NEW DELHI: World’s largest sandwich chain Subway on Saturday told a consumer court that they would no longer charge customers for cloth bags provided during food delivery. Following a complaint at the Delhi State Consumer Redressal Commission, Subway who earlier charged Rs 100 for a cloth bag informed that they have struck down the policy. Delhi State Consumer Redressal Commission president Arun Kumar Arya expressed satisfaction on the statement and asked the company to pay Rs 9,000 as litigation cost to the consumer.
The fine on the food chain comes months after Bata was fined for charging its customers for carry bags.
The order came on a complaint filed by advocate Krishna Kumar Sharma who demanded that illicit charges in the guise of charging for carry bags should be removed for the benefit of consumers.
After the order, Sharma said, “My whole concern was to make Subway realise that they cannot charge consumers unnecessarily and the policy of charging of carry bag is bad in law and should be struck down,”
During the hearing, Sharma had told the forum that one of his clients had placed an order from Subway through the food delivery app Swiggy, and was charged around Rs 100 as bag fee.
The bag received by the complainant though should not cost one more than Rs 3-5.Kumar, in his arguments, cited a Chandigarh consumer commission’s order which directed a footwear company to provide free carry bags to all customers who purchase articles from its shop and stop unfair trade practice of charging for carry bags and also had fined the footwear giant Rs 9000.
However, many major retailers continue to violate the law as they would rather be fined once than lose a major source of income from customers.This all started in 2011 when the Ministry of Environment and forests (MoEF) issued the plastic waste (management and handling) rules and one of the rule stated that “No (plastic) carry bags shall be made available free of cost by retailers to consumers.”Following this, retailers began switching to more expensive paper and cloth carry bags, but for substantially higher fee.