Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Freebie Mandarins - Happy Lunar New Year!

Today is the Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year.  Yesterday I took Mom grocery shopping and we both walked away with free mandarin oranges thanks to the Scanning Code of Practice.  This is a voluntary program for Canadian retail stores that use scanning codes - if the price charged is higher than the price listed by the product then you don't just get the price corrected, you get it for free (max 1 item or $10).
 In this case I had a feeling we were going to be overcharged as there were 2 different bins of mandarins with different prices.  I am trying to check every single grocery receipt this year before I leave the store due to so many errors last year found afterwards at home.  The produce manager was nearby so I let him know and then we went to customer service for our adjustments.  I didn't know the SCOP applied to produce but apparently at Loblaws it does, in this case, it was a Superstore.  Not all stores participate in this program, you have to ask at each store to see if they do - but it is in their best interest to do so, they immediately become aware of mispricing and can correct the issue to prevent further customer service issues.



So my overcharged mandarins($2.13) returned to being super cheap mandarins (.93) and then they were free!  Even nicer that Mom and I both got this freebie- she had quite a few more mandarins than I did.

the correct price

In other news we did get snow but as the temperature dropped below minus 5 degrees Celcius the snow that came was light and fluffy and we only got about a half an inch so no shoveling - nice because hubby is still sick and it would have been me shoveling as I am back to feeling 90% better.  I am not complaining, many have bitter cold temperatures right now in Canada and the US and would love to see our temperatures.  The only thing I wish is that the hummingbirds had somewhere warm to go, I really wish they wouldn't stay her year round but I have been bringing in the food every night and putting it out every morning so it doesn't freeze.  I have two that eat at my feeder regularly and one was chirping away at me (they chirp like a fighter jet) when I took Buddy out yesterday.  He is staying very close to the feeder all day long.  Obviously he needs calorie high syrup so I made up a batch of super sugar infused bird crack and they are guarding it ferociously.

Flowers generally start blooming here this time of year, things like crocus and snowdrops - which is why they stay.  We have daffodils and tulips in late February and March.  It generally feels like Spring here much earlier than the rest of Canada.  Even though it was cold it was sunny yesterday Buddy kept asking to go out since he is a sun seeker.  When I was making supper I forgot him out there - a firm loud single bark indicated he was waiting at the door and wasn't happy about being left outside.  

My goals this week are to get further along with our new corporate website, take our corporate year end to the accountant, start uploading information to turbotax to see  how much we need to contribute to RRSPs before the end of February to alleviate any tax bill and to go to Moms to do a decluttering.  I am also doing a declutter at home - so far I have thrown 4 items out that had no life left and sold 10 books on our bidding site, money goes into the fishing fund.  You have to start somewhere!


11 comments:

  1. Free food is always good! Weis has a free if it rings up incorrectly policy as well....but only the first one you buy. If you buy 2 the second one is what you should have paid. I don't know about produce by the lb. though as I have never had this issue when something sold by the lb.-if you get as many lbs. as you bought free or just the first lb. free.

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    1. Ours is free up to $10 or in the case of a non-sold by the pound item max 1 free. I love that - in the past have gotten $10 worth of laundry detergent free, but that was several years ago

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  2. Good catch on the oranges. Our hummers here also guard the feeders even though there are hundreds of blooms to dine from. The other day someone started to tell me how her husband had built something to keep their food from freezing in the cold snowy winter. We got interrupted so I never got the rest of the story. I will try and find out.

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    1. Hummingbirds are really neat, I love having them come into the yard. The day the neighbors looked at their property to purchase we were all standing in the front yard talking about the neighborhood and were dive bombed by 2 of them....the neighbors were sold. They were coming from a Victoria highrise and loved the thought of hummers in the backyard

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  3. Ooh, I love mandarins... even if I have to pay for them. What a gift!

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  4. I did not realize Publix had a policy until I caught a BOGO that rang up as full price for both items. When I brought it to their attention they re-rang them at the sale price and then removed the sale price of one of them. I don't check the price in the store but I do check while still in the parking lot.
    I love hummingbirds but ours do leave for a couple of months.

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    1. I got really tired of having to go back to the grocery store to get a refund, best to do it while I am there.

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  5. Well done on the mandarins! You've got me thinking I ought to check my receipts as well - I never have.

    Glad your snow and weather wasn't too heavy or bitterly cold. Though -5 is enough to freeze some plants. I suspect the crocus and snow drops are very hardy though and will make it through.

    You definitely have spring before we do. I'll be happy if the snow is gone by the beginning of May. The latest I remember getting a dump here was May 11. We don't even think about putting anything in the ground until the long weekend.

    Have a great week!

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  6. Those flowers are super-hardy. The leaves on my strawberries not so much as now they have frosted but Mom says not to worry, they have lots of time to grow back and our ground is not frozen, they endure much harsher conditions elsewhere. They were so beautiful and healthy last week though, I feel sorry for them. Here people generally can plant in early April. Usually our last cold weather leaves by mid-march and it doesn't frost again till end of October/early November.

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  7. I'm glad you didn't bear the brunt of the storms - my friend in Victoria received a good walloping with more due today I think. We've had a real mixed bag of weather with school being closed twice so far because of the freezing rain. Today's "special" is strong winds and snow squalls.

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