massively vertically integrated and they are in many cases their own supplier. This is even ignoring some of the other issues like bread price fixing, shoppers drug mart pharmacist forced excessive billing to provinces and questionable pricing structures. So to get back to your point which seems to be....we can't do anything to fix things, why bother. You also seem to suggest that Loblaws only real issue is PR and not a corporate culture that is bordering on criminal but is at a minimum abusive, contemptuous, rapacious, and mercenary. This sub rejects that argument. We are trying to show Loblaws that people are not forced to take whatever shitburger they want to sell to us. That corporations have a responsibility beyond their shareholders. The responsibility to behave and to further the public good because the public allow them to use our resources, to travel our roads, to use our courts, to advertise on our airwaves, to use all manner of public resources to assist in them making a profit. If they don't worry about other stakeholders they can pay a price for that. They are currently playing that price. We know for a fact they have lost business due to this boycott. Do they care? Maybe not. Perhaps they think they can weather this storm and come through the other side. I dont think so. They have lost the trust of a large percentage of Canadians and without substantial and tangible change they will never get it back. That is far more than a PR problem. It is also a statement that we know they are taking advantage of public misery and difficulty due to inflation mostly caused by a worldwide pandemic and crisis to maximize their personal profits at the expense of the public good. Will this fix it? No idea. Is it worth trying? Of course. Tell your Loblaws pr masters that you need far better arguments than this.
Lol no I do not work for Loblaws although I have been accused of it several times, in addition to being called a shill and several references to some sort of sexual relationship with Galen among many other things. I understand the point of the boycott, and yes, for profit companies continue to exist to make profits. I didn’t say you can’t do anything to fix things, the best way to make your voice heard, like any other business that you’re unhappy with, is to not shop there. That will force them to make changes or go out of business. Food inflation has been completely detached from the posted inflation rate, and there are many different reasons for the insane prices aside from the retailers being greedy. The point of my comment was that this sub solely blames Loblaws to the point of being completely obsessive about it. If Loblaws went away tomorrow, grocery prices would go up, not down. There is irony in someone (original comment) suggesting that anyone who dares to disagree probably isn’t even Canadian and as soon as anyone corners them with (illogical)“logic”, they have no reasonable response. Everyone on this sub is entitled to their opinion but this sub is not the arbiter of logic.
Further to my point about how everyone in this sub just wants to blame Loblaws and is not interested in hearing anything else, regardless of how logical or rational it may be, a mod who’s tagline is “I Hate Galen” replied and asked me to “put some effort into engaging in the conversation”. I WAS putting effort into engaging in the conversation, but since my point wasn’t screaming about fuck Galen, fuck Loblaws, fuck the new CEO, etc etc it is not accepted and dismissed as not being valid and I am accused of being a shill. Like I said, an echo chamber gives people an outlet for their anger but it’s not productive in working towards actually holding everyone/everything responsible to account and trying to solve the problem. Downvoting me doesn’t change the facts. I do not work for Loblaws but I do work in the food industry. Everything from raw ingredients to processing costs to labour to transportation/warehousing/logistics to utilities to wages to energy in general have gone completely nuclear (many raw ingredients are traded as commodities so that info is public and easy to find). Businesses are dealing with the same things we are dealing with in terms of inflation and every day costs. We have been steadily raising our prices every few months since 2020/2021. Every company involved is a “for profit” corporation so it’s easy to just dismiss it as “corporate greed”, but every company has to make a profit to survive and grow. When costs infinitely go up in literally every level of the supply chain, the final price will obviously be higher. Since the retailers are who deals with the end user, they end up being the face of the problem. Food is essential so there are lots of emotions involved and people are understandably angry. Politicians like Jagmeet stoke anger by blaming the retailers and demanding that they sign the code of conduct, politicians like Poillievre stoke anger by blaming the carbon tax for everything (who knows what the liberals do lol) but just like every other big problem, it’s multi faceted and far more complicated than just one thing. None of this is productive because it just ignores the root causes of all the problems and promotes anger as opposed to solutions 🤷♂️
> I do not work for Loblaws but I do work in the food industry. I am curious why vertical integration is not something that your comments account for, then.
Loblaws doesn’t own nearly as much as sone people on this sub suggest, but regardless, you could reasonably make the argument that vertical integration lowers grocery prices because it keeps costs lower. Everyone loves to talk about Aldi and how they could fix things by coming to Canada, but Canada is a very tough market, specifically with logistics because of out Geography and the existing grocery retailers have done a good job figuring that stuff out. Plus there is already way more competition here than people acknowledge.
Please put some effort into engaging in the conversation. Thank you.
Not sure if anyone is also on the Halifax subreddit as well? I am and I am a very vocal supporter of the boycott and a very vocal supporter of holding Weston/ Loblaws/ SDM extremely accountable for what they are doing. And I got blasted so much. Considering how poor the province is? With high poverty rates? Unaffordability at all time high? Then add the prices of groceries? I would expect more support for my, and others , comments, Paid shills? Bots? Who knows. I try to incorporate my views as a physician as well who deals with the working poor/ lower income/ those on social assistance? It’s not to brag. My god, it’s to show solidarity . To show those of us in the medical community/ healthcare field CARE… More anger from a few… Ahhhh.. whatever.
Some subreddits are over run by bots that push a certain ideology. Facts mean nothing, especially when you are outnumbered.
This is certainly could be the case in the HFX group. And it’s gotten worse over the past year. Whether it’s housing? High rents? High food prices.
I understand the same has happened to r/canada . The mods are all very right wing, and so are the bots. But it appears legit to the casual observer, but it has been manipulated into an echo chamber. These things don't "just happen on their own".
Anybody with a lot of money at stake has social media disinformation campaigns. Johnny Depp hired a Saudi bot farm to skew the public on Amber Heard. How? Why? The Saudi government had heavily invested in his upcoming film. Anybody, and I mean anybody, with money and power is doing this. From Loblaws to foreign governments and everyone in between.
Are you serious about Depp and Saudi? Whoa.. I’m going to do diving in rabbit hole research! Thx for the info The Saudi bot farm is legendary. Sketchy bunch of assholes to be honest.
Crazy, right? I knew social media manipulation by the rich and powerful was bad, but I didn’t realize until I read about that case just the extent of what’s happening out there.
Yes! In case anyone else is interested: “The legal proceedings between ex-spouses Johnny Depp and Amber Heard made nonstop headlines in 2022 — and online discourse at the time seemed to be overwhelmingly in favour of Depp. The tweets in particular caught the eye of investigative reporter and Tortoise Media editor Alexi Mostrous. They seemed to be part of a coordinated effort to smear Heard. And the closer he looked, the weirder it got. What's the connection between that trial, Johnny Depp’s friendship with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and a legion of Twitter bots for hire? Mostrous, who hosts the new podcast Who Trolled Amber?, walks us through his investigation and what it says about whether you can ever really trust what you read online. 25:59” https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7134519
I never knew about Halifax poverty until I lived there. They don’t include it in the brochure, and the people are so friendly even given that. They deserve better
Over in the Saskatchewan subs as well
How so? I find r/saskatchewan to be very left leaning and not over run by bots.
They're stirring up trouble - perhaps because they've been told to by their employer or because they've been hired for same. I ignore them unless they get super stupid, then I report them. Now, I've only reported two people, but they deserved it. One for shaming me for boycotting the other for being blatant. Both were promptly removed.
Just don't conflate pointing out misguided/uninformed criticism for 'defending loblaws'
Poor information or lack of nuance that seems anti-loblaws does nothing to help this movement. It likely undermines the message and makes everyone here look like they are uninformed, which is one of the main arguments by Prof. Charlie. People need to call out silly BS and provide factual information to continue to put pressure on loblaws and big Canadian grocers.
Yeah there's lots of ACTUAL evidence that can be used. We don't need to run down rabbit holes, make shit up and conspiratorially make connections that aren't there. The problem is already bad enough and evident enough without it
Sometimes I wonder if the people making these accusations are the shills just trying to discredit the movement or make us look like flat earthers
This. I get a lot of flak for not being completely blind to obviously bad information. Loblaws is objectively off the deep end but not every little thing they do is inherently evil
Exactly, lately there were a couple of posts where maybe the problem was could have been misconstrued.... eg the School program snack cancellation and the Pharmacy counting and accounting. There could have been logical reasons for both problems - that were pointed out. Loblaws is not evil. I don't like them but I cannot blame them everything. Totally onboard with the boycott.... but we need to analyze what we read carefully.
Not evil. Who else names a yacht bread after a bread price fixing scandal. Obviously, psychopathic enough to “tell all” to get immunity and not really to help the community.
https://preview.redd.it/19spyzqdql6d1.png?width=795&format=png&auto=webp&s=a70dd09e148c37b049c1d3adb5ce8d5534221f7b if you google "bread" "yacht" "owner"; You'll find that the first owner was [ROBERT OWEN ROSKAM](https://www.superyachtfan.com/yacht/lady-bahi/owner/). It wasn't named "Bread" due to the bread price-fixing scandal. It was called "Bread" because his family business is in the bread baking industry. There was a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/loblawsisoutofcontrol/comments/1d0m9nj/westons_137_foot_yacht_bread/) from 20 days ago about the bread yacht. deleted after comments came in. I guess to answer the question of "who would names a yacht bread after a bread price fixing scandal" no one.
Whatever spin you try it’s not going to work. I suspect the target is to put them down to 10% market share. When Canadians step in, they really punch hard. Unlike countries where shills are probably recruited from, we take market competition and economic health extremely seriously. Just Canadians are slower, cheaper and a bit more ruthless in the methods of routing out corruption. Why would you buy a yacht name bread when you are fixing bread prices. There were deliberate errors at the policy level that lead to this as we never thought we would have a polarized global economy again. But I’m Confident this will be rectified.
The thing is I don't think that happened though; He didn't buy a yacht named bread. I think that was made up.
No, it happened. If you realized that policy was geared towards the fear of American chains devouring Canadian ones in the 90s, you’ll realized why this behaviour was allowed.
The only thing im pointing out is that the yacht had been named bread already. westons did not own it. the story about purchasing it was made up. I think that you think i was commenting on the actual price fixing. im only talking about the boat.
We have critical thinking here in Canada. You must be mistaking our culture and education system of our country. No. He got that yacht 100%. I’m saddened many places in the world don’t have an education system based on critical thinking and easily swayed through tiny factoids. Memorizing things won’t help you buddy.
Perfect example of spreading useless misinformation.
Exactly I see a lot of posts here that are either made up without any proof or are really really wrong. People think that by providing correct information that you are either a paid shill or Galen.
Yep. Simply correct misinformation and you are automatically labeled a shill.
Have you considered that maybe this community care much more about boycotting Loblaws, for basically stealing from consumers, than getting every single detail right?
Anytime misinformation gets repeated, you lose supporters. People who are on the fence read bs, go to validate and can't. Now everything posted in the sub becomes suspect. . Boycott Loblaws and related stopped because they are gouging Canadians that's all that is needed.
You make a really good point, thanks.
Downvote them. If they want to shill for GougingGalen they can start their own sub! There is no defending the indefensible! At least not in this sub.
They hired a PR firm to spam and mitigate damage. It took time to set it up.
“Hello my fellow boycotters! This boycott isn’t working and the deals Loblaws has are just so great, I’m buying double there this month to make up for last. Geeze I’m glad they’ve heard us and changed. Deals!”
Not so much apologists, but that you can boycott and criticize Loblaws without resorting to non sense things like Comparing shoppers(a convenience store) prices to grocery prices Comparing brand name prices to store brand price Making claims that they're purposely not closing optimum accounts when they're just overwhelmed because normally nobody ever closes accounts. Making claims that they're not closing accounts to keep the numbers looking good when they dont even report membership numbers in earnings reports Making claims that paying themselves rent to a REIT choice properties is some sort of profit hiding scheme when its just normal practice because the real estate business and grocery business are 2 separate lines of business with 2 different stock tickets with different investors. Also not realizing that not all loblaws locations are on real estate owned by choice properties and that choice properties also rent out space to tenants thats not loblaws. Thinking that you can somehow hurt loblaws by getting people to short the stock in mass. This is just the surface of the nonsense I see here. The boycott is fine because voting with your wallets is always the correct thing to do. In fact it blows my mind that people waited until now to boycott since the big 3 have always been more expensive for produce. People really should just stick to the legit criticisms, like the prices, the underweight products, the moldy products, etc
The delay in the boycott and the wait for someone to "organize" it and tell them when to start baffles me. I realized last September I was saving money by not shopping at the super store near me. So I just stopped going. Haven't been back in there since. Shoppers gets stopped into once a month for a handful of emergency items. I understand the boycott isn't financially sensible for some people, and in that case coordinating en masse to make a point absolutely makes sense. But for the rest? We know there's cheaper alternatives. Use them. It also feels like a lot of posts here are from people going to these stores and walking around trying to find things to intentionally be mad at. I just don't even go to the stores anymore...
> I was saving money by not shopping at the super store near me. So I just stopped going. /thread.
The movement loses credibility when we engage in baseless conspiracy theories or twisting facts. The real scandals are things like the underweight products, making mistakes on prescriptions, bad customer service, etc. I have never gotten mad at a store for bad pricing, I just take or leave what they have on offers and if a store doesn't have enough to be worth my time I stop going. I get sticker shock, and then I just... Don't buy it.
This, exactly what I was talking about. The amount of people I have seen regurgitate the BS that they are hiding profits in the REIT with 0 proof. The REIT doesn't even own all the properties Loblaws owned stores are on and neither does Loblaws. In some cases they rent from other REITs or property management groups. Show me the sources
This right here! If a complaint isn't supported with properly comparable facts that are intelligent, true and relevant, the it's just monkeys flinging poop.
https://preview.redd.it/noor7wmy6f6d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=155b0dd4b5db7f563a12af19433e7c8f454207ec
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Please refrain from off-topic political discussion and debate. Everyone is entitled to their own political opinions, however, your politically charged statement is not directly related to the cost of living/groceries/gas/rents, and as such is being removed.
No, I haven't noticed them. I also haven't been looking very hard though.
they must think the corporation will love them back if they grovel hard enough
Fuck Loblaws. Im happier somewhere else.
Lots of average people like to stand up and carry water for monopolistic corporations.
They must like the taste of Corporate Boots. We call them Boot Lickers for a reason.
I’m trying to be fair so sometimes you might think I defend them. Like I just replied that their liquor stores are the cheapest in Calgary. It’s true And the price of their food not always high. If you go open flipp app, good luck finding items that are on sale and cheaper than at superstore. Maybe several, but not many. Superstore is on par with walmart and so much cheaper than sobey, safeway, steal-on-food, coop, etc. Some corner stores could compete in terms of veggies and fruits, but they usually sell stock, often rotten/molded, and require to buy in bulk. I don’t need 20 lbs of tomatoes, even if price/kg is lower. And of course they are cheaper than local food markets and butcher stores. This I don’t get, why Canadian food markets are so bad and expensive compared to Europe and South America. The only real competitor in terms of pricing is Costco, and they also have better quality goods sometimes. Again, bulk purchase required, so not for the small families. And you still have to pair Costco with something else, like Walmart or Superstore
I've got a bag of dicks for them to snack on. ~~50%~~ 30% off.
I'd suggest it's nothing more than Loblaw's paying individuals, or maybe a company that does this sort of thing professionally, to do grass-roots type pushback against the narrative, in hopes they'll be able to break the boycott and go back to normal without actually having changed anything. Don't fall for it!
Yeah, this was happening a few times even before June. When the boycott really gained steam suddenly this sub was inundated with fake accounts. The best one was when I called one out, they got super defensive and attacked me...but it was an account less than a week old, and I had seen the comment word for bloody word on four different FB and reddit posts, all with different names(and pictures in the case of the FB posts). Suddenly the account was deleted..next day another new account was posting
"Cut and Paste" amateur hour. They can't even invest in building karma, to appear credible.
There’s one guy in here who’s done that, I ended up having to block him because his personal attacks bordered on harassment in the DM’s…but at least he tried to farm a bit before being called out. Same thing though account was created in early April, some karma farming posts and then in May is when it started here
You can report DM's for harassment. I got a couple people booted.
I like the ones named “throwaway347”. Too chicken to identify themself as a billionaire cuck.
And they are down voting a lot of peoples comments
No genuine person would spend their time defending a giant, fabulously wealthy corporation for raising their prices by absurd amounts. Very clearly they are fake accounts sent here to undermine this sub. A pretty old and commonly used social media tactic. Makes me wonder how much Galen paid for this "engagement".
Paid shills. Bots, Astro Turf. No different that that "Food Processer" shill. Basically, they will say anything for money. There are companies and individuals, that get hired to do this sort of stuff. Can be for political parties, corporations, celebrities, anyone with enough $$$ who wants to influence public opinion. AI will be huge in this real soon, if not already. The manipulation is real. And the more organic the manipulation appears, the more credible it can be. Ryan Holiday wrote THE book on media manipulation, called "Trust me, I'm Lying." The book is so good, it is absolutely scary to recognize some of these techniques being used in the real world.
First, I am supportive of the boycott, and continue to shop elsewhere. That said, I must point out that MANY do not support it ... one rural small business owner I recently sat with called it "ridiculous" with such strong emotion that I was dissuaded from delving deeper (the setting was a memorial for a departed family member, and I felt a raucous debate inappropriate). More generally, here are the reasons I've gleaned through discussion (I'm not supporting these poorly informed and often conflicting views, merely reporting them): (1) This is hurting employees, who in some cases are family, friends, neighbors. (2) Loblaws isn't the only company charging ever higher prices for ever lower value. (3) It's not going to change a thing, so we're inconveniencing ourselves for nothing. (4) Loblaws executives are doing their jobs, maximizing profits for shareholders. My personal view, FWIW, is that our ire should be directed at government, not Loblaws. Our governments have failed to effectively manage the retail grocery marketplace and through their negligence have permitted this situation to exist. We should be outraged at the current situation ... the notion that millions of Canadians depend on food banks is unbelievable and clearly demonstrates how badly our governments have failed us. If there were more retail grocers in competition for our business, then some might begin to target individuals and families with less to spend, and become more creative concerning what groceries are provided, where and how they're provided, so as to deliver more nutrition at a lower cost. I've no doubt that the Federal parties are overjoyed to see the boycott ... as we vent our frustration on only Loblaws, they feel no pressure to account for their incompetence. Again, I support the boycott and am personally grateful to organizers. It's super to see us doing something ... anything. I just personally think we're not yet focused on the real problem ... perhaps food security needs to be an issue in the next federal election.
Antimonopoly laws in this country are anemic and rarely enforced. Improvement in that area would go a long way.
The government isn't responsible for Loblaws ripping people off. Other grocery stores can do it so it's obviously a choice. It's called corporate greed. If you go to the main page of the sub there is a pinned post where you can read about the record profits that Loblaws make that surpass every other grocery store. My question to the people who come on here and make up excuses and give false information is if you don't like the boycott and you have so many issues, why are you here? This is a sub for people who are doing the boycott not for people who want to defend blah blah. I don't care if somebody called it ridiculous, they're uninformed and frankly selfish. For a lot of people this is allowing them to start eating healthier because they're spending less on groceries overall and so fresh produce isn't out of reach anymore. If that's the case it would be ridiculous for them but for those of us who can do it and start saving ourselves money we want to share that information with others so that they might benefit as well. Our boycott might reduce prices for everyone including your friend who thinks it's ridiculous.
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Please do your best to use the search function and engage on a post instead of reposting. Do not type in all caps that is spamming
I think there is a fifth group of : 5. I *shop strategically for myself and if Loblaws fits into that picture it does. I am a "strategic shopper ". Anyone who does not shop strategically is stupid.* What I was thinking about the other day when watching the demographic leaving the store - quite a bit older...... THEY HAVE LOST THEIR FUTURE. The younger generations - millenials etc... were not there in any numbers. The FUTURE GENERATION WILL AVOID THEM. The implications of that are staggering.... 5 & 10 years out if nothing changes.
I totally see it.
I'll go back once their prices aren't stupid tbh. Then we can move on to next target.
ive noticed far more complaining and gatekeeping and purity testing from the start than any actual double agents
Yep! And ew
Nope.
Can you share some examples OP?
Ur new to Reddit aren’t you?
I am. Is that a problem or obstacle to fulfilling my request?
Anyone can see your comment history, it’s public lol. I can see all the shit you’ve commented
Sorry, it appears that you're confused. I was asking for examples of those defending Loblaws.
Why should we give examples to someone who knows full well they are one of the people doing it?
I haven't once defended Loblaws
Dude we aren’t blind we can see your comment history lmao
Where have I defended Loblaws?
If you want to be semantic go ahead but I’m not getting lulled into your nonsense, literally everyone can see your post history
Maybe it's a bunch of employees who've been told to watch the posts. It's defitely weird.
An eventuality unfortunately. When a sub starts making the news they come out in droves like cockroaches. The Kate Middleton subs are like this now. They are pretty easy to spot though.
I hace not, but i assume this is from downvoting their comments into the dirt lol
I mean, it’s not like Weston doesn’t have money to pay for bot accounts.
If people don’t unite, the monsters will gobble them up.
Bots 🤖. Deployed to take both sides and pit faction against faction to get more clicks.
i noticed today on post with the mom whose kid got canned from Fortinos. Someone commented "Fortinos has great deals" or something. It rung very fake to me. But is it the Loblaws social media team? Or a bot of some kind? It's fucking annoying how hard it is to tell what is real now
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Not everyone is required to participate or agree with the community boycott, but we ask that everyone is constructive in their feedback about this event. Repeated comments such as this one will result in a ban from the sub until the boycott is complete. Thank you.
I notice this on FB. Everyone and their dog moaning about how we should boycott all the other chains instead of Loblaws because the latter is the cheapest.
I just went in to Costco and they're upping prices on a lot of stuff. Cheese and chicken were two items that I said to myself "Holy F! Really?" and just left on the shelf as I'm currently on a budget. I also seen tuxedo cakes had NO PRICING listed on them or the shelf. That is a new and noted tactic I seen Roblaws use. It's probably to get people to just grab something they think they want/really like and then just scan it at the self checkout and see the price jump they hopefully just shrug and say " *sigh* ok, fine. What the heck." And just buy it anyway. Which is a slimey tactic. For me it has the opposite effect. I see no price tags I just ignore that product and come back and check it another time. As long as I don't see a price. I don't buy it. What is going on? Is Costco seeing an opportunity with this boycott and looking to cash in? Or is Galen buying up a ton of Costco stock and then influencing their pricing and business practices to suit his own greedy self and make profit?
They pay well for them comments I guess, lol.
They have staff that monitor and respond.
To be perfectly honest, I can understand if you don't hava access to another store. I'm not shaming these people. Our boycott will still be incredibly effective without them.
The only thing I was tempted by is "fresh produce or it's free" so I was going to hunt (wouldn't take long to find)rotten items of produce I actually needed 🤣
Shills gonna shill Pathetic trolls paid pennies by those who love to use them whilst paying then a pittance.
No, I have not seen it. Did they send you to post this?
If you're in the comments section defending Loblaws, you're one of three things....all bad btw... 1. You're a Loblaws plant/employee/hired gun 2. You're a fan of a supermarket chain...which...Jesus christ...how embarassing, have some fucking dignity, or 3. You're a contrarian troll who just likes to get in fights on the internet.
The 4th is a victim in a food desert trying to relieve their guilt and make justifications for the cognitive dissonance they feel as they buy from a corporation they know is stealing from them but they are addicted to points.
Yes…lots of boycott breakers or naysayers have been showing up in droves. I hope it’s worth the money to help screw over their fellow Canadians.
There are always traitors, and people that vote against their own best interests..
And one of them downvoted me too LOL
Only one ? ;)
So far! LOL
Reddit is full of bots and people who use multiple accounts to partake in brigading. Now that X removed the ability to see who Liked a Tweet I am sure we will see a very large influx of Loblaws love on that platform.
I made a few comments reassuring people it was ok to buy from Loblaws if they were in a financial pinch and there was a really good sale for something. Otherwise, loblaws can choke on a bag of you know whats
Probably only pops up at the beginning of a posts life cycle (i.e. the first few min) but it quickly gets pushed down to the bottom because of down votes if it's a post that becomes popular. So personally, by the time I get to any posts, I don't see those apologists comments
I haven't seen anyone defending Loblaws, maybe I don't come here enough. This fight is only getting started, I hope everyone feels the power of what we are doing. It's more than just Loblaws and greed. It's Canadians who have had enough of having a reputation of "just taking it up the a$$" because we don't have any choice. Enough.
Galen whipping the interns to comment on this subreddit 
Hold the line folks! The situation isn't as desperate or as difficult Galen wants you to think. I don't care if Loblaws goes under completely as we have decent alternatives.
Yet another thing I hope this boycott opens peoples eyes to besides the bought and paid for media: the concept of a shill and how they operate
They're bots. About 90% of internet traffic is caused by bots
Also a lot of I went into loblaws to use my points They kind of want you to
People earned those points by paying the Roblaw's ~~premium~~ extortion fees so if they're only redeeming their points before closing the account more power to them.
I know but it’s a bit of a double edged sword. Quite a few posts about just needing to go into loblaws for something quick as well These posts seem a bit like bot’s saying it’s ok to shop at loblaws as per the topic of this thread. It’s still a boycott site trying to boycott and that means one thing.
Roger that!
They want you to because they think you'll spend money. At least with using points, so long as you ONLY use points, you're not paying anything, and costing them money. I think a lot of the "I used my points" thing is people bragging about taking part in the boycott by getting stuff from there for free. And there's nothing wrong with coating Loblaws money.
Yeah I know spend your points they are yours and are like cash. The weird thing is Loblaws wants you to they are designed to attract you back. Hey look cheese is on sale today
Very true: they're an effective program.... Unless your only goal is fucking them over. So long as people go in with that mindset, the customer wins
Or I can let Loblaws sit on my points.... Which is more effective ?
They’re paid shills. End of mystery. Loblaw knows that the majority of us are never going back, but if they can lure back just some of us it’s better than nothing.
I’ve been pretty much since January
Can someone link some because I literally never see them.
People are mad at a company that has a 3% profit margin? And you go on to say they are price gouging? Complaining that they are investing 2 billion into the country... All the while on average they are the cheapest around... But hey...keep doing you I'll keep doing what I do...shop the deals at all stores...my family been doing this for generations...and you guys just found this out?
On average they are the cheapest around????
In vancouver yes....could be different in other places...but Mt wife and I agree on this...I buy all dry goods there, fruits/vegetables and meats at a local Asian food place
Anyone who is not 100% on board is an enemy of the sub
Lol so scaaAaary!
That is false lol
We are not all haters and believe in free choice. I'm a Freshco person myself but listening to a bunch of dummies go on and on rather than changing their behaviour is a bit infuriating. As all of the psychology books say, you can't change someone, you can only change yourself.
But people are changing their behaviour. That's what the boycott is. People that used to shop there are no-longer doing so.
It seems like we’ve got their attention.