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You are here: Home / 2010 / Archives for June 2010

Archives for June 2010

Product Review Etiquette

June 11, 2010 by Tricia

Do you do product reviews on your website or blog? Do you receive products to test and keep? I do the occasional review, more in the past than I do lately.

Most of the time when I do an actual product review it’s an item that I bought myself and I’m just writing about my experiences with the product. One example of this would be the post I wrote just after I bought a Shark Steam Blaster (not that happy with it overall) or my discussions about our new front load washer and dryer (still extremely pleased).

Occasionally I’m contacted by a company and I’m given a product to test and then later write an opinion piece. I haven’t had many of those and I certainly don’t accept all offers for example I probably wouldn’t accept a clinicalliex review . I generally only accept products that I can actually get some use out of and that I will use regularly. In the past I’ve received a Nokia smart phone from a marketing company, bath soaps and skin care products, coffee and a few other food items or coupons for free and discounted food and beverage products, a photograph turned into a canvas, and a special window tint that I used on our very bright south facing kitchen window. There’s probably a few other products but those are the ones that I can remember at this moment.

One reason why I’m writing this post today is 1. that I’d like to do more reviews (a couple a month maybe) and 2. I just received a product that I’m going to review on my gardening blog.

In the past all the products that I’ve received to try out and review have been completely free and the one that I received early today was supposed to be free, however I was extremely surprised when the delivery person told me I had to pay the duty. It was a product shipped from the US to my home in Canada and I guess the company didn’t cover the duty and taxes.

I’m a little miffed, but when I think about it I’m getting a product that costs over $100 for free so it wouldn’t kill me to pay the almost $13 duty and taxes charge. Still, I think the company should have warned me that I’d have to pay these charges. I’ll be contacting the person who arranged the review to tell him about the Duty and taxes I had to pay. It’s possible that he either didn’t know about these extra charges or that it didn’t occur to him that my being in other country might incur these kinds of extra charges.

I’ll chalk it up as a lesson learned. the next time a company contacts me and offers me a product for free I’ll ask if there will be any shipping charges or duty.

Anyway, I’ll be reviewing the item that I just received on my gardening blog sometime next week. It’s a Black and Decker 24 V cordless Trimmer Edger. Definitely something that we’ll get some use out of. Oh, and I’ll be coming up with a giveaway too. The company said that I could give away a trimmer edger to one of my readers, so I guess I’d better start thinking about an interesting challenge for my giveaway. Any ideas?

If you do product reviews have you ever experienced something like this? Say a shipping charge, Duty or taxes?

Do you think it’s fair to have the blogger pay these extra charges or do you think the company sending the product should cover all charges?





Filed Under: Blogging, Canada, Cool stuff, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, Sales and Marketing, Toronto, Tricia's Garden Tagged With: beverages, cellphone, charges, duty, etiquette, Food, garden, home, items, nokia, opinion, product review, review purchases, shipping, skin care, taxes, test, use, use regularly

Met the new neighbors

June 5, 2010 by Tricia

Our brand new neighbors came to visit their new house earlier today. I still have no idea when they’re planning to move in, but they were here for several hours today cleaning up the house.

They pulled out at least two rugs and what looks like some flimsy wall partitions and placed them in the backyard. There’s also a few garbage bags with what looks like broken 2 x 2’s and cheap furniture. Most of that is probably stuff the last bad renters left in the house … probably in the basement because their 14 year old daughter was living down there with her boyfriend (yep).

I guess my husband went outside to meet them sometime in the morning while I was still in bed trying to sleep. He took them in our backyard and feed them some of our fresh strawberries (picked fresh off the plants). I complained a bit about that when he told me because I haven’t even had a strawberry yet. LOL He gives them away to people whenever they visit our yard and I almost never had more than one or two of our own home grown strawberries each year.

Later when I was up we went and knocked on their door to officially welcome them to the neighborhood. My husband had gone out to a local bakery and bought $20 worth of pastries and desserts for them. We also put a few cold soft drinks in a bag in case they were thirsty working in their new hot house.

So I only met the man. I think his wife was out when we arrived at their door. He was dressed in one of those head to toe coveralls that you can buy for painting and he looked hot. He seemed nice enough. My husband who had met and talked with both of them before they were really into their clean up and were still relatively fresh found them to be quite nice.

My husband was actually quite nervous that we’d end up with bad neighbors seeing as the last two renters were so terrible. However we figured someone with the money to buy a house in this neighborhood (no house are cheap in Toronto) would probably be ok.

I don’t envy them all the work they’re going to have to do to fix up the house. When we first bought our house we started doing major renovations. I remember working about 18 hours a day continuously for weeks to get everything down .. talk about a natural fat burner ! I didn’t need to lose any weight at the time we first got our house but with all that work on our renovations I somehow managed to lose about 40 lb in a month .. oh and my Crohn’s was acting up at the time too so that didn’t help. I was skeletal by the time we were ready to move in. LOL

We still don’t know if our new neighbors are going to do a lot of renovations. I think they just want to clean up their new home, maybe paint and then move in. Apparently they gave up their apartment about two months ago and have been living with his parents while they waited to get possession of their new house. I know if I was living with my in-laws I’d want to move fast. LOL

Hopefully the new neighbors turn out to be good people. At least we made an effort to be friendly and welcome them to the neighborhood. Everyone is fairly friendly here on our street and in the general area, it takes some getting used to if you come from an area where you really don’t know your neighbors – like an apartment building, but hopefully they’ll turn out to be nice too.

Filed Under: Canada, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, Life with Chris, The Neighborhood, Toronto Tagged With: carpets, clean up, cleaning, cold drinks, dessert, friendly, garbage bags, get along, greeting, new neighbors, nice, partitions, soft drinks, welcomed, wood

A headache that just won’t go away

June 5, 2010 by Tricia

I think it’s a good thing that it was rainy this week. It forced me to take it easy and stay out of the garden which in turn allowed me not to overwork my poor aching back.

You might remember that I wrote earlier this week that I canceled my visit to Google Canada’s offices on Wednesday because my back was in terrible shape. I’m still terribly disappointed about that. At least the person that was organizing the meeting wrote back to me and told me that they would keep me in mind if they had any other meetings with Canadian Adsense publishers in the future.

Unfortunately I’ve also had a headache/ migraine that just won’t go away. It started on the evening of Wednesday May 26th and I still have it – 11 days later! Believe me when I say I’d rather have been doing research on the best acne treatments over the last week and a half than have this migraine.

My head is pounding and the pain in my head keeps moving. At first it was behind my right eye and on the right side of my head. Then it moved to the top middle of my head and then a while after that my left side got a turn. Now for the last three days or so the pains been mostly in the back of my head and upper neck although my right eye has some pain too.

I’ve also had those weird vision problems again too. Not the squiggly lines, but blurry or blind spots that sometimes last for hours. I have “weird” vision right now – a little wavy but more blurred than anything. I guess these are auras too, but it’s been happening while I’ve been having this headache / migraine. Visual headaches usually have no pain when they are occurring and then an hour or more later the headache starts.

Well maybe I’ll find out what’s going on in July when I’m set to have an MRI of my head. Hopefully it really is just migraines.

I’m a little worried though because the neurologist said that since my headache / migraine pattern has changed so drastically recently – along with the aural migraines that I could be having small strokes. He also wrote a letter to my pain doctor and said the same thing but in more detail. I didn’t read the letter but when my pain doctor told me what he’d written I realized that he really thought I might be having small strokes or TIA’s and hadn’t just been mentioning it as a possibility.

I guess that’s made me a little more nervous when I get a migraine or when the visual symptoms start up … and of course stress doesn’t help alleviate a headache – does it? I suspect that when I do have my MRI my brain will be as normal looking as it’s ever been … but I’m still glad that I’m having the test soon – just to be sure.

Filed Under: Chronic Pain, Health Fitness and Beauty, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try Tagged With: aural migraine, constant migraine, headache, migraine, mini strokes, MRI, nervous, Stress, symptoms, TIA, visual migraine

Yummy Abs

June 5, 2010 by Tricia

The other night my husband and I watched an episode of The Hour on CBC. I wanted to watch the interview with Jake Gyllenhaal …. man have you seen his abs? I don’t know that kind of abs workout he did, but it worked and it worked well!

I haven’t seen the movie Prince of Persia and I probably won’t – at least not in a movie theater as it’s not really my kind of movie. Maybe I’ll wait until it’s on the movie network so I can watch it at home.

Anyway .. Jake seems like a really nice down to earth guy. He did a great interview with George Stroumboulopoulos (say that 10 times fast).

There’s always great guests on that show. Since it’s taped in Toronto I put my husband and I’s name in for free tickets. Maybe we’ll get some tickets on a day when a star or musciain that we’re really interested in is being interviewed.

Filed Under: Canada, Entertainment, Items to Try, Television, Toronto Tagged With: ABS, George, Jake Gyllenhaal, live, show, taped, The Hour, tickets, TV

A very close call

June 3, 2010 by Tricia

Something happened an hour ago or so that’s left me shaken.

I was sitting in my living room working on my computer. It’s cool enough today that instead of having the air conditioning blasting I’m able to have the windows and doors open.

As I sat working I happened to turn my head and noticed a little girl running across the side street opposite my house. I guess she’s about 4 or 5 years old now, but I’ve been worried about her for at least two years because almost every day I see her running across the road – back and forth, several times a day. I had a feeling that something bad might happen one day.

As it turns out today was the day that something almost happened.

When the little girl was about halfway across the street a car turned off of my busy street into the side street that the girl was crossing. The car was going fast and when the driver saw the little girl he must have jammed on the brakes and swerved at the same time. He missed the little girl by a couple of feet, but crashed into two parked cars.

I jumped up and threw on some sandals and ran out the door. I think I was on my feet before the car crashed into the parked cars. I actually made it to the little girl (who was about 200 yards from my house) before the man got out of the car or anyone came out of the house she lives in.

The little girl was ok, but naturally she was terrified after almost being hit by the car. The man who was driving the car and who caused the accident was fine, but he was shaken up too. I have a feeling his day is only going to get worse once the various car insurance companies start calculating all the damages the accident caused.

I’m so ticked off at that little girls parents and or babysitter. I’m not sure who she’s with during the day, but whoever it is, they’re not watching her well enough if I can see her out alone on the street and running back and forth across the street almost every day. Sure it’s a side street, but it leads to a park so it’s fairly busy. I think someone should always be outside watching out for her when she’s playing in the front yard.

I almost feel like calling child services. I mean I’ve been worried about this kid being hit by a car for at least a year and a half and here it almost happened today. What would you do?

Filed Under: Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, The Neighborhood, Toronto Tagged With: accident, almost hit, back and forth, brakes, car, child services, crashed, cross street, dangerous, kid, little girl, turning, young

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