So, Crappy Tire [1] changed their mind and pleaded guilty to a bunch of violations of Quebec's consumer protection law. Surprising absolutely no one, the charges are largely about advertising items at huge discounts from "regular" prices that the products were never or rarely actually sold at.

https://globalnews.ca/news/11657561/que-canadian-tire-fines/

This is why there's a saying that "If you bought it at Canadian Tire and it wasn't at least 40% off, you got ripped off". The Bay / Hudson Bay is also famous for this kind of BS. Other provinces should also forbid this kind of dishonest manipulation, but they don't.

I wish Canadians wouldn't fall for this kind of marketing crap.

Can I tell you a secret that will save you money?

Crappy Tire sells two types of merchandise:

(1) name-brand stuff like Tupperware or Corning or whatever else
(2) crappy imported Chinesium products [2]

You can always get the first category cheaper at Walmart or other places.

And you can always get the latter cheaper from Princess Auto, or even cheaper than that from various online places. It all comes out of the same factories.

There is never a reason to shop at Crappy Tire.

[1] Widely-used nickname for "Canadian Tire".
[2] The sheer amount of imported junk gives rise to the alternate nickname "Cambodian Tire".

#CrappyTire #CanadianTire #CambodianTire #Chinesium #ripoff #discount #ConsumerProtection
#manipulation #consumer #dishonest #secret #tip #PrincessAuto #AliExpress

Something happens to me occasionally, and I don't know where to put it in the ridiculous - infuriating - preposterous feelingspace. It happened again today.

Backstory: I'm an email geek, who has been running mail servers for three decades, and who has written a lot of mail-handling software. I've worked as a consultant on email systems for companies large and small.

When you run your own mailservers, have deep experience with MTAs, and are a bit of a privacy nut, you might have a tendency to want to know exactly who does what with your email address when you give it to them. For most people, this desire is just a dream; it's not possible with their email system.

Thanks to a technique semi-related to #VERP - variable envelope return-path, a mailing list feature with the qmail MTA - it's possible for email geeks. Basically the idea is that you give a different email address to everyone you deal with, and keep track of who you gave it too. Then, when you receive email, you can tell from the address the email was delivered *to* - one of your many addresses - where they got your address from.

Example:

Say I own the `example.net` domain. I arrange for all email to that domain to come to me.

I decide to order something online from #CrappyTire (ask a Canadian). When the Crappy Tire website asks for my email address, I type in "[email protected]".

1/x

#FeelingSpace #ColourSpace #email #tracking #spam #MTA