Good morning,
I wanted to let you that your decision to block customers from claiming their own reusable bag refunds at the self-checkout is one of the most short-sighted and wasteful things I have seen in some time.
So where once anyone could simply claim a refund by keying 1075 on the number pad and weighing the bags, we are now expected to get the attendant (who is generally busy with more complex customer problems) to do the same thing for us.
Reusable bags save your stores money, allow customers feel like they are making a difference, and are generally a good idea. But someone decided that we can’t be trusted and are somehow going to exploit this for all the nickels we can get.
A much easier solution would to simply cap the number of bags any one customer can claim at a reasonable number, like 5. Someone may take you for 10¢ when they claim 5 and use 3, but consider the union wages you are paying to monitor that as well the customer goodwill you’re squandering, and ask yourself if it’s worth it.
Well, as it turns out, it’s not an abuse of the bag refund that is the issue. Apparently, it’s abuse of the self-checkout system itself. I’m not sufficiently criminally-minded but evidently what has happened is patrons will weigh items with their bags in the refund process, meaning they get a 5¢ refund and the item(s) free. Add to that more mundane abuses — buying item A while paying for lookalike but lower-priced item B, keeping items off the scale so they are never counted as unpaid for — and it demonstrates how people will take advantage of anything they can, anyway they can.
This was why they had the public stocks back in the day.
