E-Paper
Charging customer for carry bag without prior knowledge not fair
You go to a grocery store, purchase twenty items and at the payment counter you are told that you have to pay for the carry bag in which the goods are being packed.
You go to a grocery store, purchase twenty items and at the payment counter you are told that you have to pay for the carry bag in which the goods are being packed. You protest, but since you have already spent considerable time in choosing your groceries and cannot obviously carry all those items without a bag or bags, you pay up.
Consumers around the country have been vehemently protesting against this practice and in response to their complaints, several consumer courts have held it to be an unfair trade practice.Retailers have challenged these decisions before the highest consumer court. Last week, the apex consumer court too upheld the views of the lower consumer courts and said such a practice was arbitrary and high handed.
Presiding member Dinesh Singh, National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, in his order pointed out that the normal practice at retail outlets was to provide the carry bag free of cost. If any outlet wanted to deviate from this practice and charge for the bag, then it should let the consumers know about it, much in advance, before they make their choice of the outlet. Charging for the carry bag at the payment counter, after the consumer had made the purchase, was patently unfair and deceptive, he said.
The commission’s order came in response to a clutch of 14 revision petitions filed by Big Bazar, challenging the orders of the lower consumer courts holding its sale of shopping bags to be unfair. Endorsing the lower consumer courts’ decisions through a common order, the apex consumer court directed the retail chain to “forthwith discontinue its unfair trade practice of arbitrarily imposing additional cost of carry bags on the consumer at the time of making payment, without prominent prior notice and information before the consumer makes his choice of patronizing its retail outlets and before the consumer makes his selection of goods for purchase, as also without disclosing the salient specifications and price of the carry bags”
“The necessary notice /signs /announcement /advertisement /warning should be in the place and manner as may enable the consumer to make his informed choice of whether or not to patronize its retail outlets, and whether or not to make his selection of goods for purchase from its retail outlets”. the Commission said, while directing the Chief Executive of the retail chain to immediately issue appropriate instructions to all its outlets accordingly. (Big Bazar (Future Retail Ltd ) Vs Ashok Kumar, RP No 975 of 2020, decided on December 22, 2020)
The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum II, UT, Chandigarh, had directed Big Bazar to return to the consumer, the cost of the carry bag (charged at Rs 18 per bag), pay Rs100 as compensation, Rs1,100 as litigation costs and also deposit as punitive damages, Rs 5,000 in the Legal Aid Account of the Forum. This was upheld by the State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, UT, Chandigarh. The apex consumer court said the award was just and equitable.
Even though the order is in response to Big Bazar’s revision petition, as of now this view of the commission should apply to other retail outlets that have been imposing similar charges on carry bags too . If they want to put a price on the carry bags at their outlets, they must advertise the fact. Of course that gives consumers the choice of not going to such outlets, but does not stop the practice per se. But who knows, in these times of low footfalls and steep competition from online shops, the ubiquitous carry bag may well become the centre of a battle for a bigger chunk of the market share! And that would certainly bring an end to the practice.
