After having spent significant length of time in USA and Canada, I am summarizing some of the drawbacks or the pain areas of what it is to live in Canada.
1) Any lease agreement has to pay all months if we cancel any month. Plus they take last month payment in advance along with first month
2) Customer service is worst. And customer is treated without any respect. They act as if they don't want you to buy their product
3) Return policies are not well documented and straight away refuse to accept a product when returned
4) Price match is not honored even if they mentioned it before
5) Every store in a chain is not consistent in their policies
6) Rice is charged separately in the restaurants when you purchase an entree
7) Very high tax (HST/GST)
8) All call center agents are rude and don't provide any solution in the first attempt
9) Gas is very expensive
10) Even though CAD is high than USD, there is a significant cost difference in the prices of the goods
11) Cannot pay by credit card for insurance premiums
12) Car insurance is significantly high due to the n-number of insurance scams that people have exploited
13) Many places dont accept all forms of credit cards. Many restaurants only cash, no credit
14) Most retailers don't apologize to you and moreover they never admit their mistakes
15) Profit is more important than keeping customers happy
16) No one is available in the stores if you need help (poorly staffed big chains)
17) Even if anyone is available in the stores, they don't know absolutely nothing about anything (poor knowledge staff, hired without any training to cut down costs)
18) Change of address (redirection of mail) is not free and costs more than $100
19) Even if you buy more than $50 from any big store, they will still charge you $.05 cents for a plastic bag
20) Any mistyped fare or price error in a flyer is never honored even though it is their mistake
21) Parking is never free anywhere in the city
22) Coupons are never applied to your purchase in case you forget it in first place and come back from the parking lot to make adjustment
23) Many cell phone salesmen deliberately give wrong information on their plans just to make a sale. Very unprofessional salesmen
24) You don't get a time credit if you miss a show or if the facility closes due to unscheduled maintenance
25) Even some Big stores don't refund you if you loose receipt. Their US counterparts simply pull up receipts from the system and respect the customer but the same doesn't hold true in Canada
26) You have to fight very hard to get a refund and it takes long time for refund check to arrive if you ever succeed at convincing them
27) Customer service in some big chains don't provide you information on store inventory if you want to search for an item availability
28) If you arrive 5 minutes before store closing, they make bad excuses not to service you at that time and you have to come the next day
29) Very deceptive pricing on some services like 2 month free and then after you join them, you have to pay one year term contract, so have to be very careful with such deceptive marketing that is done in Canada
30) Almost every bank here charges monthly service fees and there is no such thing as a free checking account
31)There is no such thing as a free nationwide calling wireless cell phone plan. Cost lot of money to add the nationwide roaming which is free in the USA
32) Cable internet providers have a monthly bandwidth limit on the internet usage
33) Phone plan cannot be frozen for a month or so if you are going out of country for a vacation
34) No free refills on pops
35) They make sure to charge guacamole. No courtesy shown here
36) If you ask any local shop for directions they don't give you undivided attention. Be prepared to hear "sorry I don't know" almost 99% of time
37) Most of the Bank customer service agents on the phone are too arrogant to serve you by looking up your name and SIN details. They insist on the stupid Bank Card Number only. What a pity!
38) Canada Post doesn't deliver your mails on Saturdays as they take off on Saturday, unlike the efficient USPS who works even on Saturday
39) Banks dont help you when it comes to issues with some transaction and ask you to go to your home branch where you opened the account. This is so rude and example of bad customer service attitude by the Chinese immigrants working there as branch managers
These pain areas far outweigh some of the petty benefits to Canadians like their free healthcare system which is not really free anymore since hospitals are full and they are sending the patients down to the USA now. Do watch the below video from CBC if you are not convinced by the above and also feel free to post your comments on your own worst experiences of living in Canada. Not that you would immigrate to Canada just for your shopping dream come true, but when one choses a country to live then one has a certain expectation of the living lifestyle, and this post serves to make an informed decision about the wicked things going on inside with an insider opinion. Hope to see Canada change for better.
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