Was your Target bag fee not refunded?

If you’ve picked up an order at Target recently, you may have noticed something new: that Target is now charging a bag fee of $1. And customers placing Drive Up or Order Pickup orders from Target are, upon ordering, hit with a $1 bag feed regardless of how many bags they’re likely to actually use. So customers are overpaying for bags they’re not even using.

What’s worse is that some people are reporting that Target tells them that they will adjust the bag fee to match the number of bags you actually use – but then when it comes time to check out, the they don’t really do it. That means they’re left stuck paying for bags they never received or wanted.

Are you one of these people who paid a $1 for bags at Target you didn’t even use? Or did you get promised that they’d give you a refund or adjust the bag fee, but then didn’t refund it? You have rights, and you can help us fight back against this kind of practice.

Our attorneys want to talk to anyone who Target has done this to. We’re investigating whether a class action lawsuit can fix this practice. You can fill out a form here for a free evaluation and one of our attorneys will contact you about your experience.

That’s what local news reporters have suggested in a recent news report. Target was investigated by NBC Los Angeles about this issue. One consumer told NBC Los Angeles that she was charged $1.00 for ten bags when buying a five-foot ironing board, even though fitting an ironing-board into a grocery bag (or ten, for that matter) would be impossible. You can read more about NBC Los Angeles’s investigation into Target’s practices in connection with charging consumers for bags here.

Nobody should have to pay for

Yes, we think so. Just using California as an example, we believe this is an unfair business practice. If you tell someone you’re going to refund their money, or that you’ll make an adjustment, you can’t just not do it. When businesses make promises, they have to keep them. There are many state laws that make that clear. For example, the Unfair Competitional Law, often called the UCL, outlaws any business practices that a jury or a court finds are unfair or deceptive. Making a false promise to your customer is pretty clearly both unfair and deceptive.

Then there’s the Consumer Legal Remedies Act, or CLRA. This is a powerful law in California that protects consumers from any kind of deceptive practices, and has provisions about false pricing as well.

Many other states have similar laws. And we know how to use those laws to protect people who companies cheat.

You might think that a dollar isn’t a lot of money. But it adds up. And lots of people in our country live paycheck to paycheck and need every dollar they can get. What’s worse is that if you think about it, there are lots of people who deliver for apps like DoorDash and are repeatedly using Target’s Drive Up or Order Pick Up options over and over again. If they’re picking up deliveries over and over, and getting overcharged over and over, that adds up. Apps like that already don’t pay all that much. So why should a driver have to pay for bags they aren’t even using? And even if it’s a small amount, we can’t let big corporations walk all over us. Every little fee they charge adds up when they do it to hundreds of thousands of people. All we’re asking is that they play fair with regular people instead of trying to squeeze every last fee they can come up with out of them.

And some people have reported being charged even more. There are some consumers who have said their local Target is charging them a $2.50 bag fee automatically – no matter how many they end up using.

First of all, a class action is perfect for cases like this, where no single person got charged enough to pay for a lawyer, but everyone’s being affected. And second, there’s the possibility of getting either a settlement agreement or a court order that would make them start following the law and only charging for what people buy.

Kneupper & Covey PC is investigating whether Target’s bag-fee practices for Drive Up or Order Pickup purchases may violate California law. If you believe you may have been overcharged for bags when picking up orders from Target, please contact us today for a free case evaluation. Click here and fill out our survey if you’re interested in helping stop this unfair practice