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Hyderabad Consumer Forum: Charging Cost for Carry Bags with Supermarket Logo and Unfair Trade Practice
A Bench comprising of Vakkanti Narasimha Rao (President), PVTR Jawahar Babu (Member) and RS Rajeshree (Member) directed More Megastore to discontinue the trade practice of charging an additional cost for carrybags at the time of payment.
The bench stated that the supermarkets that sell carry bags with their company's logo use their customers as a tool of advertisement which is a spurious and deceptive act and makes it an unfair trade practice. It was held that using a customer as an agent of advertisement at his cost is an unfair trade practice under Section 2(1)(r) of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986.
Advocate K.Chaitanya from the opposite party's side (More Megastore) argued that charging an additional cost for a carry bag is not prohibited under any law. he also said that the store never compelled the complainant (Baglekar Akash Kumar) to purchase a carry bag. The complainant however submitted that according to both state and central government orders retailers can charge customers only for plain plastic bags, that is, the ones with no company logo. In case the company's symbol is printed on the bag it must be given to the customer free of cost.
The bench ordered the opposite party to pay INR 15,000 as compensation to the complainant for charging him INR 3 for a carry bag with the logo of the More Megastore.
The commission also ruled that not disclosing the cost of carrybags at the time of payment is also an unfair trade practice. The recent ruling of Big Bazaar (Future Retail Ltd.) vs Sahil Dawar was relied upon to pass the judgment.
Last year in December the NCDRC had passed a similar order where Big Bazaar was directed to discontinue imposing an additional cost of carrybags with the company's logo on them. Big Bazaar was charging INR 18 for a bag without giving any notice or information to the customer.
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