(source:Msn.ca

Who gets your vote for worst dressed? My vote goes to Nicki Minaj. Love her; but leopard hair? Noone can pull that off.

I have a craving for my all-time love, Miss Vickies Jalapeño Chips. Ever since I tasted this chip, I’ve never been quite satisfied with anything else I’ve tried. I love spicy food, and this is the only variety of jalapeño chip that satisfies me. Nicely seasoned, with a bit of heat but not overwhelmingly spicy. So Canada, what’s your favourite potato chip?

While driving home from Detroit this week we stopped for a bit.  We decided on Hungry Howies. I had never eaten there before but it was only $10 for a large pizza with flavoured crust of our choice and a large bread stix.  It was absolutely fantastic! I hadn’t had pizza that delish in years.  It got me thinking, there just isn’t that many huge pizza franchises in Canada compared to the USA which sucks.  If you had to choose your fave Canadian pizza joint who would you pick?  Toppings?

I guess if I have to stay Canadian I’d have to go with Godfather’s Pizza. I think theres just under 70 of them in Ontario.  My favourite toppings are pineapple, pepperoni, green peppers, mushrooms and bacon.

While I was in Florida last week I watching a lady in one of those tshirts that look like your a skinny women wearing a bikini. I started  pondering what fashion faux paus I’ve made throughout the years.  After a fair bit of consideration I decided my worst adventure in fashion was back when I was 15.  Skater shorts and long johns.  You know for that mid October weather when its not too cold but not warm enough for shorts weather.  Apparently to my rug rat skater friends and I the simple solution was wearing long  johns under our shorts, instead of just putting on pants. Would I combine the two nowadays? No. Never.

What is your worst fashion faux pas? Come on share,  we won’t make fun of you!

Does anyone else find Google’s autocomplete feature amusing? It’s very interesting what people search for. Try anything from “Is Canada” to “I think my” and you’ll discover a new silly world of amusement 😛

It was about time someone tried rescuing the sinking ship also known as Zellers. Today Target announced that it was buying Zellers from the Hudson Bay Company for $1.8 billion. Hopefully Target will be able to inject new blood into Zellers or maybe completely re-brand the stores to “Target” instead which I think would be a wise move. Hopefully this will also give Walmart Canada and Loblaws some competition and help lower the overall price of merchandise.

Thanks mamasavesmoola for letting me know about this!

Click here to read about this on CBC’s website

Winterlicious Toronto is now accepting reservations for the  Prix Fixe menus.  There is a huge selection of restaurants to choose from offering both lunch or dinner.

Prix Fixe reservations will be accepted starting January 13, 2011. The prix fixe menus are available at lunch and dinner at the following price points:
$15, $20 or $25 lunch menus
$25, $35 or $45 dinner menus

I’ve personally never attended Winterfest as I don’t live near Toronto but I have heard great things about the event. Click here to see what restaurants are available and to make your reservations.

I’m having a hard time figuring this out. I’m holding a Cadbury Creme Egg in my hand while typing this and I could have sworn they used to be bigger in size. Did the Creme eggs shrink in size or did I just get bigger?

Wow this is shocking. I was surfing reddit when I came across a post about Dollarama selling plates that contain lead. I just don’t get it, why can’t the use of lead in mugs, dishes, glasses, etc. be banned? Lead exposure can result in serious health risks to children and adults including neurological damage.

Well at least this plate has a warning (although still not justifiable), but I wonder how many dishes out there contain lead and don’t even have a warning on them.

For the sake of your and your family’s health I strongly suggest you do some research on what’s going to be in contact with your food, and eventually your body and make sure it doesn’t pose any health risks.

Based on over 1700 votes, Bell Canada is Canada’s Worst Company of 2010. Bell got more than 50% of the votes.

Many readers shared very sad and horrific stories regarding dealing with Bell Canada. I hope the management at Bell take the time to read the comments and feedback and try improving the quality of their business. Alexander Graham Bell, from which Bell Canada acquired its name was a great inventor and innovator. Bell Canada, you don’t need to look far for inspiration.

Based on your nominations, the 3 worst companies in Canada last year (2010) were: Bell Canada, Rogers and Zellers.

Bell Canada has led an evil campaign to try changing the Internet to usage-based billing (capped Internet). They have been pushing the government and other ISPs to enforce these ridiculous policies. Furthermore, Melanie C. summarized everything that’s wrong with Bell:

Their customer service is appalling. Recent news headlines show that they have been fined (something like 1.2 million) for violating the national ‘do not call list’. They offer inflated prices for standard services, it’s impossible to get ahold of a real person when calling for help and, when you do, there seems to always be a very significant language barrier.

I’d like to add that Bell’s customer service mostly runs from India when a lot of people in Canada are unemployed. Thank you Bell for supporting Canadians.

Rogers is a company that seems to have grown too much too quickly. They almost reached a monopoly a couple of years ago. This was accompanied with sub-par customer service, very frequent billing errors and jacked prices. But due to their terrible customer service, continuous billing errors and better competitors, Rogers is slowly losing its grip on the Canadian wireless/mobile market.

Another major annoyance with Rogers is their lack of proper pricing on plans. As honeydoo states in the comments:

Rogers.. just tacky how much you have to hassle them and play ‘the game’ to get a good plan.

Oh and if you were a pay-as-you-go customer let me mention the single word that will send chills down your spine: Melanie… Voice recognition.

Zellers made it into the worst three companies of 2010 unfortunately. Remember the days when Zellers used to be the place to go shopping and Walmart was frail in comparison? Well long gone are those days. Zellers has simply frozen in time. It has not evolved or improved over the past few years and has been slowly going downhill. Plagued with dirty stores, unfriendly staff and messy shelves Zellers is now left to die a slow and bitter death.

Two companies that barely escaped from the Worst 3 are Shoppers Drug Mart and Sears Canada. It seems like people have a love/hate relationship with Shoppers because many people nominated it for both best and worst companies of the year. I was not however impressed when I read that Shoppers Drug Mart pulled 3,500 copies of Adbusters to satisfy the Canadian Jewish Congresss. As for Sears, well there’s been a lot of talk about the parent company in the US going bankrupt soon and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the case.

Now please take a second to vote for Canada’s Worst Company of 2010 below. Voting ends in 24 hours after which we’ll announce the “winner” and have the poll for Best Company in 2010.

It seems that Shoppers had a significant problem with their computer systems yesterday.  From overcharging items part of the two day sale to not crediting the 20x points.  One of our savy Smart Canuck’ers posted their receipt pointing out all the problems.  Looks like there might be a lot of scanning codes of practice claims happening at Shoppers in the next few days.  Click here to join the discussion on the Smart Canucks forum.

Did anything in your shop ring in wrong? 

Not aware of the Scanning Code of Practice?  Click here for more information.

I hope everyone had a happy and safe NYE!  Do you make New Years resolutions? Is so what resolutions did you make for 2011?  I tend not to make any resolutions for the beginning of the year, I give myself until the end of January to “prepare” for my resolution.  I’m coming up on 2 years of being a non smoker.  I’m still pretty proud of that feat, it’s one of the hardest things I’ve commited to.  Have you ever kept any resolutions? 

This year I’d like to commit to having a more active and healthy lifestyle. I seriously need to stop loving fresh cut fries as much as I do lol!

I look forward to reading your comments.

Did you happen to catch TLC’s Extreme Couponing special?

A lot of our forum members did and their discussion can be found here.  I didn’t catch the show but I know I’m not an extreme couponer, in fact I’m a poor excuse of a couponer.  I kind of let that part of my savings slip over the past year.  Don’t get me wrong I do love high value coupons and free ones, but I’ve found since our Zehrs went to a coupon board there isn’t much that I can find thats worthwhile for me to use.

Do you use coupons? What was your “favourite” of the year?

As I’ve mentioned in my previous post I’ve decided to start an annual “contest” where we nominate and vote for Canada’s Best and Worst companies of the year! Although more companies seem to be going downhill, I did notice that the less than impressive economy helped boost some companies’ creativity, innovation and customer service.

Post your Best Company nominations and the reason for the nomination in the comment box below. You can nominate absolutely any company as long as it operates in Canada. You have till Wednesday Dec 29th, 2010 to nominate the best companies of the year after which we’ll have a public poll to choose the Best Company.