Category Archives: Business

| Business, My articles, West Island

GoJIT: “There was a loss”

This Week in Me features an interview with Serge Duchaine of GoJIT, the Dorval-based transportation company which lost a lawsuit last month and was ordered to pay over $118,000 to a St. Tite company for $90,000 of lost cowboy boots.

Doing the interview, I learned something interesting about standard practices in the industry (emphasis mine):

Gazette: Why did you offer only $6,000 in compensation for $90,000 of lost merchandise?

Duchaine: When you don’t insure goods, you’re automatically insured for $2 per pound. All the rates are based on the value you’re carrying. So the guy says: “It’s not enough, I’d like to protect all our merchandise.” There’s an insurance fee that every transport company has in the industry. More than 95 per cent of clients take a calculated risk. It doesn’t happen enough for them to buy this coverage. If someone says they want more protection, they have to buy it from an insurance company.

Ironically, it’s GoJIT which had insurance in this case: liability insurance. So the insurance company, which would have to foot the bill, is appealing the decision.

Still, it would be nice to know how 88 boxes on six palettes, over 100 square feet of warehouse floor space, just disappeared without a trace.

| Business, Montreal, Technology

A class action against Videotron?

Mere days after Videotron announced it was capping its “extreme” high-speed internet (but not its “extreme plus” high-speed service, which is $15 more a month a cap that’s curiously larger than its “extreme plus” service, with a much lower overage fee), the Union des consommateurs is trying to get a class-action lawsuit going against the company for false advertising and breach of contract.

If successful, such a suit would set a huge precedent for telecom companies changing the terms of their contracts. Currently these companies announce the change, give people 30 days to cancel (without fees), and any use after that time is considered to be acceptance of the change.

We’ll see how this plays out.

| Business, Montreal, On the Net

The TVboxset.com scam

This story from this morning’s Gazette is hilarious. Apparently customers are complaining that they’re being ripped off by Montreal-based TVboxset.com, which has been promising them great deals on DVDs of TV shows, and then never delivering them.

What’s interesting is that those who do get the DVDs delivered quickly find out that they’re low-quality pirated versions recorded straight off of cable (they even have the network logos in the corner).

A quick scan online shows plenty of other people with similar complaints. In some of them, a representative of the company responds with a form letter about “misplaced orders”, but never answers the charges of blatant pirating.

The article quotes him as saying they “buy bulk and resell”, and that they don’t verify stock before they send it out. As if any idiot couldn’t spot such obvious fakes from a hundred feet away.

Garcia Media Group, which owns the website, isn’t under investigation by the Quebec consumer protection bureau, because apparently nobody’s complained to them yet (isn’t bureaucracy wonderful?), the Better Business Bureau can’t do anything because the company isn’t a member, and the police won’t say whether they’re investigating. Only Canada Post is looking into the matter.

Hopefully, unless the claims that this is all a smear campaign from a competitor are true (right, sure), this company will be quickly shut down and its owners prosecuted before they scam more people.

UPDATE (Oct. 7): Slashdot has a story on the lack of action in this case.

| Business, On the Net

Wikitravel: A new beginning, or the beginning of the end?

Evan Prodromou has announced that he is reducing his level of involvement in the management of Wikitravel, and his wife is pulling out altogether.

Evan doesn’t say whether he thinks this is better or worse for the project (other than saying he’ll miss his wife’s contributions). I can’t help but be somewhat pessimistic. Going from people who have lived and breathed their own baby for years to a group of faceless developers in some far-away 9-to-5 office doesn’t scream “great new beginning” to me.

Hopefully I’m wrong.

| Business, Media

Scabs at the Journal de Québec

The Journal de Québec have won a case before the Commission des relations du travail du Québec, which ruled today that four employees of the newspaper were illegally working as scabs during the labour conflict which has dragged on since April. The Journal was criticized by its union for a sudden increase in the number of managers just before the lockout began.

For more information on the labour conflict, you can go to MediaMatinQuebec, the website setup by the locked-out workers.

| Business, Montreal, Technology

Videotron puts limits on “unlimited”

Videotron sent a letter to its Extreme High-Speed Internet customers this week saying their previously unlimited bandwidth was now going to be capped at 100 GB a month, effective October 1. After that, it’ll cost $1.50 per GB for downloading.

Some people are complaining about the change, which doesn’t come with a reduction in price.

Although not many residential customers use more than 3 GB per day, it’s the principle. It’s a substantive negative change which Videotron is trying to obfuscate by using confusing language. Their website still lists the service as “unlimited”, and there’s no trace of any notice on their website of this change in policy.

The silver lining for anyone that has Extreme High-Speed Internet with Videotron is that they can cancel their contract without penalty before paying their next bill by citing this change.

Section 3.9 of their service contract:

3.9 Modifications – Videotron may, upon at least thirty (30) days’ prior notice to the customer’s Videotron Messaging Address or by mail, modify the Services or any other provision of this agreement, including the charges and rates stipulated in subsection 3.1 . However, no prior notice shall be required with regard to a modification of Services if Videotron’s service offerings remain similar and have no impact on the charges payable by the customer. By settling the account statement accompanying any notice of modification to this agreement, the customer shall be irrevocably deemed to have accepted the modification. However, the customer may, within thirty such (30) days delay, cancel this agreement or request that it be modified in the manner provided in subsection 11.4 below, failing which the customer shall irrevocably be deemed to have accepted the modifications covered by the notice.

If any of you plan on doing that, let me know how the conversation with customer service goes.

| Business, Media, Web design

More bad web programming

CanWest has launched a new classified website, househunting.ca, for real estate listings. It’s still in beta, which is good because it still has problems with the way it’s coded:

Househunting.ca error message

Guess this Canadian website’s code wasn’t written in-house.

There are larger problems. The search results (there aren’t enough listings to analyze whether their search is good or not) produce a MapQuest map that’s centred on some random location that’s not where you searched for. When you move the map so you can see where you actually searched, the page forces itself to reload and change the search results to wherever you have the map pointed to.

The search box also doesn’t provide fine-tuned price ranging (or, for that matter, any search beyond location, price and size). If your range isn’t in their pre-set list, you’re out of luck (or you have to search a few times).

CanWest isn’t alone in these badly-designed online classified sites. All the websites owned by big media companies have downright awful designs. When a simple site like Craigslist is so successful, you wonder why people are trying to make these overly-complicated sites work instead of stealing a good idea.

| Blogosphere, Business, Montreal, On the Net, Technology

Everyone’s a marketing/media critic

There’s something going on out there called the 1% Army Tournament. It’s a head-to-head competition between over a hundred Canadian marketing and media blogs (there are over a hundred Canadian marketing and media blogs?)

Among the local blogs participating (or having been nominated without even knowing about it), some of whom will be added to my feed reader soon:

Wow, that’s a lot.

| Business, In the news

Please leave your bags at the tax office

Plastic bag
“A Plastic Bag” by currybet

Quebec is considering a $0.20 per bag tax on plastic shopping bags. The intent is to cut down on their production, use and disposal.

I’m in favour of reducing the use of these bags. I have a green basket I use when doing grocery shopping. Those few bags I do use get reused to hold what little garbage I produce, and any which aren’t usable get recycled.

I’m even in favour of charging for bags. Something small, like $0.05 per bag, won’t make a big difference to the people who burn through money, but it might make some think twice about double-bagging that milk or using an extra one for the can of concentrated orange juice.

But I’m not crazy about the idea of a tax, that benefits neither the consumer nor the retailer, encouraging both to find a way around it. There’s an (admittedly self-serving) opinion in the Toronto Star which explains some of the cons to such a tax. Basically it comes down to the fact that people need something to carry their groceries in. In some cases this means finding loopholes — those bags which for some technical reason aren’t subject to the tax, and may be worse for the environment.

That’s basically my issue. We need an alternative. The green baskets are great, but they have a high initial cost (around $5), and you need to lug them around. The re-usable bags also require forethought, and might not be sufficient to carry a week’s worth of groceries. Their use should be encouraged beyond the $0.05 per bill rebate that Loblaws offers, but it’s not a complete solution. What about smaller stores? What about department stores like Wal-Mart? What about those clear bags we put fruit in? What about all that excessive packaging that’s used on electronics?

That, combined with the fact that plastic bags still seem to be the method a lot of places use as proof of purchase.

Once we handle these things, then we can talk about drastic measures to reduce bags. In the meantime, I don’t get why stores don’t charge a small amount per bag, and offer more incentives for people to bring their own bags (like, say, ending the policy of everyone having to surrender their bags at the cash when they enter).

UPDATE: The Gazette’s Max Harrold has some man-on-the-street reaction to the idea.

| Business, Media

Cheap content

Montreal web-media darling Casey McKinnon has an opinion in the Guardian (yeah, that Guardian) about mainstream media trying to screw over independent web producers. With all sorts of TV shows popping up that are basically just collections of popular YouTube videos, it’s rather a propos.

Of course, it’s not just web video producers that are being screwed over. Newspapers are screwing freelancers and bloggers, new media is screwing over other new media, and all media are hopping on this “crowdsourcing” bandwagon, trying to save money by getting other people to work for them for free. Then they slap their own copyright notice on it as a crystal clear “fuck you” to the community that helps build them.

That won’t change until everyone starts seriously demanding more than just seeing their creation on television.

| Business, In the news

Gross negligence is an understatement

Gojit logo

Ever consider using GoJit or Dicom for deliveries? You might want to reconsider, because apparently they don’t keep track of their packages, and won’t reimburse you when gross negligence causes tonnes of merchandise to grow legs and disappear right under their noses.

Last week Quebec Superior Court ruled that the company was liable for $90,000 of boots that were lost in 2004. The company had offered a laughable $6,000 compensation when the 88 cartons over six palettes disappeared, and never called the police to report a theft.

Considering these actions take “gross incompetence” to a new level, the $118,307.65
judgment against them (plus interest retroactive to 2004) seems small.

UPDATE (Aug 8th): Just got off the phone with a VP at GoJIT. Apparently they haven’t received the decision yet from their lawyer, so won’t comment (too much) on the legal case. But apparently the compensation situation is an industry standard, and not just GoJIT policy. Look out for the interview in an upcoming article.