Yep, my local Asda has the staff holding any and all bags hostage 🙃 Meanwhile, how many tons of stock do they have in that is plastic, and how many rolls of that big cling film do they go through when they are wrapping their cages? 🤔
Bags became a hot topic in superstores with all the Go Green
Their excuse for charging was to "encourage" people to bring their own bags thus reducing plastic waste and putting forward recycling ♻️
This has kind of backfired though because people don't actually bring their own bags (Save a minority) and pick up and walk out with the superstores bags without paying for them
And by all means it's "just a bag" but forming the plastic, moulding the bags, etc all costs money
Supermarkets do not get the bags for free, it was merely a case before that it was a necessary company cost for customer satisfaction and accessibility
The stores around me couldn't really care less about people taking bags but that's upto them, when corporate wants to know why money is disappearing and what the least profitable stores are they'll be first on the chopping block like my store was many years ago
Never pay for a bag. Ever.
If you spent £50 on shopping and “forget “ to pay for a worthless bag, if it went to police or court they would laugh at the store
This really angers me. They'll trust me to self scan and pay but think I'm gonna steal a bag. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely would, but you'd think the 50p is less of an issue than the other stuff I don't scan correctly
They do just this in my asda, the staff carry them, no staff no bag, ask for a bag they scan it.
Ask them to swap a damaged bag and they look at you like you have insulted them
I'll never forget when I went to the pizza counter at a different Asda to my local once... asked them to put garlic spread as the base and they refused. I was super confused and explained that's what I usually got at my local Asda. She told me they weren't allowed and it was "more than her jobs worth" couldn't believe it haha
I think it might be a *that* Asda thing. In the last 18 months, I've lived in 3 cities in the UK and have shopped at Asda in all of them and have never come across that
They are only required to charge 10p yet I’m charged 60p in most places they have turned something that was always free because it was baked into the price of everything in the shop into a new revenue stream
You're missing the point - the point of the cost is to put you off buying them, not to make additional revenue.
Same thing as ULEZ - for some reason people just can't comprehend the idea of this.
The carrier bags they used to supply for free, they had to charge for and donate the money to charity, so they all got rid of the basic carrier bags and now sell the ‘bags for life’ (which they always sold alongside the free bags).
So rather than the 5p they charged for the basic bag (with donation to charity) they now only provide the 30-60p bags for life, with no obligation to donate to charity.
I also enjoy that stores with paper bags, also charge for those.
>I also enjoy that stores with paper bags, also charge for those
This fucking boils my blood. Sure we should be reducing and reusing before we recycle, but *sometimes* my other bags are at capacity and I need a new bag. I’m not *getting* **your** bag to show off I’ve been there.
I’m talking to you Primark
Sorry but I disagree. There no chance these profit hungry organisation have started doing doing this for altruistic reasons. Not comparable with ULEZ either.
Its because the highest shrink line is actually bags for life. It is a cheap product but its the most commonly stolen product. Source: I'm a section leader at Asda.
😂🤣😂 It's so funny and pathetic when you guys police customer's plastic bags. Scan it for me to make sure I've paid but I've used the self scan gun and "forgotten" to scan half of my shopping 🤣😂🤣😜
We’ve just started trialing this in some Morrisons stores, I thought exactly the same thing, surely there’s other stuff getting nicked that we’re more worried about.
If you look at the price of bags. But they don’t cost that do they. You’d be looking at less than £100 in reality, which was always offset in the price of everything else. It’s used as revenue for the already over wealthy large companies.
And we can’t even recycle them! It should be legislated that they only provide paper bags imo, and charge what it actually costs to make/ship to store.
I don’t mind paying for bags. But the biggest place that pisses me off is Morrisons. 70p for a plastic bag or 50p for a PAPER bag. Everywhere else is max 30p for a plastic bag.
I work in Morrisons and I agree our bags are an absolute rip off but they’re 60p for plastic and 40p for paper. Still outrageous but I guess the idea behind the high price is to put people off buying them and bring their own.
Needs changing, It’s just lining someone’s pockets, living costs are through the roof, many different Jobs are simply not paying their employees enough, and I do not see much being done to Improve the environment even if that is the case where I am from, still litter and dumped items everywhere, nothing good is being returned in the peoples direction some places are really bad, and people have to live like that in what is one of the richest countries in the world? Those at the top have the attitude of as long as I am okay, forget the conditions people at the bottom have to live under, If we want a better country, something drastic needs to be done to improve life for everybody.
They carry them round and just give you one when you ask so they might as well be hanging up 😩
My reasoning is the 1 minute it takes chasing a poor sod round for a bag costs me money, so I just rob it anyway 🤣
Please understand that some of us do not want to carry those bags! I absolutely hate it I get that they are stolen a lot but it makes our job so much harder people interrupt what I’m doing all the time because they need a bag and it’s so frustrating when we’re busy. I wish we could just hang them up but it’s not allowed 😭😭
Yes because supermarkets give each member of staff one job only and that job can easily be completed by one person.
MASSIVE SARCASM in case you couldn't tell, you obviously haven't worked in a supermarket but do you not notice when you go shopping how there's often just 1 person covering 10 self serves and they also have to deal with customer questions, replacing damaged items, any other problem that comes up... And also handing out bags? Like when they have to walk off to a completely different part of the store because there's literally no one to help them, then come back to 7 red tills and annoyed customers?
Hmm that's very ignorant of you. Their job description is not bag carrier. They are there to keep an eye on all the self checkouts and solve all the issues that self checkouts have by waving their badge at the scanner and ignoring what it says on screen. The bags are stapled and sellotaped to these poor folks when they arrive at work, without their prior consent. 'Bag carrier' is demeaning. They are the computer-sitter avec bag caddy.
It’s almost like a role should exist where a person is employed to assist customers with their purchases by scanning and helping with packing goods the customer is buying and by doing so reduces losses via theft by ensuring all goods are scanned.
That would be ground breaking. You should tell shops everywhere of this new idea. Gone are the days of 'unexpected item on bagging scale' "fuck off no there isnt"
The bags were free before and the government forced us to pay for them for the good of the environment supposedly. And now the supermarket are complaining for loosing income on things that they didn't count on before. So where is the environment benefit here. If the money we pay for the bags go to envitomal agency then everyone we will be up for it but like this only the supermarket profit
Supposedly
"The major supermarkets supplied just 564 million single-use carrier bags in 2019-20,
# a reduction of over **7.4 billion bags**
compared to 2014."
Please tell me you understand that 7.4 billion carrier bags / year being buried in the ground and scattered over the land and sea is a very bad thing for the environment?
>for the good of the environment supposedly
I understand being cynical about government sometimes, but it's pretty hard to see a nefarious alternative motivation for this.
And given that you used to see plastic bags everywhere littering the streets, roadside, trees etc and now see very few I'd say it's been one of the most obviously visibly effective environmental policies of my entire lifetime.
I work for another retailer. The money needs to go a charitable cause. We advertise it rigorously. People are in fact, not up for it.
The risk regarding the bags is falling foul of The Single Use Plastics Law 2022.
I’m led to believe that only the mandated amount needs to go to that cause (10p in Scotland, 5p elsewhere if I’m correct). Morrisons charge 35p for a *paper* bag. Fuck that!
Or you could get a big strong plastic one that lasts forever for 80por whatever. Which is what you're supposed to do. Your fuck that is your motivator to remember to bring it.
Reading all the comments here is entertaining but the reality is the idiots that run the company will not allow the branches the funds to buy all the supplies we need any more. In my branch we have had to use just essentials cling film to wrap our rubbish cages at the end of a shift because we cant get shrink wrap. and actually use Little Angels nappies to mop leaks from the chiller units because we cant get zorba strips. The reason asda now protects the bags is that we simply dont have enough. We need to maximise the amount of time our cashiers arent getting abuse hurled at them for having no bags. That is the lesser of two evils sadly
Can someone not design rubish cages that don't rely on single use plastic? I know not the point of this thread, but it bugs me that individuals are to reduce single use plastic but the cages are wrapped up every time
Perfectly fair comment. The cages are supposed to come with gates on them. This means the wrap isnt required. As outlined before however, anything useful that we may actually need to operate efficiently has been steadily taken away from us. We are lucky if we get 3 gates per delivery these days (we need roughly 60 a day)
Not Asda but i worked in lidl for a bit and it was about £70,000 a year getting stolen just from the bags alone.
Thats about the same as an area managers pay for the year, if the area manager can cut down on that by even 1/2 for each store they are in charge of they have saved the company about £140,000 being lost from theft in bags.
I imagine they probably get a nice bonus from things like that?
And I know "it's only a bag" but loss is calculated into the price for companies, when companies lose £1,000,000 they aren't just forgetting about it, the price of everything goes up to account for it, making it more expensive for everyone in the long run
Your not wrong but £70k is litterly nothing for a company that took £1.1b last year it just pisses off our customers and means front end are wasting time scanning in bags rather than helping when the self serve fucks up leaving customers waiting part of the issue is Mossey is a greedy cunt and doesn't look at the bigger picture
I get what your saying, and £1.1b is a crazy amount of money, but that was 70k for one store, multiply that buy the 960 stores they have in the uk and it over £60 million. I think it may have been the most stolen thing in the store I worked, taking over the steaks and cheese.
Bag theft is rife at self service in particular, it's more common I DO than do NOT see someone scan all of their shopping, pay for it, then take the bags they need from the hanger. There is no 'oh I forgot' or 'just this once' about it - they've decided that the 30p charge is not for them.
I would expect it's happening a lot more these days as Tesco at least have put up the price from 10p to 30p, which starts to get noticeable when you're only spending a few quid on other items.
Now, personally I don't give a shit that they do it, their reasons are their own and I'm not about to start protecting the profits of large corps...but you just know these are also the people who park outside school gates, leave shopping trolleys in the middle of the car park, and do a thousand other things that they've decided are OK for them to do even though it's either breaking the rules, or just unpleasant for other people to deal with.
Oh and when they've loaded up their shopping into their stolen bag, they'll go and get into the car they parked on the double yellows right outside the shop entrance because they were 'only popping in'. Hazards flashing of course, to make it OK.
It’s a general thing across most of the supermarkets I’ve noticed. A lot of the time it’s because bags are being stolen- usually it’ll be people haven’t thought to scan it, and sometimes it’s people that have the ‘it’s only a bag ffs’ mentality.
But the reason they hold onto them is two main reasons:
1) when an item is stolen (or more accurately not scanned thru the till), the system doesn’t know it’s not there anymore, so a check of the stock on bags would tell staff there’s plenty, when there really isn’t.
2) its against the law to give a bag away for free in the UK, and retailers can be charged. So upon audit, if there’s a discrepancy between stock level and actual bags in stock, the auditor will want to know what steps the business is taking to mitigate.
Oddly enough, people don't realise it's law. You have to pay for bags, I had a customer threatening to put a complaint in because I made him pay for a bag.
I had a couple come to the till back in the day (the law had been such in wales for at least a year or so at this point), and they knew it was 10p a bag at the time.. I asked if they wanted bags, the bloke declined.
We still used to save up boxes at the till in case people wanted a free option- and again the bloke declines. His wife is still putting the shopping one the belt, and then comes over, to a whole load built up ‘post checkout’.
He snaps at me, ‘oh so now you’re gonna make me pay for bags eh?!’ and keeps up some narrative that I’m illegally preventing him from methods of taking his shopping away. The wife is flustered saying to me ‘it’s okay don’t worry, we can use a box, or bag it in the car’, and he’s shooting her down every step, while she gets more and more embarrassed.. About halfway through he shouts, and makes a scene, and storms off- with the money, leaving his wife to take the embarrassment..
I dunno why people do it- it’s not the fault of the stores or the workers. Always stuck with me, that.. I hope she gave him shit in the car home.. Must’ve taken an hour to shop for what they had, and they would’ve had to do it again at another store- and still paid for a bag anyway!
I'm my store (tesco) every two or three months we have to zero the bag counts because the system things we've got approx 25 boxes when we've got just a couple. A lot get stolen, mainly through self service.
My local Asda does this as they are constantly running out of bags yet the system says it has plenty on stock as people don’t pay for them. It’s so bad a couple of weeks ago one of the young girls on the self scan tills was punched in the face by a customer because he wanted bags but didn’t want to pay for them.
Not saying he is right for punching her as that is disgusting - however 30p for a bag that used to be free is a disgrace. Why am I paying for a bag that used to be free? The store is making it difficult by banning the shopping push trolleys that we take in for the shopping. Does it cut down on the plastic used? No not really so it’s more profits that can be taxed so more money for the company and government.
I pick one they’ve left hung somewhere. Once a staff member brought it over and scanned it for me when is had to ask for one and I asked them to scan the rest of my shopping for me since they didn’t trust me, I got a shitty look and told management make them do it.
People can cling to every bit of power they are given. In this case, being a guard of bags for life makes them feel like they have some importance and control over their lives, despite working at Asda.
Sorry but no it is not that I'm sure you need to rub that ego of yours acting like we hold that much regard to how your life will be Inconvenienced this is just another one of those jobs we don't want to be doing but are forced funnily enough thanks to customers.
Your just another customer with a pissy attitude like alot of people who thinks we actually care about your existence were payed to help you we wouldn't be doing it otherwise.
> existence were *paid* to help
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
You can’t be serious. At what point does simply doing a job make you become “power hungry”? They don’t care whether they get stolen, they care that they’ll get sacked for not following a reasonable request from the company.
i hope the people in these comments throwing out insults aren’t bullying staff members at the checkouts. i’ve lost count of the number of times i’ve been insulted by some big man for making them pay for a bag. it’s different in different stores, but in all the ones i’ve worked we receive an absolute bollocking for letting people get away with free bags. the poor sod staffing the tills is not the person making the decision to hide the bags. let them scan the bag or carry your shopping in your hands, don’t start bullying a(n almost) minimum wage worker who’d rather be doing anything else
I work at a BP/M&S and the amount of guys that I ask if they need a bag and they say no only to decide they want one after payment is made is a joke. If they pay cash it’s coming out the change if they pay card they either make another purchase of a single bag or they can fucking juggle for all I care. 50p a bag will add up fast if you’re handing them out free all day
Most commonly stolen items but 5 year ago they were free? Just another way they try and fuck us and charge us more. If the person dishing the bags out actually scans it for you I just steal something to make up for it
The government implemented the tax, the stores force the staff to adhere to the rules and will discipline you if they dont, don’t make the staffs life harder by being a prick, we’re all in the same boat
Asda is required charging 30p min per bags under current regulation. It's a way showing anyone waiting for asda screwing up anything compliance with this specific regulation.
It might cost 1p to manufacture, but the 'externalities' are much greater. (Wider impacts to the society/ the environment from the manufacture and disposal of plastics.) This is why there is a specific tax on bags, petrol, whiskey, tobacco etc.
Having said that, it is a right pain when you need a bag. Perhaps they need to invent a bag dispensing machine. But there are enough types of jobs getting replaced by machines nowadays that I don't begrudge the person being paid to hand out bags. I'm fact that person would probably still be employed anyhow to keep an eye on the checkouts.
Which is slowly being reduced, but why wouldn’t you start with something that doesn’t need to be consumed all the time?
Plastic on most food is necessary because they haven’t found other ways of storing it yet, a plastic bag isn’t necessary when you’ve already got one or you can buy a fabric bag that lasts years instead.
Is it fiscally sensible to employ someone at 12p/h to hand out bags, which if every single bag east stolen still wouldn’t equal that amount? They demeaning workers to save minuscule amounts of money, which doesn’t even benefit them. We have self checkouts now so instead of scanning items they are handing out bags like apes
A lot of these comments are assuming the bag is worth 30p. It’s not. Even when they were 6p the cost to the business was a fraction of a penny. If you had 700 bags unpaid for like a previous commenter noted, that’s about a fiver.
Now do that x every store, every day and suddenly it’s considerably higher unnecessary loss.
The bigger thing is actually for the convenience of the customer. I’ve been in stores that run out of BFLs and the drama that causes is hell. That can occur because the bags are stolen at such high frequency that the stock system doesn’t reach its order count and then suddenly you don’t have any in the store at all. Then it’s a choice of no bag or a tagged £5 fabric one.
The blackpool asda do this but it's like that presume you're a thief I went in last night and i asked for a bag and she gave it me and said "make sure you scan it though" in a blunt voice... I said "yeah obviously?" God
But did you scan it? You're from Blackpool, so I'd assume not!
Fun fact more bags are stolen in the north west than any other part of the UK. With more bags going missing in Blackpool, Liverpool and Crewe than anywhere else in the UK!
Source: made it up
The carrier bag charge 10p is mandatory and shops could be heavily fined for not charging. Bags for life do incur a charge but if they wear out you can get another one for free. So the small charge for the bag for life is a bargain. Carrier bags are an expensive option as they are often single use.
You’re not the only person mentioning this in this thread, but why are people assuming someone holding bags *only* does that for their job. They’re still self-scan staff doing their normal job, they just have the inconvenience of carrying around 200 bags because customers can’t stop stealing them, and their employer forces them to carry them. Neither the staff or customer like that, but the retailer is obviously going to try and stop unnecessary theft from happening.
Because they are one of the most commonly stolen items in stores because people don't see it as stealing in the same way they would if it was a physical item on a shelf - most people wouldn't help themselves to a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk, but many people think nothing of taking 2-3 bags without paying despite them being the same value. In my store a few weeks ago we ran out of bags because the inventory said we had 600+ bags in stock when there was literally not a single bag left in the building ... Which means 600+ bags had been stolen in the course of the last couple of weeks as the ordering system is connected to the sales system so 1 sale = 1 ordered, which is a loss of just under £250 and it isn't just a one off, it happens on a regular basis.
That doesn't sound like a lot but if we, as a single store lose that amount every month thats £3k a year lost and if we extrapolate that to the 1016 Asda stores in the UK then that could be £3MILLION a year lost just due to bag thefts, before you even look at costs caused by actual stock being stolen.
The easiest way to combat these thefts is to limit access to bags - on a manned checkout they can either be kept behind the till or placed in a location where the checkout colleague can see how many bags are being taken and add them on to the transaction; in self scan there is no easy location where their usage can be monitored, except in the hands of the colleagues.
This means that the self scan colleagues have yet another stupid task to do all because people can't be trusted not to steal and if they dare try to make their life easier by just putting the bags somewhere where people can help themselves and they get stolen (as they always do) then they get pulled into investigations/disciplinary meetings as the upper management hold those colleagues responsible for the thefts as part of their job is to ensure customers pay for all of their shopping and it's not worth risking their jobs to let Karen waltz out with a load of free bags for the third time this week.
Carrier bag dispensers are the answer to self service tills
You pull a bag out of a dispenser above your till, the dispenser registers the force of you pulling the bag and adds it to your purchase 🤔
Hopefully someone, somewhere, sees this comment and designs/builds/sells this to supermarkets so we can stop standing at tills waiting for fucking bags when the staff are otherwise occupied
I once waited 20 minutes for a bag because the one person watching the tills was having a conversation about baby photos 💀
20
Fucking
Minutes
ASDA reportedly made 1.1bn in pre-tax profit in 2023 on the back of consumers being fleeced. They can afford the 3 million for the stupid bags.
The only stealing going on is that of larger corporations against the consumer. I hope people steal more from them.
The flaw in the bag for life scheme, and being shown for what it is, which is just a money maker for the stores, is the whole 1 sold, 1 ordered. Surely, if it's a bag for life, then the idea would be to not have to keep a 100% inventory, thereby reducing the number of plastic bags that are being produced and being sold/stolen?
Sadly, from the retailers perspective the stock levels being accurate is actually then main focus over the theft - automating everything is the answer to everything, including ordering.
The amount of red tape and authorisation a store can need for ordering carried bags is - sadly expected nowadays.
Absolute ridiculous use of labour time for the staff IMO, but solves the problem.
Nah, not without reason.
Eg management may weekly review department / lines. A 1-5% variance expected across most.
You’ll notice spikes across lines, cheeses, wines, any high value items thieves nick.
Those can be explained - and if documenting the thefts, this is the data management can then take to ‘higher ups’ to appeal for security.
Ofc, this is AFTER in-store measures, ie - okay wines getting knicked, are we security tagging them? Placed correctly, watching cameras? Cheeses - how many displayed at a time? Some are even tagged.
After these measures, if still a high variance - THEN you have a case for a guard (or hours towards a guard)
carrier bags? Nah staff can ‘easily manage these on assistant level’ is an easy fix, to a complex problem - over stock thats worthless -basically- and staff would hate this. But along the chain of ‘ways to fix’, easily fixed.
Ofc this varies across stores but a lil insight (10 years exp in retail -supermarket + local.
Also love the "bag for life" that both asda and tesco claim 🤣 i cant count the amount of times i loaded one od those, they were not even that heavy, and one of the handles snapped off. Yeah, for life. For life of the potential glass bottle you have there, be it vinegar, oil, booze. Theyre anything but "bags for life".
Bag for life doesn't mean that the one individual bag will last indefinitely, it means that if it breaks or wears out then the store will replace it for free
Oh really????
Well, thanks for that information, will utilise this next time when the handle breaks as soon as i take it off the shelf of the self-checkout.
Yup, just tell the staff member it broke or whatever. We have a barcode number for BFL replacements. It will add it on and then minus it, just for stock count basically.
Right, is this something that is part of the staff training? I also dont want it to come out of anyone's wages.
I always pay for my bag, and yes, use them at home for whatever (cat litter, chucking in plastics to be put to recycling, etc).
Id never go back with an old, shattered bag to get it replaced.
Question: if i pay and have a glass jar/bottle in my bag when it snaps, will the company replace or do i have to buy a new item? Its just a question. I'm a super anxious person who rather walks off with a broken jar of olives and broken bottle of wine, before even asking for a new bag.
Yup, for Tesco it's a BFL Replacement. Nothing we do comes out our wages.
>Question: if i pay and have a glass jar/bottle in my bag when it snaps, will the company replace or do i have to buy a new item? Its just a question. I'm a super anxious person who rather walks off with a broken jar of olives and broken bottle of wine, before even asking for a new bag.
Yeah, even without the bag being at fault, if you drop and break something within the store we'll replace the bag and the item(s) for you. No need to worry about it.
Thanks, thats good to know. I generally carry the bag in my arms like the americans do, if i feel like its heavy or MAY snap (you literally never know ). Just because similar to what i described above, happened to me. But thanks. You possibly unloaded a chunk of anxiety off me. :))
This is something most people don't realise. Take your knackered 'bag for life' into the store and most will replace it free of charge and recycle the broken one.
To be fair I was under the same misconception as yourself up until a few months ago. It wasn't very transparent that this was the case when the bag charge was introduced so I completely understand why many share the same opinion. Ha ha! =)
This literally happened to me a week ago. Normally they have them on a hook, unless you go checkout at one of the self scan gun-scan crap machines. But we went to standard checkout where we scan ourselves (rather than on the go with a gun), and asked for bags and a wee lass said "how many?", i said "two" and she immediately scanned them both herself. I was like what the fuck....
I find it a little offensive they don’t trust me to not steal the bags, then a bit odd they trust me to scan the nearly £100 worth of other stuff I have. Once they’re confident the all important bags have been scanned they stop watching you and focus on other people bags though, I imagine it would be easy to mis scan other things, if you were so inclined.
Self scan colleague holding bags is apparently one of the points the mystery shopper checks for when they visit a store according to the signage in my store.
I don't think it's so much the bag itself it's the finest outlets receive
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/carrier-bag-charges-retailers-responsibilities
Fixed penalties
Penalty
Not charging for bags appropriately £200
Not keeping records £100
Not supplying records £100
Variable penalties
Problem Maximum penalty
Not charging for bags appropriately £5,000
Not keeping records £5,000
Not supplying records £5,000
Giving false or misleading information to, or otherwise obstructing or failing to assist the local authority £20,000
Minimum 10p but yep.
They've all got round that because the minimum charge was originally intended to apply to single use bags - bags for life were always more even before this.
Except most places have done away with the cheaper single use bags, so the only option now is the bags for life.
Technically it's more economical if we use them correctly and get them replaced for free when they break, but how many of us do that.
But I guess rather than getting annoyed at the cost we should remember why the charge was brought in to begin with. Seems to have worked, with figures showing bag usage has declined by 98% since the charge was introduced.
https://www.bbc.com/newsround/66392120
Carrier bags have always had a charge. The original 5p bags (the plastic single use ones) were for small shopping, maybe a few items. Whereas the 6p bag for life was stronger and could hold more shopping without breaking
I once got stopped at the door in Asda and prevented from leaving because I hadn’t paid for my bag. I got marched back and had to put 10p in the self-service machine 😂😂
I never pay for plastic bags at self service. Personally I think its such a small thing I dont consider it theft. I've worked in retail and the amount of waste and unnecessary single use plastic is hard to comprehend. The 5p charge was good as it stopped till workers from bagging every purchase. Now though its 30p minimum.
Did you actually read my comment? I went back and put my 10p in the machine.
You better climb down off your high horse if you want to continue throwing around false accusations of thievery my friend 😏
I get that they are stolen a lot more than other items, but every other super market seems to have accepted defeat. By being the only ones that still do it, Asda are just drawing negative attention to themself in my opinion.
It depends on the staff honestly. Only one person in my store (Tesco) actually cares, rest of us gave up.
With that said, our bag for life money does go to local event/charities and not *just* company profits. It's not a bad hill to die on.
Yep, my local Asda has the staff holding any and all bags hostage 🙃 Meanwhile, how many tons of stock do they have in that is plastic, and how many rolls of that big cling film do they go through when they are wrapping their cages? 🤔
Because then they say bag for life it’s not a bag that lasts for life, it’s describing the exchange required to obtain one
Bags became a hot topic in superstores with all the Go Green Their excuse for charging was to "encourage" people to bring their own bags thus reducing plastic waste and putting forward recycling ♻️ This has kind of backfired though because people don't actually bring their own bags (Save a minority) and pick up and walk out with the superstores bags without paying for them And by all means it's "just a bag" but forming the plastic, moulding the bags, etc all costs money Supermarkets do not get the bags for free, it was merely a case before that it was a necessary company cost for customer satisfaction and accessibility The stores around me couldn't really care less about people taking bags but that's upto them, when corporate wants to know why money is disappearing and what the least profitable stores are they'll be first on the chopping block like my store was many years ago
but 30p for a bag is crazy
Never pay for a bag. Ever. If you spent £50 on shopping and “forget “ to pay for a worthless bag, if it went to police or court they would laugh at the store
Aldi do the same thing mainly because stolen bags was losing about 2 million pound a year
This really angers me. They'll trust me to self scan and pay but think I'm gonna steal a bag. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely would, but you'd think the 50p is less of an issue than the other stuff I don't scan correctly
They do just this in my asda, the staff carry them, no staff no bag, ask for a bag they scan it. Ask them to swap a damaged bag and they look at you like you have insulted them
I'll never forget when I went to the pizza counter at a different Asda to my local once... asked them to put garlic spread as the base and they refused. I was super confused and explained that's what I usually got at my local Asda. She told me they weren't allowed and it was "more than her jobs worth" couldn't believe it haha
yes, but now that plastic bags cost 50p we've ended global warming and saved the world, right?
Global warming that happens everywhere but England hahaha
poundland in exeter refuse to give out any bag that isn;t a £1 "bag for life" covered in some horrible stock photo image
I think it might be a *that* Asda thing. In the last 18 months, I've lived in 3 cities in the UK and have shopped at Asda in all of them and have never come across that
It’s in all of the asdas in my region
Because the venn diagram of people that shop at Asda and steal carrier bags is a complete circle.
These bags should be free like they was years ago, It was better times back then in Britain 🇬🇧
They are only required to charge 10p yet I’m charged 60p in most places they have turned something that was always free because it was baked into the price of everything in the shop into a new revenue stream
Society turned a corner for the worse when we started charging for bags and banned plastic straws. It’s probably what to led to Brexit.
You can still get plastic straws on shein, temu and wish 😉
Loopholes…I like 😎
😂😂
You're missing the point - the point of the cost is to put you off buying them, not to make additional revenue. Same thing as ULEZ - for some reason people just can't comprehend the idea of this.
The carrier bags they used to supply for free, they had to charge for and donate the money to charity, so they all got rid of the basic carrier bags and now sell the ‘bags for life’ (which they always sold alongside the free bags). So rather than the 5p they charged for the basic bag (with donation to charity) they now only provide the 30-60p bags for life, with no obligation to donate to charity. I also enjoy that stores with paper bags, also charge for those.
>I also enjoy that stores with paper bags, also charge for those This fucking boils my blood. Sure we should be reducing and reusing before we recycle, but *sometimes* my other bags are at capacity and I need a new bag. I’m not *getting* **your** bag to show off I’ve been there. I’m talking to you Primark
Scotland charge for any bag even a Mcd paper bag, it is the law
Sorry but I disagree. There no chance these profit hungry organisation have started doing doing this for altruistic reasons. Not comparable with ULEZ either.
They're forced to by law, for altruistic reasons.
Yes you’re right. But the law requires them to be 10p, not 60p. Why are they charging more than they are required to?
70p at my local wh smiths
Its because the highest shrink line is actually bags for life. It is a cheap product but its the most commonly stolen product. Source: I'm a section leader at Asda.
😂🤣😂 It's so funny and pathetic when you guys police customer's plastic bags. Scan it for me to make sure I've paid but I've used the self scan gun and "forgotten" to scan half of my shopping 🤣😂🤣😜
I haven't paid for a single bag in Asda muhuhahaha
You're part of the problem then..
I'm sure it won't affect Asda's bottom line, lol. There are worse places to steal from than giant global corporations
I don't care about that, I care that I'm held up waiting to get their attention so I can leave ..
Personally, I don't care. That's just Asda's reasoning for the change.
We’ve just started trialing this in some Morrisons stores, I thought exactly the same thing, surely there’s other stuff getting nicked that we’re more worried about.
I don't mind paying for bags, because I've already robbed at least 30 quids worth of stuff in my way round anyway
😂😂
You would be surprised how much money is lost in stolen bags. Small shop I work in loses £400-500 every two weeks.
If you look at the price of bags. But they don’t cost that do they. You’d be looking at less than £100 in reality, which was always offset in the price of everything else. It’s used as revenue for the already over wealthy large companies. And we can’t even recycle them! It should be legislated that they only provide paper bags imo, and charge what it actually costs to make/ship to store.
I agree but loss is always guaged at rrp. I agree with the bag idea as well. They should be biodegradable. Or get rid of them full stop.
Surely it costs more to pay the staff member to hold and hand out bags
It's likely the same person tasked with supervising the self check outs anyway
Managers don't make decisions based on what actually saves money, they do it based on what looks good to their bosses.
I don’t mind paying for bags. But the biggest place that pisses me off is Morrisons. 70p for a plastic bag or 50p for a PAPER bag. Everywhere else is max 30p for a plastic bag.
I work in Morrisons and I agree our bags are an absolute rip off but they’re 60p for plastic and 40p for paper. Still outrageous but I guess the idea behind the high price is to put people off buying them and bring their own.
Because they’re not free? Just because something is cheap doesn’t mean they should allow people to steal them
They used to be Free, and still should be Free really.
The charge is a legal requirement. I’m pretty sure the money also goes to environmental charities
Needs changing, It’s just lining someone’s pockets, living costs are through the roof, many different Jobs are simply not paying their employees enough, and I do not see much being done to Improve the environment even if that is the case where I am from, still litter and dumped items everywhere, nothing good is being returned in the peoples direction some places are really bad, and people have to live like that in what is one of the richest countries in the world? Those at the top have the attitude of as long as I am okay, forget the conditions people at the bottom have to live under, If we want a better country, something drastic needs to be done to improve life for everybody.
Yeah and free bags will achieve all that
It’s a step in the right direction.
I’d focus on something bigger mate
They carry them round and just give you one when you ask so they might as well be hanging up 😩 My reasoning is the 1 minute it takes chasing a poor sod round for a bag costs me money, so I just rob it anyway 🤣
Please understand that some of us do not want to carry those bags! I absolutely hate it I get that they are stolen a lot but it makes our job so much harder people interrupt what I’m doing all the time because they need a bag and it’s so frustrating when we’re busy. I wish we could just hang them up but it’s not allowed 😭😭
People don’t “interrupt” what you’re doing. You are the bag carrier who customers have to go to to get a bag.
Savage
Yes because supermarkets give each member of staff one job only and that job can easily be completed by one person. MASSIVE SARCASM in case you couldn't tell, you obviously haven't worked in a supermarket but do you not notice when you go shopping how there's often just 1 person covering 10 self serves and they also have to deal with customer questions, replacing damaged items, any other problem that comes up... And also handing out bags? Like when they have to walk off to a completely different part of the store because there's literally no one to help them, then come back to 7 red tills and annoyed customers?
Hmm that's very ignorant of you. Their job description is not bag carrier. They are there to keep an eye on all the self checkouts and solve all the issues that self checkouts have by waving their badge at the scanner and ignoring what it says on screen. The bags are stapled and sellotaped to these poor folks when they arrive at work, without their prior consent. 'Bag carrier' is demeaning. They are the computer-sitter avec bag caddy.
It’s almost like a role should exist where a person is employed to assist customers with their purchases by scanning and helping with packing goods the customer is buying and by doing so reduces losses via theft by ensuring all goods are scanned.
That would be ground breaking. You should tell shops everywhere of this new idea. Gone are the days of 'unexpected item on bagging scale' "fuck off no there isnt"
The bags were free before and the government forced us to pay for them for the good of the environment supposedly. And now the supermarket are complaining for loosing income on things that they didn't count on before. So where is the environment benefit here. If the money we pay for the bags go to envitomal agency then everyone we will be up for it but like this only the supermarket profit
Supposedly "The major supermarkets supplied just 564 million single-use carrier bags in 2019-20, # a reduction of over **7.4 billion bags** compared to 2014." Please tell me you understand that 7.4 billion carrier bags / year being buried in the ground and scattered over the land and sea is a very bad thing for the environment?
>for the good of the environment supposedly I understand being cynical about government sometimes, but it's pretty hard to see a nefarious alternative motivation for this. And given that you used to see plastic bags everywhere littering the streets, roadside, trees etc and now see very few I'd say it's been one of the most obviously visibly effective environmental policies of my entire lifetime.
I work for another retailer. The money needs to go a charitable cause. We advertise it rigorously. People are in fact, not up for it. The risk regarding the bags is falling foul of The Single Use Plastics Law 2022.
I’m led to believe that only the mandated amount needs to go to that cause (10p in Scotland, 5p elsewhere if I’m correct). Morrisons charge 35p for a *paper* bag. Fuck that!
Or you could get a big strong plastic one that lasts forever for 80por whatever. Which is what you're supposed to do. Your fuck that is your motivator to remember to bring it.
Reading all the comments here is entertaining but the reality is the idiots that run the company will not allow the branches the funds to buy all the supplies we need any more. In my branch we have had to use just essentials cling film to wrap our rubbish cages at the end of a shift because we cant get shrink wrap. and actually use Little Angels nappies to mop leaks from the chiller units because we cant get zorba strips. The reason asda now protects the bags is that we simply dont have enough. We need to maximise the amount of time our cashiers arent getting abuse hurled at them for having no bags. That is the lesser of two evils sadly
Can someone not design rubish cages that don't rely on single use plastic? I know not the point of this thread, but it bugs me that individuals are to reduce single use plastic but the cages are wrapped up every time
Perfectly fair comment. The cages are supposed to come with gates on them. This means the wrap isnt required. As outlined before however, anything useful that we may actually need to operate efficiently has been steadily taken away from us. We are lucky if we get 3 gates per delivery these days (we need roughly 60 a day)
Not Asda but i worked in lidl for a bit and it was about £70,000 a year getting stolen just from the bags alone. Thats about the same as an area managers pay for the year, if the area manager can cut down on that by even 1/2 for each store they are in charge of they have saved the company about £140,000 being lost from theft in bags. I imagine they probably get a nice bonus from things like that? And I know "it's only a bag" but loss is calculated into the price for companies, when companies lose £1,000,000 they aren't just forgetting about it, the price of everything goes up to account for it, making it more expensive for everyone in the long run
Your not wrong but £70k is litterly nothing for a company that took £1.1b last year it just pisses off our customers and means front end are wasting time scanning in bags rather than helping when the self serve fucks up leaving customers waiting part of the issue is Mossey is a greedy cunt and doesn't look at the bigger picture
70k per store for 1000 stores thats 70m pounds
but is that 70k raw cost or sale price? bags don't actually cost 10p to produce
I get what your saying, and £1.1b is a crazy amount of money, but that was 70k for one store, multiply that buy the 960 stores they have in the uk and it over £60 million. I think it may have been the most stolen thing in the store I worked, taking over the steaks and cheese.
But the actual cost to Lidl is nothing
Bag theft is rife at self service in particular, it's more common I DO than do NOT see someone scan all of their shopping, pay for it, then take the bags they need from the hanger. There is no 'oh I forgot' or 'just this once' about it - they've decided that the 30p charge is not for them. I would expect it's happening a lot more these days as Tesco at least have put up the price from 10p to 30p, which starts to get noticeable when you're only spending a few quid on other items. Now, personally I don't give a shit that they do it, their reasons are their own and I'm not about to start protecting the profits of large corps...but you just know these are also the people who park outside school gates, leave shopping trolleys in the middle of the car park, and do a thousand other things that they've decided are OK for them to do even though it's either breaking the rules, or just unpleasant for other people to deal with. Oh and when they've loaded up their shopping into their stolen bag, they'll go and get into the car they parked on the double yellows right outside the shop entrance because they were 'only popping in'. Hazards flashing of course, to make it OK.
Sounds like the average tories voter
Jesus 30p for one bag ?!
Literal life
Waitrose are doing the same thing recently I’ve noticed
Lmao they get pain in commission
>bag is called "bag for life" >wonders why people guard it with their life
It’s a general thing across most of the supermarkets I’ve noticed. A lot of the time it’s because bags are being stolen- usually it’ll be people haven’t thought to scan it, and sometimes it’s people that have the ‘it’s only a bag ffs’ mentality. But the reason they hold onto them is two main reasons: 1) when an item is stolen (or more accurately not scanned thru the till), the system doesn’t know it’s not there anymore, so a check of the stock on bags would tell staff there’s plenty, when there really isn’t. 2) its against the law to give a bag away for free in the UK, and retailers can be charged. So upon audit, if there’s a discrepancy between stock level and actual bags in stock, the auditor will want to know what steps the business is taking to mitigate.
Maybe companies shouldn’t charge 30-35p for a bag when it’s only mandatory to charge 5-10p.
Oddly enough, people don't realise it's law. You have to pay for bags, I had a customer threatening to put a complaint in because I made him pay for a bag.
I had a couple come to the till back in the day (the law had been such in wales for at least a year or so at this point), and they knew it was 10p a bag at the time.. I asked if they wanted bags, the bloke declined. We still used to save up boxes at the till in case people wanted a free option- and again the bloke declines. His wife is still putting the shopping one the belt, and then comes over, to a whole load built up ‘post checkout’. He snaps at me, ‘oh so now you’re gonna make me pay for bags eh?!’ and keeps up some narrative that I’m illegally preventing him from methods of taking his shopping away. The wife is flustered saying to me ‘it’s okay don’t worry, we can use a box, or bag it in the car’, and he’s shooting her down every step, while she gets more and more embarrassed.. About halfway through he shouts, and makes a scene, and storms off- with the money, leaving his wife to take the embarrassment.. I dunno why people do it- it’s not the fault of the stores or the workers. Always stuck with me, that.. I hope she gave him shit in the car home.. Must’ve taken an hour to shop for what they had, and they would’ve had to do it again at another store- and still paid for a bag anyway!
I'm my store (tesco) every two or three months we have to zero the bag counts because the system things we've got approx 25 boxes when we've got just a couple. A lot get stolen, mainly through self service.
My local Asda does this as they are constantly running out of bags yet the system says it has plenty on stock as people don’t pay for them. It’s so bad a couple of weeks ago one of the young girls on the self scan tills was punched in the face by a customer because he wanted bags but didn’t want to pay for them.
Wtf is wrong with people. Is she okay? Did the customer get arrested?
No they let him walk straight out the door
with bags?
And his shopping. Manager & security decided it wasn’t worth the hassle so it went unpunished
Not saying he is right for punching her as that is disgusting - however 30p for a bag that used to be free is a disgrace. Why am I paying for a bag that used to be free? The store is making it difficult by banning the shopping push trolleys that we take in for the shopping. Does it cut down on the plastic used? No not really so it’s more profits that can be taxed so more money for the company and government.
I pick one they’ve left hung somewhere. Once a staff member brought it over and scanned it for me when is had to ask for one and I asked them to scan the rest of my shopping for me since they didn’t trust me, I got a shitty look and told management make them do it.
What next? Did you go to a manned check-out and ask them to let you scan your own shopping...? 😂
Yeah, in that case they *only* let me scan the bag.
I just wanna know why places like McDonalds charge you for a PAPER bag. I thought the charge was to offset the impact of plastic.
TBH I never order the paper bag from McD for a take away. If you order fries, they tend to give you one anyway.
What’s more shocking is by selecting take away they’ve saved the VAT on the meal so are already 20% up on someone dining in.
Hot takeaway food is subject to VAT, only certain cold takeaway foods are VAT exempt
Technically cooked to order. That's why bakeries cook small batches of sausage rolls at a time.
And if you select no they usually give you one anyway. At least round my way
And if you select yes, they then don't give you one, which is what happen at my local one
Yes they do, at least the ones in and around Dunfermline do.
People can cling to every bit of power they are given. In this case, being a guard of bags for life makes them feel like they have some importance and control over their lives, despite working at Asda.
Sorry but no it is not that I'm sure you need to rub that ego of yours acting like we hold that much regard to how your life will be Inconvenienced this is just another one of those jobs we don't want to be doing but are forced funnily enough thanks to customers. Your just another customer with a pissy attitude like alot of people who thinks we actually care about your existence were payed to help you we wouldn't be doing it otherwise.
> existence were *paid* to help FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
You can’t be serious. At what point does simply doing a job make you become “power hungry”? They don’t care whether they get stolen, they care that they’ll get sacked for not following a reasonable request from the company.
yeah they are cheeky bastards.
i hope the people in these comments throwing out insults aren’t bullying staff members at the checkouts. i’ve lost count of the number of times i’ve been insulted by some big man for making them pay for a bag. it’s different in different stores, but in all the ones i’ve worked we receive an absolute bollocking for letting people get away with free bags. the poor sod staffing the tills is not the person making the decision to hide the bags. let them scan the bag or carry your shopping in your hands, don’t start bullying a(n almost) minimum wage worker who’d rather be doing anything else
I work at a BP/M&S and the amount of guys that I ask if they need a bag and they say no only to decide they want one after payment is made is a joke. If they pay cash it’s coming out the change if they pay card they either make another purchase of a single bag or they can fucking juggle for all I care. 50p a bag will add up fast if you’re handing them out free all day
Just take bags with you.
Most commonly stolen items but 5 year ago they were free? Just another way they try and fuck us and charge us more. If the person dishing the bags out actually scans it for you I just steal something to make up for it
Never have I seen a better example of the flaw with democracy.
The government implemented the tax, the stores force the staff to adhere to the rules and will discipline you if they dont, don’t make the staffs life harder by being a prick, we’re all in the same boat
That just makes you a scummy thief. End off
Just take bags with you.
Asda is required charging 30p min per bags under current regulation. It's a way showing anyone waiting for asda screwing up anything compliance with this specific regulation.
[No they’re not](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/single-use-plastic-carrier-bags-why-were-introducing-the-charge/carrier-bags-why-theres-a-5p-charge)
Sory,, 10p.
Because "it's the law" and people get overexcited about things they perceive as "the law".
A plastic bag costs less than 1 pence to manufacture, does it make sense to pay someone £12 per hour to hand out?
It might cost 1p to manufacture, but the 'externalities' are much greater. (Wider impacts to the society/ the environment from the manufacture and disposal of plastics.) This is why there is a specific tax on bags, petrol, whiskey, tobacco etc. Having said that, it is a right pain when you need a bag. Perhaps they need to invent a bag dispensing machine. But there are enough types of jobs getting replaced by machines nowadays that I don't begrudge the person being paid to hand out bags. I'm fact that person would probably still be employed anyhow to keep an eye on the checkouts.
Everything in the shop is coated in plastic...
Don't get me started on that lol
Which is slowly being reduced, but why wouldn’t you start with something that doesn’t need to be consumed all the time? Plastic on most food is necessary because they haven’t found other ways of storing it yet, a plastic bag isn’t necessary when you’ve already got one or you can buy a fabric bag that lasts years instead.
Is it fiscally sensible to employ someone at 12p/h to hand out bags, which if every single bag east stolen still wouldn’t equal that amount? They demeaning workers to save minuscule amounts of money, which doesn’t even benefit them. We have self checkouts now so instead of scanning items they are handing out bags like apes
Just take a bag with you or pay for a new one. It’s not difficult, stop whining.
It's not their only duty there.
A lot of these comments are assuming the bag is worth 30p. It’s not. Even when they were 6p the cost to the business was a fraction of a penny. If you had 700 bags unpaid for like a previous commenter noted, that’s about a fiver.
Now do that x every store, every day and suddenly it’s considerably higher unnecessary loss. The bigger thing is actually for the convenience of the customer. I’ve been in stores that run out of BFLs and the drama that causes is hell. That can occur because the bags are stolen at such high frequency that the stock system doesn’t reach its order count and then suddenly you don’t have any in the store at all. Then it’s a choice of no bag or a tagged £5 fabric one.
The blackpool asda do this but it's like that presume you're a thief I went in last night and i asked for a bag and she gave it me and said "make sure you scan it though" in a blunt voice... I said "yeah obviously?" God
But did you scan it? You're from Blackpool, so I'd assume not! Fun fact more bags are stolen in the north west than any other part of the UK. With more bags going missing in Blackpool, Liverpool and Crewe than anywhere else in the UK! Source: made it up
Your Asda has a Blackpool in it?!
😅😅😅😅😅😅😅 apparently so!! Lol
The carrier bag charge 10p is mandatory and shops could be heavily fined for not charging. Bags for life do incur a charge but if they wear out you can get another one for free. So the small charge for the bag for life is a bargain. Carrier bags are an expensive option as they are often single use.
They're no longer 10p, bloody 60p now. Pisstake, the boots shit paper one ripped, and they didn't replace it.
The store I work at lost £5k in bfl last year
No they paid 5k for advertising technically
So fuck
Proper British response, love it
So that was their reasoning for making us carry you bell whiff
costs more than 5 grand to have someone stand about fannying about with bags though tbf
You’re not the only person mentioning this in this thread, but why are people assuming someone holding bags *only* does that for their job. They’re still self-scan staff doing their normal job, they just have the inconvenience of carrying around 200 bags because customers can’t stop stealing them, and their employer forces them to carry them. Neither the staff or customer like that, but the retailer is obviously going to try and stop unnecessary theft from happening.
So….? Just let people take them for free? Lose much more than 5k? People, stop thieving, pay your dues. Grow the fuck up.
[удалено]
Ok… but make yourself a thief for a bag? Really?
who said I steal carrier bags mate
Reread the comment. Mate. Your name is not people.
you were replying to me tbf but no worries
I was replying to your comment, not you personally. But yeah no worries.
Because they are one of the most commonly stolen items in stores because people don't see it as stealing in the same way they would if it was a physical item on a shelf - most people wouldn't help themselves to a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk, but many people think nothing of taking 2-3 bags without paying despite them being the same value. In my store a few weeks ago we ran out of bags because the inventory said we had 600+ bags in stock when there was literally not a single bag left in the building ... Which means 600+ bags had been stolen in the course of the last couple of weeks as the ordering system is connected to the sales system so 1 sale = 1 ordered, which is a loss of just under £250 and it isn't just a one off, it happens on a regular basis. That doesn't sound like a lot but if we, as a single store lose that amount every month thats £3k a year lost and if we extrapolate that to the 1016 Asda stores in the UK then that could be £3MILLION a year lost just due to bag thefts, before you even look at costs caused by actual stock being stolen. The easiest way to combat these thefts is to limit access to bags - on a manned checkout they can either be kept behind the till or placed in a location where the checkout colleague can see how many bags are being taken and add them on to the transaction; in self scan there is no easy location where their usage can be monitored, except in the hands of the colleagues. This means that the self scan colleagues have yet another stupid task to do all because people can't be trusted not to steal and if they dare try to make their life easier by just putting the bags somewhere where people can help themselves and they get stolen (as they always do) then they get pulled into investigations/disciplinary meetings as the upper management hold those colleagues responsible for the thefts as part of their job is to ensure customers pay for all of their shopping and it's not worth risking their jobs to let Karen waltz out with a load of free bags for the third time this week.
Carrier bag dispensers are the answer to self service tills You pull a bag out of a dispenser above your till, the dispenser registers the force of you pulling the bag and adds it to your purchase 🤔 Hopefully someone, somewhere, sees this comment and designs/builds/sells this to supermarkets so we can stop standing at tills waiting for fucking bags when the staff are otherwise occupied I once waited 20 minutes for a bag because the one person watching the tills was having a conversation about baby photos 💀 20 Fucking Minutes
ASDA reportedly made 1.1bn in pre-tax profit in 2023 on the back of consumers being fleeced. They can afford the 3 million for the stupid bags. The only stealing going on is that of larger corporations against the consumer. I hope people steal more from them.
They will recoup the loss. And it will be everytime the same persons paying for others
The flaw in the bag for life scheme, and being shown for what it is, which is just a money maker for the stores, is the whole 1 sold, 1 ordered. Surely, if it's a bag for life, then the idea would be to not have to keep a 100% inventory, thereby reducing the number of plastic bags that are being produced and being sold/stolen?
You wouldnt steal a car, you wouldnt steal an asda bag
Sadly, from the retailers perspective the stock levels being accurate is actually then main focus over the theft - automating everything is the answer to everything, including ordering. The amount of red tape and authorisation a store can need for ordering carried bags is - sadly expected nowadays. Absolute ridiculous use of labour time for the staff IMO, but solves the problem.
Wouldn't they also automate stock loss? I.e. ordering 120% of sales per month, with stats showing 20% is loss. Stolen, damaged etc.
Nah, not without reason. Eg management may weekly review department / lines. A 1-5% variance expected across most. You’ll notice spikes across lines, cheeses, wines, any high value items thieves nick. Those can be explained - and if documenting the thefts, this is the data management can then take to ‘higher ups’ to appeal for security. Ofc, this is AFTER in-store measures, ie - okay wines getting knicked, are we security tagging them? Placed correctly, watching cameras? Cheeses - how many displayed at a time? Some are even tagged. After these measures, if still a high variance - THEN you have a case for a guard (or hours towards a guard) carrier bags? Nah staff can ‘easily manage these on assistant level’ is an easy fix, to a complex problem - over stock thats worthless -basically- and staff would hate this. But along the chain of ‘ways to fix’, easily fixed. Ofc this varies across stores but a lil insight (10 years exp in retail -supermarket + local.
Also love the "bag for life" that both asda and tesco claim 🤣 i cant count the amount of times i loaded one od those, they were not even that heavy, and one of the handles snapped off. Yeah, for life. For life of the potential glass bottle you have there, be it vinegar, oil, booze. Theyre anything but "bags for life".
Bag for life doesn't mean that the one individual bag will last indefinitely, it means that if it breaks or wears out then the store will replace it for free
Apart from M&S apparently, when I tried to do that.
Oh really???? Well, thanks for that information, will utilise this next time when the handle breaks as soon as i take it off the shelf of the self-checkout.
Yup, just tell the staff member it broke or whatever. We have a barcode number for BFL replacements. It will add it on and then minus it, just for stock count basically.
Right, is this something that is part of the staff training? I also dont want it to come out of anyone's wages. I always pay for my bag, and yes, use them at home for whatever (cat litter, chucking in plastics to be put to recycling, etc). Id never go back with an old, shattered bag to get it replaced. Question: if i pay and have a glass jar/bottle in my bag when it snaps, will the company replace or do i have to buy a new item? Its just a question. I'm a super anxious person who rather walks off with a broken jar of olives and broken bottle of wine, before even asking for a new bag.
Yup, for Tesco it's a BFL Replacement. Nothing we do comes out our wages. >Question: if i pay and have a glass jar/bottle in my bag when it snaps, will the company replace or do i have to buy a new item? Its just a question. I'm a super anxious person who rather walks off with a broken jar of olives and broken bottle of wine, before even asking for a new bag. Yeah, even without the bag being at fault, if you drop and break something within the store we'll replace the bag and the item(s) for you. No need to worry about it.
Thanks, thats good to know. I generally carry the bag in my arms like the americans do, if i feel like its heavy or MAY snap (you literally never know ). Just because similar to what i described above, happened to me. But thanks. You possibly unloaded a chunk of anxiety off me. :))
This is something most people don't realise. Take your knackered 'bag for life' into the store and most will replace it free of charge and recycle the broken one.
Yes, I genuinely had no idea that this is what they mean. Thanks for the clarification!
To be fair I was under the same misconception as yourself up until a few months ago. It wasn't very transparent that this was the case when the bag charge was introduced so I completely understand why many share the same opinion. Ha ha! =)
This literally happened to me a week ago. Normally they have them on a hook, unless you go checkout at one of the self scan gun-scan crap machines. But we went to standard checkout where we scan ourselves (rather than on the go with a gun), and asked for bags and a wee lass said "how many?", i said "two" and she immediately scanned them both herself. I was like what the fuck....
I find it a little offensive they don’t trust me to not steal the bags, then a bit odd they trust me to scan the nearly £100 worth of other stuff I have. Once they’re confident the all important bags have been scanned they stop watching you and focus on other people bags though, I imagine it would be easy to mis scan other things, if you were so inclined.
Self scan colleague holding bags is apparently one of the points the mystery shopper checks for when they visit a store according to the signage in my store.
I don't think it's so much the bag itself it's the finest outlets receive https://www.gov.uk/guidance/carrier-bag-charges-retailers-responsibilities Fixed penalties Penalty Not charging for bags appropriately £200 Not keeping records £100 Not supplying records £100 Variable penalties Problem Maximum penalty Not charging for bags appropriately £5,000 Not keeping records £5,000 Not supplying records £5,000 Giving false or misleading information to, or otherwise obstructing or failing to assist the local authority £20,000
The law is to charge 10p, not fucking 60p (Morrisons)
Minimum 10p but yep. They've all got round that because the minimum charge was originally intended to apply to single use bags - bags for life were always more even before this. Except most places have done away with the cheaper single use bags, so the only option now is the bags for life. Technically it's more economical if we use them correctly and get them replaced for free when they break, but how many of us do that. But I guess rather than getting annoyed at the cost we should remember why the charge was brought in to begin with. Seems to have worked, with figures showing bag usage has declined by 98% since the charge was introduced. https://www.bbc.com/newsround/66392120
Carrier bags have always had a charge. The original 5p bags (the plastic single use ones) were for small shopping, maybe a few items. Whereas the 6p bag for life was stronger and could hold more shopping without breaking
Only since 2015 in England as a mandatory charge. Wales introduced it earlier IIRC
I know but bags for life were always charged
Yep I did mention that in my comment
I once got stopped at the door in Asda and prevented from leaving because I hadn’t paid for my bag. I got marched back and had to put 10p in the self-service machine 😂😂
Not sure what's funny about admitting you're a thief - you didn't pay for an item, whether it's a bag for life or a bottle of gin, it's still stealing
I never pay for plastic bags at self service. Personally I think its such a small thing I dont consider it theft. I've worked in retail and the amount of waste and unnecessary single use plastic is hard to comprehend. The 5p charge was good as it stopped till workers from bagging every purchase. Now though its 30p minimum.
Settle doon ya fucking melt.
Did you actually read my comment? I went back and put my 10p in the machine. You better climb down off your high horse if you want to continue throwing around false accusations of thievery my friend 😏
You went back because you were made to
Still paid, so still not a thief.
The only thief here is the government.
I get that they are stolen a lot more than other items, but every other super market seems to have accepted defeat. By being the only ones that still do it, Asda are just drawing negative attention to themself in my opinion.
It depends on the staff honestly. Only one person in my store (Tesco) actually cares, rest of us gave up. With that said, our bag for life money does go to local event/charities and not *just* company profits. It's not a bad hill to die on.
System said we sold 259 bags in one week and we had gone through nearly 700 thats 132 quids worth of (profit) in bags in a week.
Won't somebody think of Asda's profits?