The suggested dates for surface mail has now past and airmail dates start on November 23rd so if you are mailing Christmas presents internationally, it is time to start planning.

Check out Canada Post’s suggested mail dates for Christmas 2012 here.

For those McCafe coffee lovers, McDonalds is introducing bags of ground coffee in Canada on November 5th – after they give away lots of cups for free to get people hooked.  A 340g bag will cost $6.99 and will be available in select McDonalds locations.

They are also looking into k-cups and other grocery items for the Canadian market.

The federal government have finally imposed regulations on prepaid credit card companies.

Under the new regulations, prepaid cards must fully disclose any fees and conditions at activation, must not expire and eliminate any unused balance, they also can’t have maintenance fees for at least one year after card activation.

For more information, check the government’s press release here.

Banana Boat/Energizer is pulling two types of continuous spray Banana Boat sun care products from stores across Canada – Banana Boat Ultra Defense Spray Sunscreen and Banana Boat Sport Performance Spray Sunscreen.

Energizer who own the Banana Boat label says there is a “potential risk of product igniting on the skin if contact is made with a source of ignition before the product is completely dry.”  There are five cases of users catching on fire, four in the US and one in Canada.

The products were sold nationally from January, 2010, through Sept. 20, 2012.

If you shopped in the US, the list is much longer, view it here.

Consumers who purchased the products are being told not to use them. More information is available from the manufacturer at 1-888-SUN-TIPS (1-888-786-8477) Monday to Friday 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. ET. or by sending an email to: [email protected].

Starbucks Canada has revised their Rewards Program to ensure their customers get more free food and drinks!  However, they have also said goodbye to a few small freebies 🙁  Click here to view all the changes (too many to mention) and let us know what you think of the revised program.  The new program starts on October 16, 2012.

Websaver.ca has announced on its Facebook webpage that “Monday will be a big day for coupons! If we get 1000 likes on this post, we’ll announce one of the companies that coupons will be available for. Start liking and sharing!”  They received over 1000 “Likes” in 36 minutes and annouced there will be a coupon for Kellogg’s Vector cereal.  They stated “Keep those shares coming! Our next company announcement will have quite a few coupons!”

Click here to “Like” websaver.ca on Facebook and check back to see more coupon announcements!

With so many Mini-Wheat coupons, I thought this one was worth posting even though it is a ‘low level recall’.  Kellogg’s Mini-Wheats have been recalled due to metal “Extraneous Material” in the cereal.  The recall includes original frosted and brown sugar flavour across the country with best before dates of “2013 AL 01 TO 2013 JL 29”.

See details on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s website and check your cereals, chipped teeth are expensive to fix!

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is now urging consumers to ask stores where they get their beef as they expanded the recall to include steaks, roasts, sausages and other cuts of meat in addition to the original (expanded) ground beef.

You can check the various lists on the CFIA website to see if the meat you have is recalled.  Due to the size of the list, and the fact they are all on different pages, this page which sorts by store selling the items, may be of more use.

We seem to be experiencing server issues and the forums are currently showing intermittent database errors.

Hopefully they will be back up fully soon, but feel free to chat in the replies here until they are.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has issued an alert for ground beef sold in major retailers across Canada.

• Walmart branded ground beef in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
• Kirkland branded ground beef and products (Costco brand) sold nationally.
• Safeway branded products from ground beef to burger patties where sold across the country.

For a full list with item codes, pictures and expiry dates, visit their website.

Thanks for posting this important recall on the forums KrazE.

Bumping this as they have added stores to the list

Loblaws, Sobeys, Foodland, IGA, Metro, SuperC : See here for more details

For those who shop in the US, it has also been expanded to there:

Brands in the U.S. affected by the recall include Morasch Meats, Calahoo, Kirkland Signature, and Cattleman’s. The USDA’s FSIS site has not posted recall information on their site, but Kroger has released a recall of KRO Ground Beef 73% 3#, 3 lb. The beef was sold at Kroger stores in the greater Cincinnati area, northern Kentucky, Dayton Ohio, southeastern Indiana, Indiana (except for Evansville), Illinois, and eastern Missouri. It was also sold at Jay C, Food4Less and FoodsCo.

Expanded again to include private retailers and other grocery stores

Use this link for most up to date information

JC Penney are making it easier for Canadians to shop across the border online.

They now display pricing in Canadian dollars, calculate duties and taxes at checkout to ensure you do not pay additional fees on delivery and have a $9 flat rate shipping cost when you spend $100+.

Click here to shop online at JC Penney.

iloveagreatdeal has posted on the forums that as of this week, No Frills is to become more lenient in price-matching including allowing multi-buy deals.  Their fineprint on the price-matching terms does seem to have dropped the multi-buy language, so hopefully this rumour proves to be true.

For me, No Frills is the hardest to price-match at, between keeping my flyer or writing on my flyer and then giving it back to me, getting a manager approval and printing a duplicate receipt I have not bothered price-matching there in some time.  I will be interesting to try given the new rules and so many stores offering multi-buy deals.

SmartSouce announced today that they are going mobile.

The new mobile version of the site uses the same URL and will allow users to scroll through the available offers and select which coupons they want from any web-enabled phone, smartphone or other mobile communications device, without having to download any special software or applications.

“We were eager to make the mobile couponing experience available to our Canadian consumer base,” said Henri Lellouche, Senior Vice President, Digital.

What does this mean for Canadians?  Will stores be accepting mobile coupons soon?  There certainly has been a move towards grocery stores accepting printable coupons with the increased security the coupon printer software used by companies like SmartSouce.ca.  Will they be able to talk these stores into accepting mobile coupons too?  With Sobey’s allowing you to save bonus points on your Club Sobeys card, it does seem like changes are coming in couponland.

Boo must be delirious because he seems to think he is a genie and can grant wishes to lucky Smart Canucks’ readers.

All you have to do is reply to this post (once per IP address) before Thursday 13th September at 11:59 p.m. Eastern with the following wishes and someone will win the $10 gift card of their wish.

I wish for a $1 coupon for … (insert product)

I wish I could find …. (insert product) on sale this week

I wish for a $10 gift card to …  (insert store)

His genie powers are obviously limited since he can’t make unicorn coupons appear, but maybe the stores will listen to what we want.  Winner will be chosen using a random number generator on Friday 14th September.  Your correct email must be used when posting in order for us to contact you (name in first box, email in second).  Winners will be given 24 hours to respond or a replacement winner will be chosen.

For more chances to win, more winners will be chosen in our matching forum contest here.

• Age of majority only
• Canada only no purchase is necessary to enter, odds of winning are dependent on number of entries received.
• Potential winner will be required to answer a skill testing question.
• You must use a valid email so I can contact you with details on how to claim your prize. Persons who enter with an alias(fake) email will forfeit their prize and a new winner will be drawn.

This contest has now ended and the winner is Val (post 89)

Yes, Nordstrom’s worst kept secret has finally been confirmed.

The first Nordstrom store will launch in Chinook Centre in Calgary in the fall of 2014, followed by Ottawa’s Rideau Centre and Vancouver’s Pacific Centre in the spring of 2015 and Sherway Gardens by the end of 2016.  So we have a while to wait, but I am excited by this, we need some more variety in our stores here.  At least three of the stores are currently Sears stores so the new Nordstrom stores will be fairly large.