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Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

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Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#31

Post by gruez »

arcticbull wrote: post #21
gruez wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's one province where people pay roughly half the national average for all there telecom needs - and that's Saskatchewan. SaskTel's mere existence keeps all the majors in line. Source? Looking at sasktel's website and rogers' website, this claim does not pass the sniff test. Their "basic" plan is $60/month (BYOD) for 15GB of data, whereas rogers gives you 75GB for $65. Even if you don't use 15GB of data and tha…

Probably marketing/promos for new customers vs. actual realized, and I strongly suspect if you click through those Rogers plans you'll land on a much higher total cost. https://hellosafe.ca/en/telecommunications/cell-phone-plans/...

I clicked through and see no time limited discount, only a $5 "automatic payments discount", whatever that means.

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#32

Post by throwaway201606 »

99_00 wrote: post #22

1. Online prices are not the same as in store prices 2. No one, other than random people in messages forums, is alleging collusion or price fixing. No one at any university, not the government, not the media. 3. The government’s investigation, which many of the conspiracy theorists site as evidence, shows a lack of competition led to 1 or 2 % increase in price over 12 years, and the vast majority of the price increas…

Want to give you benefit of the doubt with regards to phrasing but tackling each of these statements as they are all factually incorrect:

> 1. Online prices are not the same as in store prices This depends but mostly they match ie online grocer prices in Canada are the same as in-store prices

This is because most grocers have use online prices as flyers / ads / sales pricing for stores.

Also, in Canada, because of price match policies from the grocers themselves, most grocers have to match their own online prices and, in many cases, competitor prices - this includes competitor online prices!!! including sales and flyer offers

https://blog.flipp.com/7-canadian-grocery-stores-that-price-...

Further, there is - pricing law in Canada around charging more than advertised pricing

https://competition-bureau.canada.ca/deceptive-marketing-pra...

- a pricing code of conduct: if an item is more expensive than the listed price, the consumer gets that first item for free. This means that grocers go out of their way to show the lowest correct possible price all the time everywhere.

https://competition-bureau.canada.ca/deceptive-marketing-pra...

The only exception I can think of is delivery prices where in-store pricing will not match the online pricing. But delivery is usually differentiated by completely different branding from the actual store eg Sobey's has the "Voila" brand for delivery and Metro has "metro.ca" as the delivery brand which is distinct from Metro.

> 2. No one, other than random people in messages forums, is alleging collusion or price fixing. No one at any university, not the government, not the media."

This is factually incorrect: grocer bread price fixing / collusion went to court and there was a $500m judgement

https://globalnews.ca/news/10642801/loblaw-bread-price-fixin...

> 3. The government’s investigation, which many of the conspiracy theorists site as evidence, shows a lack of competition led to 1 or 2 % increase in price over 12 years, and the vast majority of the price increases was due to things like war in Ukraine, Covid restrictions, fuel prices due to energy crisis.

Price fixing preceded all these events. In cases being investigated e.g. bread which is now resolved, the period was as far as 15 years back.

https://globalnews.ca/news/10642801/loblaw-bread-price-fixin...

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#33

Post by arcbyte »

ziddoap wrote: post #17
aga98mtl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it is an elaborate psyop to shift the blame of inflation away from the government and toward a boogeyman, the "evil" grocery chains. As you point out the margins are super tight in food retail, it is impossible for it to be the cause of inflation. From the point of view of the average man however, the grocery store is exactly where he is facing inflation daily! This makes it the ideal scapegoat. The average…

> I believe it is an elaborate psyop to shift the blame of inflation away from the government and toward a boogeyman, the "evil" grocery chains In Canada, the grocery stores were caught colluding. Recently. Is it still a "boogeyman" when they were caught in a 15 year long collusion scheme?

Yes, it's still a boogeyman. The bread price increases still amounted to only an extra 1.50 per load of bread over the 15 year period.

For reference, a dozen eggs shot up by a 1.50 since 2022 alone.

Go after the collusion yes but that's not where inflation is coming from.

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#34

Post by gruez »

ziddoap wrote: post #28
arcticbull wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but even during the price fixing period Loblaws' profit margin was sub-5%, and currently sits a 3.3%. Yes, it obviously shouldn't have happened, but there's no piñata of profit just waiting to be smashed apart that would magically drop grocery bills.

That's overall profit margin, right? So they can collude on just a few essentials, like I don't know... Bread maybe? And make an absolute killing on bread and mask those profits by claiming that their overall profits are down?

>So they can collude on just a few essentials, like I don't know... Bread maybe? And make an absolute killing on bread and mask those profits by claiming that their overall profits are down?

1. If they actually want to make a profit, surely it'd make sense to price fix some high value/volume item rather than something cheap like bread? If anything choosing to price fix bread seems more like incompetence than evil villainy.

2. The parent specifically acknowledges that price fixing isn't okay, but his contention is that overall margins is still low. Who cares if margins for a certain item is high? Are you also upset that mcdonalds make orders of magnitude higher margin on soda than burgers?

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#36

Post by ziddoap »

arcbyte wrote: post #33
ziddoap wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe it is an elaborate psyop to shift the blame of inflation away from the government and toward a boogeyman, the "evil" grocery chains In Canada, the grocery stores were caught colluding. Recently. Is it still a "boogeyman" when they were caught in a 15 year long collusion scheme?

Yes, it's still a boogeyman. The bread price increases still amounted to only an extra 1.50 per load of bread over the 15 year period. For reference, a dozen eggs shot up by a 1.50 since 2022 alone. Go after the collusion yes but that's not where inflation is coming from.

>Go after the collusion yes but that's not where inflation is coming from.

The title of the article is "reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector", not "blame grocery for inflation".

Ctrl+f for inflation in the article doesn't even turn up a result.

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#37

Post by Scoundreller »

arcticbull wrote: post #14
tomComb wrote: post #5

Oh man, we really need this for telecom too. And even more important than their collusion is their political corruption, so the government protects them from competition and funnels endless billions in taxpayer money to them.

You know what actually works great for reducing the price of cell plans in Canada is a public option. There's one province where people pay roughly half the national average for all there telecom needs - and that's Saskatchewan. SaskTel's mere existence keeps all the majors in line. Manitobans should be absolutely up in arms over the privatization of Manitoba Telecom. Canada has a ton of land and just not that many p…

> there's a pile of bodies there proving my point

They make great organ donors though!

(Not all were economic failures: you can also be a successful and scrappy going concern and that gets you acquired by bigger pockets with a rubber stamp from government that thinks bigger firms are better for all)

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#38

Post by arcticbull »

gruez wrote: post #31
arcticbull wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably marketing/promos for new customers vs. actual realized, and I strongly suspect if you click through those Rogers plans you'll land on a much higher total cost. https://hellosafe.ca/en/telecommunications/cell-phone-plans/...

I clicked through and see no time limited discount, only a $5 "automatic payments discount", whatever that means.

I looked again after your response, the Rogers plans all state "for new customers only" which is probably the discrepancy. Every time I speak with my parents I'm shocked how much they're paying and I have to spend an hour renegotiating.

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#39

Post by fallingknife »

aga98mtl wrote: post #16
fallingknife wrote: post #10

Why on earth are people and government stooges suddenly targeting grocery stores for collusion and price gouging? If there is an industry with a lower profit margin, I'm not aware of it.

I believe it is an elaborate psyop to shift the blame of inflation away from the government and toward a boogeyman, the "evil" grocery chains. As you point out the margins are super tight in food retail, it is impossible for it to be the cause of inflation. From the point of view of the average man however, the grocery store is exactly where he is facing inflation daily! This makes it the ideal scapegoat. The average…

Isn't it funny how large companies always get greedy at exactly the same time governments print a lot of money?

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#40

Post by ziddoap »

gruez wrote: post #34
ziddoap wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's overall profit margin, right? So they can collude on just a few essentials, like I don't know... Bread maybe? And make an absolute killing on bread and mask those profits by claiming that their overall profits are down?

>So they can collude on just a few essentials, like I don't know... Bread maybe? And make an absolute killing on bread and mask those profits by claiming that their overall profits are down? 1. If they actually want to make a profit, surely it'd make sense to price fix some high value/volume item rather than something cheap like bread? If anything choosing to price fix bread seems more like incompetence than evil vil…

>If they actually want to make a profit, surely it'd make sense to price fix some value/volume item rather than something cheap like bread?

Weird that they price-fixed bread for so long then. If it wasn't for profit, was it just for pure hatred of poor people or what?

>If anything choosing to price fix bread seems more like incompetence than evil villainy.

I don't buy "incompetence" as an excuse for a 15-year price-fixing scheme.

>Who cares if margins for a certain item is high?

Who cares if margins across the board are low?

>Are you also upset that mcdonalds make orders of magnitude higher margin on soda than burgers?

I'm upset that there is a history of collusion in the pricing of the food I have to buy to live. I support efforts to make sure more collusion is not happening.

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