Walmart observations

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Super S
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by Super S »

TW-Upstate NY wrote: August 26th, 2022, 9:45 am Spoke to a friend of mine yesterday and his wife mentioned something that I thought was quite surprising. She was shopping at a local Wal-Mart sometime this week and was told by the cashier that starting Oct. 1st., they are totally doing away with bags and you'll have to bring your own reusable bags or presumably purchase them there. Could there be any validity to this? I'm located in New York state and I know New Jersey has or is going to have a total bag ban but this is the first I've heard of it here.
In Washington and Oregon stores charge for ALL bags now, paper or plastic. Most likely Walmart will bring in the thicker plastic reusable bags to purchase.
Alpha8472
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Re: Walmart observations

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Walmart loses money on bags, because the super thick plastic bags cost so much. If the store manager is really strict about saving every penny, I can see why the store manager would do this.
TW-Upstate NY
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by TW-Upstate NY »

They do collect a bag fee now and from what I was told it's going to be NO BAGS and you need to bring your own reusable ones and the only ones they will have for purchase are the heavier canvas and or cloth bags.
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Re: Walmart observations

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They are not offering paper or plastic bags at all in Canada, they sell a reusable bag that looks like a plastic bag but is a material like a reusable bag. They have similar bags in NJ. Those bags cost somewhere in the .33 to .50 range and they are making a fairly good profit on them (cost is around. 18 supposedly). These bags are made in China. The environmental impact of these bags is significant and I expect many will not reuse then.

I am guessing that is what they are moving to in NY.

The paper bags they were using in NY were not working out. They had issues getting them in the first place, they broke easily, took too much space to store, and were inefficient to work with. Also the cost was well above the .05 they collected.

These bag fees and bag regulations are a failure.
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Re: Walmart observations

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The thick plastic bag suppliers are unreliable. Even Walmart cannot get bag deliveries sometimes. For many days the local Walmart was out of bags several times. Customers were complaining. Walmart had to buy bags from the Dollar Tree next door. Safeway has not had any Safeway branded bags in ages. They just buy whatever generic bag they can get.

During the pandemic Walmart used thin bags, and most customers seemed to love the free thin bags.
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Re: Walmart observations

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Alpha8472 wrote: August 27th, 2022, 7:34 pm The thick plastic bag suppliers are unreliable. Even Walmart cannot get bag deliveries sometimes. For many days the local Walmart was out of bags several times. Customers were complaining. Walmart had to buy bags from the Dollar Tree next door. Safeway has not had any Safeway branded bags in ages. They just buy whatever generic bag they can get.

During the pandemic Walmart used thin bags, and most customers seemed to love the free thin bags.
I've heard the thin bags cost about $2,000 per pallet which has many thousands of bags, and the thick ones cost closer to $5,000 per pallet (for like 1/8 as many bags).

Some CA Wal Marts gave thick bags for free during the COVID and others did get some thin bags in, maybe it varied by what distribution center served the store. Wal Mart's OR Stores were about the last retailer to start complying with the OR bag ban in mid-late 2021. OR requires a super thick plastic bag of 4m thick, not the 2.5m thickness CA requires (WA also at 2.5m). OR bag fee is also only .05. Stores are losing a lot of money on those bags at the .05 fee. There are also cities in OR that do not enforce the bag ban and may still be some Wal Marts in OR using thin bags and not assessing a bag fee.

Albertsons does not use branded bags in CA anymore. Those "thank you" bags are standard for them and used across banners (Albertsons, Vons, Pavilions, Pak N Save, Safeway). Some of those CA Safeway bags are made in the US and some are made in Thailand (same exact thank you design). They still have branded super thick bags in other places with bag regulations (like OR/WA). The OR ones have both Safeway and Albertsons logos very small, not sure what WA is doing in Seattle Division. Also NorCal Safeway sends Safeway branded plastic bags to the NV Stores; they are made at a bag plant in Hayward. That bag plant also makes a small run of Save Mart and Food Maxx branded bags for their NV Stores.

The Burning Man event is currently in Reno area and we have many folks buying at various stores in town. Wal Mart, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe's are very popular with this crowd, but all of the grocery stores benefit. Today in one Wal Mart when I entered the store I noticed a couple burners with two heaping cartfulls of groceries headed up front; they went to the self checkout and must have thought NV has a bag fee because one of them went and got an empty cart and they started moving items from one cart to the scanner then to the third cart. They left the store with two carts and it took them 30+ minutes to use the self checkout. They were actually rather quick but had so much stuff it took a while. Then out in the parking lot it took them another 30+ minutes to load all of their items, one by one, in their van (which had CA plates). Luckily there was nobody checking receipts at the door for "unbagged items." That would have been fun.
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Re: Walmart observations

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I guess some Wal Marts will now measure bags, including purses, when people enter the store.

https://www.koat.com/article/bag-policy ... l/41004844

I cannot even imagine, if I was carrying a purse, how I would react to a place of business demanding to measure it before I enter their place of business. Actually, I would not be entering that place of business. This is absolutely absurd.

I have a better idea. Well not really but if we are putting out lousy ideas let's go for it. How about they weigh the purse. If the weight out exceeds the weight in then they can assume you shoplifted and inspect the purse contents.

They must have incredible staffing levels in Albuquerque to be able to measure purses at the entrance.
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Re: Walmart observations

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The store manager is probably worried about people with large bags shoplifting. There are other ways to combat shoplifting without bag weighing. They could always lock up items in glass cases.
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by BillyGr »

TW-Upstate NY wrote: August 27th, 2022, 9:43 am They do collect a bag fee now and from what I was told it's going to be NO BAGS and you need to bring your own reusable ones and the only ones they will have for purchase are the heavier canvas and or cloth bags.
Most of NY does NOT require a fee for bags, but it doesn't mean the stores can't charge one (as places like Aldi always did, even prior to the plastic ban).

Also, I doubt there is any requirement to offer bags at all - the stores usually did it for customer convenience, but that doesn't mean that they have to do so. Maybe for certain items (for instance, even the stores that charge for bags do NOT charge for ones at the pharmacy), but not overall.
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Re: Walmart observations

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BillyGr wrote: August 28th, 2022, 10:42 am
TW-Upstate NY wrote: August 27th, 2022, 9:43 am They do collect a bag fee now and from what I was told it's going to be NO BAGS and you need to bring your own reusable ones and the only ones they will have for purchase are the heavier canvas and or cloth bags.
Most of NY does NOT require a fee for bags, but it doesn't mean the stores can't charge one (as places like Aldi always did, even prior to the plastic ban).

Also, I doubt there is any requirement to offer bags at all - the stores usually did it for customer convenience, but that doesn't mean that they have to do so. Maybe for certain items (for instance, even the stores that charge for bags do NOT charge for ones at the pharmacy), but not overall.
These stores can do whatever the consumer puts up with. No bags, check every cart at the door full of "unbagged" items creating a line up in a line 20 people deep to walk out the door given most customers see a line and assume it is mandatory to wait in that line to exit the store (hint: it isn't, except at a membership store). At some point you create a shopping environment that is such a hassle that the consumer stops showing up. The harder you make it for people to spend their money, the less they will spend money.

They are basically following the path of the Austrailian retailers. This is exactly what they are doing. But they are now taking it a step further- no more single use produce bags or meat bags either. But they'll sell you mesh bags for your meat and produce.
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