Ticketmaster also came to mind as a company that has been doing this for years.

Borderlands 3 and Wonderlands demonstrated clearly that the customers show up for the games, not the store front.

This doesn’t seem to match my own experience but I would be curious to see the steam vs epic sales numbers for gearbox. I use steam because it has good features. If epic supported user reviews, a flexible refund policy, a workshop for user mods, voice chat, cloud saves between devices, achievements, profile customization, the ability to stream games to a different device, etc. I might be more inclined to try it. I waited for borderlands 3 and wonderlands to come to steam and be on sale before I purchased there was zero incentive for me to create an epic games store account unless I really wanted the game right away. Epic exclusives were a good business idea (it worked for Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo for years) but they needed to develop a good store front along with them because it just isn’t sustainable.

Ford, GM, Toyota, Honda, Fiat Chrysler have factories in Canada. I don’t know of any that truly Canadian companies though.

As a condo owner with an EV, getting a charger installed was only marginally more difficult than if I was freehold. There are already laws in place that require condo boards to respond to charger installation requests and enter an agreement with the owner. I think getting more street parking chargers like they have all over Europe would be a good idea and installing charging bays in all new condo towers should be a requirement for the developer.

A big barrier to EV adoption is also education. I have been asked so many questions about my EV from my neighbours, friends, and families. The dealership wasn’t able to answer like 80% of my questions. I had to do a ton of learning online to understand the features of my car, how it works, how to charge it, when it operates well or poorly etc.

We have an Ioniq 5, paid $62,000 after tax, with federal rebate, and upgrades (winter tiers, extended range (520 km), floor mats, etc.). I would not consider EVs in Canada to be cheap by any standard. The base models tend to have poor range for anything more than light city driving.

I use a setting on iOS that blocks all calls from numbers that aren’t in my contact book. The only side effect is I have to save business numbers I interact with in my contacts. For the most part this works well for me and since I don’t answer spam calls they usually don’t try more than a few times before giving up. It is interesting to see their call patterns though. Some try daily for a week, others more randomly over a month.

Occasionally I disable the setting for a few hours when I am expecting a call from a number I don’t know.

What about buying directly from the brewery or distillery? I haven’t been to the LCBO since they made deliver from online sales legal. It’s cheaper, more convenient, fresher product, and directly supports a local business.