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Star: Shopping wars: 'Screw it, I need some bags'

bags were never free, the cost for bags was just absorbed by all the other products for sale. when you purchased your groceries, the cost of bags was covered.


i'm not a fan of the bag charge. i would have preferred that biodegradable environmentally friendly bags were made available instead. grocery bags were very useful for lining trash bins or packing a lunch. now people gotta buy bags for lunch packing and trash bins, etc.
 
I don't mind the bag charge so much as trying to figure out how many I'll need before I start bagging them. We tend to reuse plastic bags for future trips, use them to line wastebaskets, take out the garbage etc. so they get a lot of use. I'm still not into the canvas bag thing but I suppose I'll eventually warm to it.
 
billonlogan said:
Some advice if you want to save the 5 cents per bag. I have not had to pay for a single bag. I tell the cashier I need do many bags and I dont want to pay for them. If she refuses, I will leave the groceries at the cash and walk out. They ususally comply. Works every time.
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People like you are the reason customer service is so lousy. It only takes one customer to royally piss off a cashier/salesperson/etc. and completely ruin their day. I get jerks like this every day at my store, all whining and moaning about not getting their way. I've had people argue for a one-cent discrepancy in the price of a product. ONE. CENT. People like that say "It's the principle of it." Bull@#%! It's the money! People are so spoiled and used to instant gratification that they don't care who they have to yell at, whine at, and kick in the stomach to get what they want.

Do you know how irritating, demoralizing, and depressing it is to get that every...single...day? Do you? No, you don't. Let me tell you, people like you destroy all hope in the human race. You may not think your stubborn, pig-headed act does that, but it does.

</climbs off soapbox>
 
arguing for a few cents is one of the surest ways not to get laid. just my opinion.
 
Well said DHLawrence85. As someone who worked 4 years in fast food and 3 years in customer service for an auto insurance company I know first hand what you're talking about. The overwhelming majority of my experiences were pleasant, if not uneventful. It just takes that 1 one pig-headed, self-absorbed person to ruin a day and it's almost always over insignificant crap like a 5 cent bag. It's just sad that there's so many people like that out there, if removed from society customer service would be a fantastic job.

I wonder what all of those people in India and Bangladesh who are working the phones as customer service support think of Canadians? Surely they can't be good thoughts...
 
adma said:
I'm also wondering if there's an incipient "cross-border shopping" phenomenon, i.e. people doing their grocery shopping in Mississauga or north of Steeles just so they don't get dinged for bags...
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Every major grocery chain has put in place the 5 cent charge across Ontario if not nationally.
 
Prometheus The Supremo said:
bags were never free, the cost for bags was just absorbed by all the other products for sale. when you purchased your groceries, the cost of bags was covered.


i'm not a fan of the bag charge. i would have preferred that biodegradable environmentally friendly bags were made available instead. grocery bags were very useful for lining trash bins or packing a lunch. now people gotta buy bags for lunch packing and trash bins, etc.
Click to expand...

Brown paper lunch bags are absurdly cheap. A penny a piece, if that.
 
Also this talk of bags has reminded of Aldo's shoe boxes. They have the strap built in, completely genius and something I wish the entire industry would adopt.
 
I support the 5c bag charge. I wish in fact that we had Germany's law, which is (as I understand it) you can unpack whatever you buy at the store if you like, and the store has to bear the cost of getting rid of the excess packaging. Quite a clever way to put pressure on those manufacturing products to get pressure from someone they actually will listen to (the retailers) to minimize their packaging.

And it makes sense - if you have something, that because of its fragility or size, that requires packaging, you'll be glad of it. If the packaging is superfluous, then leave it behind at the store. Separates the wheat from the chaff.

5c bags are only the beginning.
 
Fadhil Yousif, who runs Grand Plastics, a Brampton family business, says orders have dropped 75 per cent in the past two weeks. He used to make 100,000 to 150,000 bags a day. Last week, he stopped his machines
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This is awesome. A huge success. See how effective a cent charge can be?
All that waste of raw materials and energy to produce a product that no one actually valued is now avoided.

A huge success.

If people really want plastic bags to line their garbage they'll pay for them. Maybe those boxes of Glad kitchen garbage bags are cheaper now - so buy those if you need plastic bags.

When bags were free, I would avoid taking them but cashiers would often put my purchases in one before I could object. Then I would usually just capitulate and take the bag. Even with this attempted non-use I would end up with more plastic bags that I could use for kitchen garbage.
 
By the way, for people who forget to bring bags when they go shopping, or need plastic bags to line garbage cans, don't forget that most grocery stores have a container near the front entrance for people who recycle old bags. There are thousands of bags in there, so just dig in.

Personally, I'm amazed that this 5c charge is actually having an effect. I would have thought that at that price, most people would treat it like a nuisance tax and just ante up.
 
Hipster, studies have demonstrated that a small charge does indeed have a highly predictable effect. The earlier, ridiculous proposal of a refund if you brought your own bags would have had no effect.

I find it funny, too, that it does - but I'm not surprised.
 
Most of my shopping went down at No Frills, so this bag charge is hardly new for me. The one great thing about No Frills though was that they would have, near the cash, all of their old boxes you could use as an alternative. Hopefully places like Loblaws could start that. If they are charging 5$ for their 'eco' canvass bags, you could buy 500 regular bags before you break even. Somehow I doubt that the average eco bag lasts 500 uses before attrition kills it. So, providing recycled alternatives would be an improvement over trying to corral shoppers into more expensive bags.

The part of this I hate though is that it applies to delivery. Somehow I thought that only retail shops would apply the charge, but the other day I ordered Chinese and they charged me 5c/bag. When I asked to just not have a bag, they refused and told me to refund it personally. Its not such a big deal, to add 5c on a 20$ meal, but it just seems stupid to not offer alternatives.
 
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