April 23rd, 2009

Letter I sent to Extra Foods:

Attn:
- Customer Relations, Loblaw Companies, Ltd.
- Customer Relations, Extra Foods, Coquitlam

Last night my wife and I went shopping at Extra Foods (Coquitlam) and at the checkout we were asked, “How many bags would you like?” When I asked the cashier why I needed to tell her, she pointed out that bags are now fives cents each!

Awful.

Now I’m being gouged five cents each for my plastic bags. You know what I think? This is your way of exploiting peoples’ well-meaning but poorly thought-out desire to assuage their guilt about the dubiously-reported environmental abuse they are accused of wreaking. But instead of helping any environmental movement, you’ve made the world a little bit worse for us all. You’ve turned peoples’ pure intentions into a cash grab for your organization.

I read your statistic: “After 6 weeks, all participating stores showed an average 75% decrease in plastic bag usage compared to the same time period in 2008” Well, good grief, could you make the data in that statement sound any more cherry-picked? By presenting such a narrow slice of information, you are apparently manufacturing a “whole lie out of a half truth”! That decrease could be because people are just avoiding your stores (which we will be doing from now on) because now they have to pay for something that used to be free, or they could be repeatedly buying those expensive nylon bags, which themselves consume a massive amount of energy and resources in their manufacture. Maybe overall sales are down due to economic hard times, thus fewer bags are being used. Maybe none of these are true, or maybe all of them. You fail to make a reasonable measurable picture with such information so it’s anybody’s guess where the truth lies.

And that three million dollars to WWF-Canada is a nice gesture ... but you shouldn’t be taking too much credit for it; money is being drained from your customers’ pockets to help fund it. And those customers didn't get a say in it. They just showed up at your store one day to learn they had to start paying for their bags.

You know, there is nothing more despicable than a company nickel-and-diming people in the name of a well-intentioned movement. People buy into it feeling as though they are helping, when really all they are doing is contributing to that company’s bottom line.

Well, shame on you.

Let’s be clear: You are doing this so that can look like you are being a “good corporate citizen”. You want people to feel good about coming into your stores. Well, it might work for some people; however, my wife and I will be buying our family’s groceries elsewhere from now on. See? You’re losing some people too—and some folks will just decide to go to Safeway, Save-On-Foods, or Super Valu without taking the time to complain.

Brian and Julia Porter

PS: We are sending copies of this letter to both the store we formerly shopped at in Coquitlam, BC, and head office in Brampton, Ontario. Also, I'm posting it on my blog.

The reason I get so worked up about things like this is the insult to my intelligence that trying to pass one thing off as another makes. If they had just told the truth: "We can't afford it any more," then I might have felt quite a bit different about it. But as it is, they are trying to spin themselves as oh-so-pure and pure-intentioned, when really they are sticking people with an extra cost and trying to make us like it. Yeah ... it's the "trying to make us like it" part that irritates me the most.

Read more rants - Comment on this rant - Email me