Has anyone tried a "buy Canadian" app?
I ran across this post on the CBC that names a few apps to help people find Canadian products: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/buying-canadian-shopping-apps-barcode-scanners-1.7463039
I'm curious if anyone has tried any of these and how useful (or not!) you've found them.
I use Buy Beaver pretty extensively. It's community based so it's evolving and obviously not perfect, there are many duplicates, often alternatives are missing but the more it's used the better it's gonna be.
My friend uses O SCANada but I refuse to use it because its AI based
Thank you! I just installed Buy Beaver!
The only two I have tried are IsThisCanadian? and Buy Beaver. The former is AI powered and often either entirely incorrect or gives contradicting information, and the latter is community-driven and is missing a lot of data on many products.
I mostly just use the Wikipedia app and quickly check the background info on companies as I encounter them, looking up their subsidiaries and such.
I tried Maple Scan when it came out. It’s alright, if a bit slow. It’d probably be a lot more efficient to have it scan barcodes instead of analyzing photos, but maybe there’s an advantage there that I’m not aware of.
I tried about a half-dozen, and they were either broken (didn't work), or gave false information.
Now I just check labels or do research when looking up who owns the company behind the brand.
I've been using Buy Beaver. Not perfect as others have noted but the more Canadians help, the better it gets.
I tried one about a month ago, but I think it was shop Canadian. 2/3 of the stuff I scanned was not found. I don't trust crowd sourced data. I've said a few times now I would rather have an app that identifies what is American. I'll just stick to reading labels.