Walgreens: Santa Fe stores won’t charge for small paper bags

Customers with receipts showing erroneous fee will be reimbursed

Walgreens announced Tuesday it will stop charging its Santa Fe customers 10 cents for small paper carryout bags.

The decision came after The New Mexican reported that the national chain store was among retailers in the city that have been charging shoppers a dime for small paper bags, even though a 10-cent fee imposed by the city applied only to grocery-size or larger bags.

“Today we are informing all Santa Fe store employees that we will not be charging bag fees for small shopping bags,” James W. Graham, a Walgreens spokesman, said in an email.

“The city’s Reusable Bag Ordinance, which sets a fee of 10 cents a bag, will only be applied to large grocery bags. We apologize to our customers for any inconvenience,” he wrote.

Graham also said Walgreens will reimburse customers for past paper bag fees “if they have a receipt indicating they were charged for small bags.”

The 10-cent paper bag fee, which went into effect a little over a year ago, has been a source of confusion for cashiers, some of whom incorrectly apply the fee to small paper bags or use discretion on which customers to charge.

One consumer, Will Karp, said two weeks ago he was charged 10 cents for an 8-inch-tall paper bag at Sears.

“I spoke to the manager there who just blew me off,” he wrote in an email to The New Mexican. “I had a couple of instances at Walgreens on Richards [Avenue] several months ago and spoke to the manager there who apologized and told me he would retrain his cashiers. Have not had the problem there since.”

City Councilor Ron Trujillo, who voted against the paper bag fee, said a now-deceased constituent once complained to him that Walgreens had charged her 10 cents for a small paper bag containing her prescription medicine.

Shirlene Sitton, director of the Environmental Services Division, said one of her employees visited the Walgreens on South St. Francis Drive on Tuesday to discuss the 10-cent charge assessed to a reporter with The New Mexican for a small paper bag.

The manager “agreed to follow up with his employees,” Sitton wrote in an email.

The city employee who visited the store asked a customer carrying a lunch-size paper bag if he could see his receipt.

“The customer was not charged for the bag,” Sitton wrote.

To file a complaint against a retailer, call 505-955-2200.