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Tough times in Toronto - Aug 9-13

I’m now completely in favour of free market economics (notice how my laptop corrects the spelling of favor).

This is because I have witnessed how monopolies/oligopolies can squeeze customers, here in Toronto. Anyway, the three most frustrating things about Toronto so far have been:

1. The day I realized that most banks here charge you a monthly fee or transaction fees when you make debit transactions on your chequing account. The only way to waive that is to maintain a minimum balance (between $2K to $5K in most places). Mind you, there are 5 banks which control about 80% of total assets in Canada’s banking sector. These are RBC, TD Scotiabank, CIBC & BMO. There’s one Citibank branch in the whole of Toronto, so I went to open my account there. They charge me $0.50 for every debit transaction.

2. Last Tuesday, I gave my card to the petite Chinese cashier at Shoppers Drug Mart and said “debit please”. She said “no it’s credit”. I said “no it’s debit”. We went back and forth a few times. Then I said “look it’s MY card and it’s attached to MY bank account in the US. It’s debit”. Then very lazily she said, “whatever, you still have to sign” and rang it up as credit. Then I said “YEA WHATEVA”, took my things and walked out. Few days later I learned that in Toronto, MasterCard or Visa = Credit card”. No such thing as a debit MasterCard or debit visa. Instead, they use "interac" cards.


3. The day I realized that Ted Rogers (CEO of Rogers comm.) runs sh** in Canada. Try giving these punks a $100 deposit just to get a phone line. Or paying $40 for 250 anytime minutes. Or $100 for a 1GB blackberry data plan (vs. $30 for unlimited in Chicago). Or $11 to add on voicemail + caller ID + 250 sms messages. They might as well have asked for my wallet itself.

I’m bitter about this (even though work covers most of the cost) simply because it is VERY unfair to the average consumer. I can’t imagine how ticked off I would be if I had to pay for this myself.

In conclusion, don’t expect to be a ‘baller’ in Toronto. The bills ‘a kill ya.

Quick addition: I just spent the last few days finishing “The Fountainhead”, a novel by Ayn Rand. Thanks to Duncan M & Pat G for arguing about the concepts in this book at Lauren H's dinner for the AC1s. That's what prompted me to read it. Thanks to Jigar C for allowing me to borrow (err steal) his copy. Thanks for Aisha for resisting the urge to tell me what happened next.

I would recommend this book to anyone who feels like reading something different. It's dense and reads slow at first, but it's an amazing book once you get past the first 100 pages. If you want to take the easy route, watch the full movie at http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=2A71E708224E9B1C. It's split into 12 segments. It's definitely not the same though.


Preview next posting: I’m really starting to like Toronto. It’s not "just like Chicago" as a lot of people have said to me. It’s quite different actually. My Citibank banker said they call it “Mini Manhattan”. That’s TBD.

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