This man is not your boyfriend; Loblaw boasts big profits: CBC’s Marketplace cheat sheet
Miss something this week? Don’t panic. CBC’s Marketplace rounds up the consumer and health news you need.
Want this in your inbox? Get the Marketplace newsletter every Friday.
If your online boyfriend is this man, he’s a catfish
Two months ago, Go Public reporter Erica Johnson shared the strange story of a man who tried to lure her into a romance scam on Instagram.
Johnson called him out, told him she was a journalist, and had never believed he was the man in the photos.
He admitted he’s actually a 26-year-old Nigerian. He claimed he lives in poverty and said he preys on women using photos stolen from an attractive man’s Facebook page.
After that story aired, the man in the scammer’s photos contacted Go Public. He was actually Sigi Fink, a weatherman from Italy, working for the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation.
He posts a lot on social media — often shirtless, or working out at the gym — and two years ago was voted sexiest man in Austria.
Fink said he likes to use his face “for good” — entertaining people with his weathercasts — but our story, he said, was the opposite.
“It’s quite a terrible thing to see your face in a news story where people are being harmed,” he said, in an interview from Vienna.
Being in the limelight is one thing, says Fink, but to find himself suddenly in Canada’s news concerned him.
“I thought, ‘I have to tell people I’m innocent,'” he said. “I’m a good guy. I tell the weather. It just feels horrible.” Read More
Loblaw reported $13.58 billion in Q1 revenue, as a boycott of its stores kicks off
Canadians frustrated with rising groceries prices have pledged to boycott Loblaw-owned stores for the month of May. On the same day it was set to begin, Canada’s largest grocer reported a nearly 10 per cent increase in profits.
It’s a 4.5 per cent increase from the year earlier, and on the same day the report was released, a group of frustrated shoppers on Reddit said they would begin a month-long boycott of the grocery retailer.
The company’s quarterly profit was $459 million, marking a 9.8 per cent increase. It hiked its quarterly dividends to shareholders by 15 per cent.
A group of shoppers who say they are fed up with the company’s grocery prices said that as of Wednesday they would start boycotting the retailer’s flagship Loblaws stores and its offshoot brands, including No Frills, Provigo and City Market.
The Reddit group “Loblaws is out of control” had 62,000 members as of Wednesday. It is not known how many people will participate in the boycott.
Responding to the online boycott, a company spokesperson told CBC News that Loblaw is “acutely aware” that it has to win its customers’ business each day.
“The last few years have been tough for Canadians, and we continue to do what we can to combat inflation at our stores,” the spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday evening.
“Customers are noticing, with more visits in our stores and many commenting in the same Reddit groups that they’re getting real value at our stores, often the best across the industry.”
David Soberman, a marketing professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, says those kinds of statements ring hollow with consumers who have watched their grocery bills go up.
“They think to themselves, ‘Well, what that guy was saying and what I’m experiencing are two different things,'” he said. Read More
Hate self-checkouts? More stores are ditching them amid theft and consumer complaints
In 2020, Walmart started testing cashierless, all-self-checkout big box stores, first in the United States and then in Canada.
But the pilot project didn’t quite catch on. Walmart tells CBC News that, currently, just one big box location across Canada and the U.S. has an all-self-checkout, cashier-free format — in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, a small town in Quebec.
Meanwhile, over the past eight months, the retail giant has removed all its self-checkout machines at six U.S. locations, joining several other big box chains that have ditched the machines in certain stores, including, recently, a Giant Tiger in Stratford, Ont.
It’s a surprising shift in the predicted trajectory — instead of the all-self-checkout store becoming the norm, some retail outlets are returning to the traditional, all-cashier format.
“Stores anticipated that this technology would allow them to significantly reduce labour costs,” said Christopher Andrews, a sociologist and author of The Overworked Consumer: Self-Checkouts, Supermarkets, and the Do-It-Yourself Economy.
But instead of cutting costs, some stores discovered that self-checkout actually hurt their bottom line, largely due to theft, says Andrews.
“I think they’re just losing so much [money] that it just becomes an economic liability.”
Two weeks ago, franchise owner Scott Savage removed the four self-checkout machines at his Giant Tiger discount store in Stratford, some 90 kilometres west of Hamilton.
He says, rather than theft, he made the change because many of his customers are seniors who dislike using the machines.
Several customers told CBC News they were happy the store no longer has self-checkout.
“I like the person-to-person contact,” said Leslie Clayton-Winget. “You can’t say to a machine, ‘Have a good day.'”
Another customer said she fears the technology will eliminate jobs. “I’d rather see the people stay employed than [me] doing self-checkout,” said Angela Weber. Read More
What else is going on?
The Bank of Canada governor told MPs “we are getting closer” to cutting interest rates
“We are seeing what we need to see and we just need to be confident that it will be sustained,” the governor said.
The USDA says producers must reduce salmonella bacteria in certain chicken products
It means if a product exceeds the allowed level of salmonella, it can’t be sold.
Got a green thumb?
Incorporating native plants in your garden can be tough, but worth it for our ecosystem, say experts.
Marketplace needs your help!
Are you a senior or retiree who feels burned by your mortgage product, whether you’ve re-financed, or taken out a home equity line of credit or a reverse mortgage? We want to speak to you. Write to us at [email protected].
Are you looking for the latest in business news? You’ll want to subscribe to this newsletter, too.
Mind Your Business is your weekly look at what’s happening in the worlds of economics, business and finance. Subscribe now.
Catch up on past episodes of Marketplace on CBC Gem.
