Forbidden Planet

Two days ago, I picked up a very nice art book called Master's of Deception: Escher, Dali & the Artists of Optical Illusion . It features the work of many extremely talented illusory artists and at $19.95 Canadian it was an extremely reasonably priced book considering it is full colour and quite large. The problem was that the bottom edge of the book was dirtied and slightly damaged. I looked for another copy but could not find one. I asked at the cash if they had any undamaged copies and they found another, but it too suffered from the same imperfection. I asked if another store had any copies. They did, but it was in worse shape then the ones I had in my hand - the cover was torn. So I took the least damaged copy, they gave me a 20% damage discount (book is now non-returnable) and I got an additional 10% off because I'm an iRewards member. (Going online, I see I could have got an immaculate copy for pretty much the same price). Being religious, I find this picture by Octa...

Seeing as I had nothing better to do last night, I calculated the taxes on my phone bill. There are two taxes: a 5% Federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) and (in Ontario) 8% provincial sales tax (PST). My bill was $50.07 before taxes. My GST should have been $2.50 and my PST should have been $4.01. Instead it was $2.51 and $4.02 respectively. I was over billed $0.02! Of course, that is really insignificant, however, this morning I discovered it is happening to others . Assuming Bell Canada bills 1,000,000 customers (probably low, considering the number of residential, business and cell phones available in Canada), that means an extra $10,000 per month for Bell or $120,000 per year. Typical rounding practice is to round down if less than 1 / 2 a penny and round up if 1 / 2 a penny of more. And Bell appears to round this way, except it then adds a penny to the final result. The numbers in bold should be the final result, but since Bell adds a penny, it is actually the numbers in italic...

Following on the heels of Barbara , I have my own tale of consumer woe. Background Until the middle of August, I have the kids up here in Ottawa with me, since it is easier for me to get them to and from summer camp than it is for Sofia in Montreal. Since the kids principally live in Montreal, that is where their beds are. I live in a mostly empty house in Ottawa, so I need to buy a bed for them to sleep on. It was a pretty simple decision for me, I went to Mattress Mart because I've bought from them four times before (97 or 98, 2000, 2001, and 2003) and was happy with them. On 03-July-2007 I bough a futon from them and asked to have it delivered in the evening of 04-July-2007 - defined as being sometime between 17:00 and 20:00. ”Call tomorrow after three for a more accurate delivery time” , I was told. 04-July-2007 between 15:30 and 16:00 (I tried calling at 15:00, but the line was busy). me: ”Hi, I was told I to call after three to get a better estimated time of delivery" ...