EDITOR, The Tribune
Not long ago, we were reminded that the Bahamas is a difficult place to do business. We are stuck well over the 100th worst place to do business in the world. Successive governments have boasted that legislation planned or enacted would address this problem. So far there has been little movement.
A part of that poor business environment, of course, is our generally poor customer service, which we have come to accept as a fact of life, although we would all wish it were not. Attitudes at the counter seem to get worse every year, and it is not unusual to sit in a public place and listen to complaints about bad attitudes and poor customer service.
How surprising it is, then, to have the government create legislation that in fact demands bad customer service. The protocols required by legislation in connection with the plastics ban violates the fundamental process of normal customer service and changes the vendor’s relationship with his customer for the worse.
When planning a retail business, the vendor accepts responsibility for the packaging of the items of sale. They assume that normal customer service requires them to hand their customer their purchase in a way that is convenient for the customer. To make certain that is possible, they purchase the carrying device, add it’s price to the calculation of their overheads and include it in the price of the product. There is no reason to deviate from that simple business process. Instead, the legislation makes the customer responsible for their own convenience, while adding to the management concerns of the vendor. It simply creates worse customer service.
No one I have spoken to is opposed to the plastics ban. What they are against is being made responsible for a part of the vendor’s normal operation unnecessarily. There is no reason not to simply require vendors to use a different type of packaging as of a certain date and trust the business community to make the adjustment. If it results in increases in product cost, the politicians would just have to accept that that is the cost of operating in a more planet-conscious way, rather than pretending that they can avoid the cost of environmental vigilance by complicated and unnecessary legislation.
Please return the responsibility and opportunity for good customer service to the vendor. By legislation, we have made going to the grocery store a reason to be upset.
PAT RAHMING
Nassau,
January 27, 2020.
Comments
birdiestrachan 4 years, 2 months ago
It was designed to increase the profit of the merchants and increase the cost to the poor
The PM has no respect for those over the hill people. he feels all he has to do is go into their communities shake some cow bells and tell his "I WAS A POOR BOY " story then jump into his chuffer driven car with police escort and return to his home in the hills.
Th PM does not feel the pains of the poor that is why he continues to tax them .
Dawes 4 years, 2 months ago
My God are people still talking about this. How pathetic can we be. For the letter writer to say that doing business in the Bahamas is now harder thanks to the plastic ban is pulling at straws (pun intended). I'm not sure how to explain to people like the letter writer that the whole idea of the charge is to make the customer think that it is better to bring in reusable bags (as this has been explained many times before).
Sickened 4 years, 2 months ago
I know right! Too many of us just freak out over any sort of change.
stillwaters 4 years, 2 months ago
People need to get their reusable bags and get over it!!! Stop having little stupid tantrums over this issue.
birdiestrachan 4 years, 2 months ago
What was wrong one hundred years ago is still wrong today. It was the duty of the Government to see to it that the merchants provide some kind of bags for their customers.
When people are poor every little counts.
There is a right way and a wrong way to do things. and just dismissing truths is not helpful. foolish people do just that.
joeblow 4 years, 2 months ago
The author is correct. Grocery stores are the only business where our goods are not packaged to allow you to leave their stores and it creates an unnecessary inconvenience for customers. I constantly see people leave stores with 1 or 2 items in hand, unbagged, because they may have forgotten to bring their 'reusable' bag to stores and the stores do not provide a small bag for small items. It is ridiculous!
Dawes 4 years, 2 months ago
Gas stores don't either.
joeblow 4 years, 2 months ago
I usually get small brown paper bags for small purchases from the gas stores I frequent.
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