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| A Canadian Tire store - this is not the one where this adventure takes place. |
In my opinion, Canadian Tire is pulling a scam.
(Be warned: A Tolstoy-rivalling epic follows.)
Always seems to happen on the weekend, right after my "first call"
parts supplier is closed, that I end up needing some kind of auto part
for one of my fleet.
This time, the battery in my wife's car, a two
and a half year-old Interstate "5 year" battery that ironically replaced the previous battery that died on a weekend. That's why I ended up with an
Interstate (another one of my suppliers that was still open carries them). The only other Interstate battery I've ever bought died young too. This will be my last.
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| Old and New - Note the core tag still on the new one's negative terminal. |
I figured
that Canadian Tire would be likely to have both the best selection and
the freshest stock, so I headed there. Their nationwide warranty doesn't hurt
either. I also needed to buy a 10mm wrench and a battery terminal brush
to do the swap, as my tools were at work and home, not with me, so
one-stop shopping, right?
First off, the parts counter guy looks
up her '96 Nissan Maxima, pulls up listings, and says about my choice of a 48 month
mid-range battery, "this one will be way better than original, because
the original only had 360 cold cranking amps." Look close at the image
and you'll see that it clearly indicates that
all Canadian models used
the optional, 585 CCA battery, a fact I already knew from owning 7
Nissans. (We also got standard low washer fluid lights - yay Nissan
Canada!)
It doesn't change the outcome, but I'm of the mindset that if you really don't know something, trying to sound like you do and being wrong is much worse, so say nothing.
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| The original look-up result - a Group 75DT battery. The wrong right battery. |
He comes back with a dual-terminal Group 75 battery - a
standard size for most pre-2005 GM vehicles. Would it fit? With enough
screwing around, I could certainly make it function. That doesn't make
it right.
"This car takes a Group 24F battery", I inform him.
"Oh," (fiddles with the computer) "you're right." Goes and gets it. It's
slightly more expensive. I don't care. It's correct for the application.
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| Ahh, that's better. The right right battery. Even if it is more expensive. |
Now, to be fair, this
gentleman was actually very helpful, and it's not entirely his fault
that the system points him in that direction. It's here, however, where
Canadian Tire's scam starts:
Core Charge.
A "core" is the
old part being replaced. Core charges are like the deposit on your beer
bottles that encourage you to return them. Automotive cores are either
rebuilt (calipers, alternators, etc.) or reclaimed (batteries, among
others). This is a long-standing practice that makes a lot of sense. In
the case of the battery, it's $20, which is pretty closely aligned with
what a scrap metal place will pay you for it.
I have no problem
with this, and as my wife's old battery was still out in her car waiting to
be removed with the tools that I was buying alongside the battery, I
had no qualms about paying it. Please note that the $20 was added onto
the price of the battery. It shows as "XCore" in the item line.
Swapped the battery in less than 5 minutes - easily, as it actually fit
in the hold-down and plastic heat insulator because it's - gasp! - the
right size - and went inside to return the old battery to get the core
charge back.
After being ignored at the parts desk for just over
15 minutes while others got served and service advisors just feet away
chatted with their buddies (my helpful parts guy, it turns out, had
gone on his lunch break), we finally grabbed the attention of someone
capable of dealing with such a complex endeavour, and were directed to
the customer service desk to get our refund...
...where we spent
another 5-10 minutes waiting for the poor harried cashier and her
supervisor to try and explain for the umpteenth time something battery
return-related to the customer ahead of us. My patience had about exited
the building by now.
Finally, time to get our money back! We're handed back a $20 bill.
Sounds fine, right? That's the scam!
Remember, the $20 was added to the price of the battery. That total was
taxed! We actually paid $22.60. It took several run-throughs before the
two staffers grasped this concept.
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| See the battery? "Motomaster ELM2" - $129.99, with the $20 core charge added in. |
"That's how the system does
it, automatically!", says the girl, explaining that the core charge
return function only allows her to refund the $20.
Listen, it's
only $2.60, and the supervisor tried to give us the money out of his
pocket when it became clear after several minutes that we weren't just
going to leave.
That's not the point.
Canadian Tire has been
selling batteries for over 75 years, and they don't just blindly hand
extra tax dollars over to the government. You know, absolutely know,
that at some point someone in Accounting discovered that the amount of
tax collected didn't jibe with the amount of taxable merchandise sold.
You can't tell me that they aren't aware of this discrepancy.
Their system will have provision for non-taxable items, which a core
charge is. Instead, I believe that they rightly figure that most people won't clue in
to this overcharge, and of those that do, very, very few will force the
issue.
In our case, after I threatened to go back out to the car
to get the battery to return it, they readjusted the price and did a
refund for the correct amount.
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| This is how it got fixed - a work-around. |
Given that Canadian Tire is likely
the largest Canadian retailer of automotive batteries, and that they
cater to the DIY'er crowd, many of whom will end up paying the core
charge, if I'm right, it's a pretty big scam, gleaned $2.60 at a time.
If I'm wrong, it's a system flaw that costs Canadian consumers tens of thousands of dollars or more a year. Either way, Canadian Tire is greatly deserving of a Jackass Award.
