Isabella Lam bought a $1 jug of bleach at Canadian Tire last week. Her bill was $1.55, which included an eco fee of 37 cents and HST on top of that.
Ron Compton bought three $1 bleach jugs at Canadian Tire and was charged eco fees of 57 cents on each one.
April Holman bought a $3 bottle of laundry detergent at Canadian Tire and paid a 60-cent eco fee.
Barb Harren bought a $20 driveway sealer at Canadian Tire and paid an eco fee of $3.23, while Viren Desai paid an eco fee of $4.03 on the same product.
These examples of inconsistent and excessive eco fees will be fixed by Wednesday, says Amy Cole, a spokeswoman for Canadian Tire.
“This is a very complex program and we made an error programming our point-of-sale systems,” she said.
“We’re reaching out to customers to apologize for the inconvenience this has caused. Customers that return to the store with a receipt will be reimbursed the difference between the correct fee and the adjusted, correct fee.”
On July 1, Ontario expanded its eco fee program to cover 22 types of household products. The goal is to shift the cost of disposing of hazardous wastes from taxpayers to manufacturers and importers of the products.
But how much confidence can consumers have when one of Canada’s largest retailers makes repeated mistakes in showing the right eco fees on its bills?
Do we have to become eco-vigilantes to make sure we’re paying the right amount?
After hearing many stories from readers, I went to two Canadian Tire stores to look for errors in what I was charged.
It didn’t take long to find cases where I paid more – often a whole lot more – than the examples used by Stewardship Ontario, a non-governmental body that runs the program.
My 2.26-litre bottle of Cascade dishwasher detergent should have had an eco fee of less than one cent.
Instead, I paid a 43-cent eco fee at two Canadian Tire stores I visited (Yonge St., north of Davenport Rd., and Bay St., corner of Dundas St.).
What happened? The stores didn’t differentiate between corrosive products, such as toilet bowl cleaners and rust removers, and detergents – which are classified as irritants.
I also paid 28 cents on a package of four double-A non-rechargeable batteries at a Canadian Tire store when the correct eco fee was actually 6 cents.
“Eco fees were not intended to generate profit for us and we’re working to ensure the correct fees are charged going forward,” Cole said.
Any money that is not reimbursed to customers will be remitted to Stewardship Ontario to pay for its recycling and disposal efforts, she added.
Diane Brisebois, president of the Retail Council of Canada, blamed the pricing errors on the number of individual products – known as stock-keeping units or SKUs – carried in large stores.
While some manufacturers will incorporate the eco fees into the price of their goods, others will pass them on to retailers – which pass them on, in turn, to customers.
“I wish I had a simple solution, but this program is so complex and touches so many products,” says Brisebois, who’s also a member of Stewardship Ontario’s board.
In her view, “a communications snafu” resulted when the second phase was launched on July 1 without advance notice to customers.
“The industry did not spend enough time to educate, inform and motivate consumers, as it did in 2008. Instead, it spent more time on the implementation,” she said.
After my column last Saturday, I heard from many people who tried to check the eco fees and found Stewardship Ontario’s website hard to navigate.
I also heard from people who went to the affiliated website, www.makethedrop.ca, and couldn’t find any drop-off locations close to their homes.
Wayne Jenkins, who lives in Waterford, Ont., was given drop stations in Cambridge, Hamilton and Dundas – about an hour’s drive from his home. He thinks he’ll never be able to use the service.
John Hamlin, a painting contractor in Thunder Bay, was told to go to a landfill site to drop off leftover cans of paint and petroleum products and pay disposal fees of 81 cents to $4.03 per container.
Stewardship Ontario never responded to his letter last fall, asking why – if he’s paying eco fees to buy these products – he’s also charged a second time to dispose properly of hazardous waste.
Finally, many people said that eco fees should be considered a tax – especially when the Ontario government stands to gain money from the HST applied on top of them.
Many suggested that retailers should have to show eco fees on price tags and shelf labels, instead of surprising customers with them after they paid their bills.
Ellen Roseman writes about personal finance and consumer issues.
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