Here's a graph of the Canadian dollar versus the United States dollar over the past 5 years. As you can see, the Canadian dollar has gained an amazing amount of ground, especially since the beginning of this year. The graph doesn't show it, but the Canadian dollar is currently worth US$1.03. We're above parity!

I bring this up because I wanted to point out how it seems some retailers are taking advantage of the situation to rip off Canadian consumers. With our dollar so high, prices in Canada should be falling, right? Well, some have, and some haven't.

For an example of prices that haven't fallen, consider the following:

When I was at Legoland about a week ago in the United States, I bought my son a lego house for US$49.99. However, when I was shopping at Toys-R-Us yesterday here in Canada, I was surprised to see the same house selling for $69.99. Unbelievable.

So I went to lego.com to see what their prices were. To view the house for yourself, you can follow this link. Amazingly enough, as of today, October 21, 2007, if you choose Canada as your county the house is CAD$69.99, but if you choose the United States as your county the house is USD$49.99. Why does Lego hate Canadians? This is a blatant rip-off. The price for Canadians is 40% higher, even though the Canadian dollar is worth roughly the same as the US dollar.

Clipped from lego.com   2007-Oct-21
Price in the United States	Price in Canada

This pricing discrepancy is not limited to this one item. Pretty much every item on the lego.com site shows a similar gouging of Canadian consumers.

Here are two other examples:

Item #	US$	CA$
4954 Model Town House	69.99	94.99	36% more
KT303 Small Train Engine Blue	19.99	29.99	50% more!!

Shame on you, Lego!

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Copyright ©2007, David Vanderbyl