I always thought Porter Airlines’ customer service was first class, but looks like it’s going downhill. I came across an interesting article in the Ottawa Citizen about a woman (Janet) who had to share her Porter airline seat with a obese person because that obese person didn’t fit in her own seat.

She figures the woman’s spine was where the middle armrest comes down when in use. The woman also needed a belt extender to be able to buckle up.

Janet did not complain during the flight but afterwards she contacted Porter Airlines and asked for a full refund but Porter Airlines refused and offered her a $100 Gift Card on a future flight.

I think that the least Porter could have done was give her back her money. But this situation should not have happened in the first place. If someone cannot fit into a single seat then they should pay for 2 seats, sit comfortably and not bother others. Passengers should not be expected to travel with someone occupying part of their seat during the flight; or at least that’s how I personally feel about this. It’s uncomfortable, annoying, unfair and disgusting. If this had happened to me I would have refused to occupy half a seat on the spot and would not have waited till the flight was over to complain.

What would you have done?

Thanks Litesandsirens911 for pointing me out to this video 😀

Remember the awesome “I Gotta Feeling” video that was shot in one take by Université du Québec Students?

Well it looks like University of Victoria students decided to give them a little challenge by taking a video of Hey Soul Sister by Train in one shot.

The youtube competition between our universities just makes me proud to be a Canadian 😛

Update: My sis tells me that there’s a university in Spain called University of Vic and that it isn’t University of Victoria. I’m not sure but either way it’s a nice video!

[youtube]EeGDRSWB46w[/youtube]

I was browsing Lee Valley since they are offering free shipping for the next several days and I came across this gem. A Rim Roller!

This product makes it easy to check for prize statements hidden under the rims of paper coffee cups in various contests. Essentially a curved clip with two integral (covered) blades, it slices the cup rim twice (1-1/8″ apart) when pushed down, and an internal lip unrolls the paper edge when it’s pulled up. Push, pull and you’re done. 2″ high, 1-1/2″ wide, with an attached split-ring.

This is only for of course the hardcore Roll Up the Rim to Win enthusiast. Costing just $2.50 this might make a great gag gift for the hardcore Timmie’s drinker in your family.

🙂

The Steven and Chris show is back for another season!  They would love to have you in their studio audience during their tapings. The dates available right now are as follows:

*Monday September 13th, 2010 – 10:00 AM * First show of Season 4!

*Tuesday September 14th, 2010 – AM

*Wednesday September 15th, 2010 – AM

*Thursday September 16th, 2010 – AM

 Click here to request your seat.

Thanks Mjae for using the Suggest A Deal feature.

I came across this article on the Yahoo Canada website, and I don’t know if it’s because I recently had a baby or what, but the article just made me all teary. It’s about a baby in Australia who was born prematurely and pronounced dead by the doctors, but was revived to life after being cuddled by his mother.

Click here to read the full article on Yahoo.ca

First of all I’d like to thank commenter “Natalie” for the wicked awesome idea about this! 

This is the official Smart Canucks “Bring Back The Orange Drink Petition”  Simply leave a comment if you’d like the Orange McDonald’s drink brought back!  At the end of the month (September 30th)  I will email this to my McDonald’s contact and see what kind of response we get!

What are your memories of the Orange drink?  I remember for Brownies we’d get the McDonald’s red cooler jug with the Orange drink and run around with orange mustaches all day!

* Yes we all know it has 0 nutritional value 😛

If you were a fan of LOST TV show you’ll love this! A 12 minute epilogue of the show has been released 😀

Although it doesn’t explain everything this Lost Epilogue does answer a few of the unanswered questions a lot of us had. I really enjoyed these 12 minutes and wish Lost hadn’t ended!

Click here to watch the Lost Epilogue

Bagged milk was uniquely Canadian… until sometime of this  year! It looks like brits are moving from milk in jugs to bagged milk! I get a feeling the Queen stole this idea from us while she was visiting in july!

Well ladies and gents this is my 500th blog post! It’s been a fun couple of years blogging for Smart Canucks and working with Boo.  We’ve become good friends over the past few years and I’ve loved the opportunity to bring great savings and freebies to fellow Canadians.

Walking down memory lane in my list of blogs I wanted to share a few (or recap) some of my favourite posts.

• Thrills Gum on the bottom of my shoe
• Socks With Sandals
• The dissapearance of Country Crock
• In Memory of Beastmaster
• The Grinch and his swinging parties
• Micheal Buble Contest
• Fake Potatoes
• Cardboard Towel Season
• Pook Toque

To celebrate my 500th post a lucky reader gets to buy me a COACH purse! Haha just kidding!  To celebrate one person thats left a comment will randomly be chosen to receive a $20 Amazon.ca e gift certificate. Winner will be announced sometime this Friday. Enter only once, Canada only, age of majority only, valid emails only.

Thanks for being a wonderful audience Canada! Heres to another 500!

There was a lot of drama recently regarding this Cineplex coupon blog post: Cineplex Theatres Coupons Canada: Buy 1 Movie Ticket Get 1 Free so I thought I’d explain what happened because a lot of people don’t know the full story.

First of all, yes of course the deals need to be legit to be posted on SmartCanucks.ca! I do not support or endorse fake coupons or deals of any kind and I do not tolerate scammish behaviour. People who go around trying to scam businesses are not welcome on here and need to go get a life.

So what happened with the cineplex promo? Why was it posted again if the Energizer promo had already been posted a while back?

First of all people assume that I am aware of every single deal that is posted on the blog but this isn’t true. I have a very small group of bloggers that I trust and I don’t always read their blog posts. The fact that this energizer deal was posted a few months ago does not mean I was aware of it. You can ask Sally who constantly messages me saying that I posted a deal that has already been posted on the blog. So I had no idea that this coupon originated from an energizer promo or that an energizer promo existed at all.

I found out about this Cineplex coupon via the “Suggest a deal form” on the blog which people can use to suggest good deals and coupons that they’ve come across. For some reason I didn’t think it was a one time use coupon and I had no idea it was related to energizer in any way possible. I posted it on the blog thinking it was legit although I have to also admit that I didn’t take any extra steps to ensure its legitimacy. I was very distracted that day with a CBC Radio interview  and was not having the greatest of days trying to deal with a really annoying immature CBC journalist. I then get a message from Sally and a few other members saying there’s panic on the blog because of a fake coupon so I logon and remove the link to the coupon PDF while doing all the other CBC stuff. I thought everything had been fixed and move on forgetting that there is also an image..  blah. Anyways later on I’d find out that people made a huge fuss out of this coupon and some people used it KNOWING it was intended for one time use only! How cheap and scammish!

What’s really stressful is that I’m expected to be perfect and not make any mistakes which I find terribly frustrating. I provide the blog as a free service and thousands of good legit deals are posted on here. I do a gazillion other things at the same time including writing my graduate thesis and trying to have a normal life.

What annoys me more is that occasionally someone will message me using “Suggest a Deal” with fake coupons and they KNOW it’s fake. This makes my life even worse and wastes my time. For example about a week ago I got this coupon through suggest a deal but without “FAKE” written on it. I wrote that so that no one tries using it. Click on it to view the full size:

This Pizza Pizza coupon looked fishy and the $5 deal looked too good to be true so I did some research and found that on Pizza Pizza’s website it said:

Note: Please be advised, if you are inquiring about the “Welcome to the Neighborhood” letter & coupon you received via email please note that this is not an authenticated offering from Pizza Pizza Limited.

It is not valid and can not be redeemed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

So I emailed the person who sent me this coupon back to let her know it’s fake so that she doesn’t use it or email it out to anyone:

Hello,

Unfortunately this coupon is not valid according to Pizza Pizza:
http://www.pizzapizza.ca/PPLWeb/CommandServlet?command=screenscmd&screenID=ft_contactus

Thanks for letting me know though!

Cheers,
A

She replies back saying:

thought so. ha ha.

Thanks! 🙂

Wow! 🙁  she actually “thought so” and still emailed it to me without letting me know. If I had gone ahead and posted it imagine all the trouble it  would have caused! I don’t understand why some people are like that.

Anyways the objective of this post was to apologize for any inconvenience the Cineplex coupon had caused you and to assure you that I did not post this with any bad intentions in mind.

So this “freebie” may not benefit you directly but it will most definitely benefit someone in Canada! It’s Kraft Peanut Butter’s 50th anniversary and for every “virtual hug” you send they will donate a jar of peanut butter to a Canadian Food Bank.  I personally think this is great and it only takes a few seconds to send a free hug.  Click here to visit the site and send a hug. Don’t delay this opportunity ends July 25th!

Thanks Sweet Deals & Bucky101 for posting this great find on the Sc forum!

Yes, it’s true. Once upon a time we were all children. Back in the day movies seemed so much better then they do today. Movies such as Labyrinth, Never Ending Story, The Goonies,  Lady In White, (ok so not a kids movie but my parents were lenient on ratings) Pete’s Dragon, Secret of the Nihm, Little Shop of Horror’s, Ghost Busters, Beetlejuice, National lampoons, Animal House, Crocodile Dundee,   I could go on forever. 

I think my favourite back then and still today is The Last Unicorn.  I remember watching it a few years ago and I bawled my eyes out. I never realized how “deep” it was.  As for “grown up” movies my pick has to be Caddy Shack! Seriously, who can forget the chocolate bar in the pool scare!

Some of my classics I’ve tried to watch with my children and they thought they were so lame. They dissed The Sword In the Stone. I never thought I’d hear someone diss that classic.  My oldest couldn’t even sit through Never Ending Story! Are you kidding me. He thought it was boring.

What were your favourite movies when you were a child? Do you still watch them today? I look forward to your  look back at memory lane.

Oh and Ps. I loved Howard the Duck as well. Also loved Cannibal women in the avacado jungle of death < I cannot BELIEVE my mother let me watch that! It starred Shannnon Tweed!

* Yes this isn’t a deal but us bloggers do blog about random things as well from time to time 😀 Have fun! It’s Friday!

I got this email today from Grahame who works at the Minister’s Office at the Ontario Ministry of Revenue addressing our previous blog discussions about HST. Although I don’t necessarily agree with everything they said, I’m actually very impressed that they took the time to read people’s opinions.

My name is Grahame from the Minister’s Office at the Ontario Ministry of Revenue and I read your blog post referencing the Harmonized Sales Tax. With the recent implementation of the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) it is important to learn about how the HST will affect people in Ontario. Based on the focus of your blog, I thought this might be helpful information to provide your readers.

This is about creating jobs and putting people back to work. Within 10 years our comprehensive tax package will create nearly 600,000 new jobs, attract $47 billion in new business investment and increase wages.

The HST is part of this comprehensive tax package that will see 93 per cent of Ontarians receive personal income tax cut. With these cuts Ontario now has the lowest provincial tax rate in Canada on the first $37,106 of taxable income. In fact, 90,000 low-income Ontarians will no longer have to pay Personal Income Tax.

To help families we have introduced a permanent $260 Sales Tax Credit for low- and middle-income adults, children and seniors. In total $4.2 billion in transition payments will be delivered to help Ontarians adjust to the Harmonized Sales Tax. It is important to remember that every $100 in tax relief is equivalent to the 8% tax on $1250 in newly taxed items.

We are exempting children’s clothing and footwear, infant and child care seats, diapers, books, food under $4, newspapers, and feminine hygiene products, from the provincial portion of the HST.

Please find more information on the tax breaks for people here: http://www.rev.gov.on.ca/en/taxchange/families.html

Another helpful document is a list of what’s taxable under the HST and what\’s not: http://www.rev.gov.on.ca/en/taxchange/pdf/taxable.pdf.

For more information about the HST please visit www.ontario.ca/taxchange.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions regarding the HST or the government’s tax reforms.

Thank you,
Grahame
www.twitter.ca/riversgr

Great news! Tomorrow Ontario is announcing plans to drop the intolerable eco fee thats been tacked onto so many products since the first of July! You weren’t aware of the eco fee? Don’t worry a lot Ontario residents had no idea that this was sneakily implemented the same day HST took effect. This eco fee was being tacked onto household cleaners and various other items as a “hazardous disposal” fee.  The fees were ranging anywhere from 1 cent to almost $7!  There was a “pilot” run of this a few years ago for batteries etc and listing them on your receipt but the “new eco fee” that had started July 1st implemented thousands upon thousands of items from drano to glue. 

Why are they scrapping it? Because it was implemented very poorly and the instructions were very vague to retailers. Different stores were charging different prices for the eco fee. Ie. One store would charge 2 cents for drano while another was charging upwards of 10 cents.  Canadian Tire has even refused to charge consumers this fee! Yes you read that right, Canadian Tire stood up for it’s consumers.

I’m all for saving the enviroment but to me this was just a poorly implemented money grab. I’m so tired of being nickel and dimed to death.

Thanks Manzervite for the heads up

(Below In posts I clarified that Canadian Tire announced this on Monday)

Edit* Canadian Tire WILL refund all Eco fees charged since July 1, you just have to bring in your receipt.