That's a LOT of Canadian Tire money...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I have a mouse in my condo. I’m not entirely sure how he got there as he would have had to either scale my balcony and come in the doggie door, or squish his fat little mouse body under my front door, in which case it’s likely he’s not a mouse, but actually a neighbour’s escaped hamster or gerbil.

In a bid to find the little beastie and get rid of him, the new beau and I have been ripping my place apart - hauling EVERYTHING out of every room/storage room/cupboard/etc looking for the little turd. As such, we’ve found a bunch of stuff in various places. I’ve lived in my place for a long time and while things get put away, they don’t necessarily get put in the exact same spot ever time.

So, the new beau, being the organized sort, has started putting “like with like.” Two days ago he came up and handed me a 4-inch thick stack of Canadian Tire money.

For the non-Canadians in the group, Canadian Tire is a Canadian (duh) store that sells a variety of things - tires (again, duh), car parts, plumbing stuff, electrical, but also gardening supplies, house wares (Debbie Travis!), etc. etc. When you make a purchase with cash or debit, they give you a Canadian Tire money rebate. You get Canadian Tire “money” which you can then spend in the store for future purchases.

Now - back to the money. Beau hands me a 4-inch thick stack of Canadian Tire money. I’m delighted! I start fantasizing about the stuff I’m going to buy with it.

::cue dreamy fantasy music::

*I’ll get a bar-b-que!

Or some new patio furniture!

Or some of those nifty Debbie Travis plates that I have no room for in the kitchen…"*

Excitedly, I sat down and sorted all the “money” into denominations and proceeded to count it.

$16

A four inch thick stack of Canadian Tire money, and I have $16. Shit. That’s barely a decent discount on a bar-b-que. It’s not even one frikin’ chair. I’d get two cups and a salad plate.

<sigh>

I guess now I know why I’ve never taken the time to develop a storage system for the stuff. However, I’ll take the 10-cent bill out of my wallet and add it to the stack I guess. $16.10…

In other news, no, we didn’t find the mouse.

2

When I moved back to Alberta from NWT, a family friend gave me a stack of Canadian Tire money to help outfit my new place in Canmore. He gave me $80. Eight-Zero. I bought a coffee maker and kitchen towels and an iron and bath towels and cleaning supplies.

3

All Canadians are required to have a stash of Canadian Tire money. Regrettably, the amounts paid out by Canadian Tire these days are so small that they’re almost negligible. Mouse Bedding is as good a use as any. My stash of CT money only adds up to a couple of dollars.

4

One of my uncles started buying all of his gas at Canadian Tire and fairly quickly managed to save up a couple hundred bucks to buy a bar-b-que.

I really don’t shop there that often (once I got the place pretty well kitted out, there wasn’t much point, ya know? I mean, how many hammers does one girl need?), so I’m not sure why I thought I was going to have a brazillion dollars to spend…

5

I haven’t been to a Canadian Tire (RONA is closer) in a while, but I seem to recall that they have a charity box thing you can put your Canadian tire money in. That is what I do with it.

6

A noble idea, but I think I’ll keep saving it up and see:

a) how long it takes to actually get enough to buy something. I’ve been in my place for 9 years, so I imagine it will be a while

b) the look on the poor Canadian Tire person’s face when I walk in and want to pay for my BBQ with a 2-foot high stack of the stuff. Yes, I’m evil.

7

I don’t shop at Canadian Tire often enough to accumulate so much as a buck or two over the course of a year. I do shop at Zellers a number of times in a year though; I’m accrued something like 350,000 HBC Rewards points over the last 7-8 years. That’s worth, like … $40 or something. Unless I’m a “gold” member (which means I’ve earned more than 50,000 points in a year or something absurd like that) then shopping in their rewards catalogue boosts the value of my points (or rather, reduces the number of points required to buy things for gold members).

I still don’t know what to do with it. So it just keeps building up. Maybe sometime in the next decade I’ll get enough to buy something I actually want out of that silly catalogue.

8

I actually switch my HBC points over to airmiles, which I then use to get Banana Republic gift cards, cus I like Banana Republic. I probably get about $250/year which is a nice perk for buying stuff I needed anyway.

9

I didn’t know they were convertible to air miles. Not that I have an air miles card – I don’t go anywhere – but since they can be redeemed elsewhere for other, arguably cooler stuff, it might be a more useful form of “promotional currency” than HBC points, which are only redeemable at three or four HBC-owned stores, and only for stuff out of their rewards catalogue or occasionally traded in on promo days in-store (wherein the trade-in value is significantly diminished compared to the points it requires.)

10

You know what amazes me most about Canadian Tire money?

Nobody complains that it references an ethnic stereotype.

What a country! :slight_smile:

11

I use my airmiles points for entrance fees for Radium Hot Springs and movies. I haven’t flown anywhere in years, but the airmiles are good for lots of other things.

I like to cash in a whole bunch of Crappy Tire money all at once, too. I don’t like the store much (what is it with Canadian stores and what seems to be systemic bad attitudes?), and I probably shouldn’t take it out on the wage slave behind the till, but that’s how the cookie bounces. Last time I did this, I had about a four inch stack, too; came to about $25.

12

I’ve used my airmiles to ‘purchase’ an mp3 player, and a digital camera. Both were items I really wanted, but just couldn’t bring myself to spend real dollars on.

I buy gas at Canadian Tire every so often (when I’m not buying it at Shell to get airmiles), and the Canadian Tire money builds up quicker doing that. I used it to buy a slow cooker, and still have a stack of money.

13

Heh - I just found this story, which I kind of love:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2004/12/01/CanadianTire-ATM.041201.html

It goes further to support my decision to never have any dealings with CIBC again, as they are all, obviously incompetent boobs. Next they’ll be faxing personal identifying financial information about their customers to a junk-yard in the States. Oh wait…

14

Heh… I remember the fax bungle. I used to deal with CIBC many years ago but I didn’t like them. I’m with BMO now. They’re still a big bank with big fees, but I decided to shell out for the $16/month “no-fee” account package, so I can make as many withdrawals as I want without any extra fees.

And so far, I’ve been given nothing but real money and no one in Buttpound, IA has my personal information.

15

Well, there is a liquor store in town here that proudly advertises with a huge banner “We take Canadian Tire money!!”, so you could very well get drunk (or at least tipsy) with your $16 here.

16

IIRC, the largest denomination of Canadian Tire money is $1, and the smallest is 5c. I’m not surprised that a four-inch stack would only be $16. I forgot how much I had after years of collecting it, but I do recall that my wife put it towards a coffee maker. It didn’t completely pay for the coffee maker though.

Alice, about the mouse–would you like to borrow a cat or two?

17

Ha! that’s what you get for having umpty-ump different colors and designs on your money. Hmmm, I wonder if I could get someone gullible down here to exchange CT money at par…

mad cackle BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

18

The local library system takes donations of CT$, so that’s where most of mine ends up.

Two things to note:

  • You don’t get CT$ if you pay by credit card
  • (At least some places) they want your CT$ back if you return something. (I couldn’t find it, so they took 10c off the return)

At least on that last one, I wrote a letter of complaint comparing taking back their CT$ to a store giving coupons at the register and asking for them back, and got a $10 gift card for my troubles. :smiley:

19

This is awesome.

Stupid draconian Ontario liquor laws.

They did that to me as well Nanoda. Maybe I should write a letter too!

Wait, was it like a real letter or an email?

20

Indeed, where I live we have a bar that takes Canadian Tire money.

How great is that? :smiley: