Customer claims supermarket chain pastes in-house sticker over BCRS barcodes on cans, prevents returns at machines
A customer has accused a heartland supermarket chain of pasting in-house stickers over the Beverage Container Return Scheme (BCRS) barcodes printed on canned beverages, preventing the cans from being returned at reverse vending machines even after the stickers are removed.
The customer, who goes by Yadobler on Reddit, penned a post on Sept 27 on the Singapore subreddit to air their frustrations.
In the post, Yadobler accused the supermarket of “pasting custom barcodes over chilled cans” and “breaking BCRS returns”.
The Redditor added that the stickers are made of “standard paper” that becomes “impossible” to peel off once it comes into contact with water.
“You end up with torn paper and sticky glue residue obscuring the manufacturer’s barcode. By the time you take the cans out of the fridge and check out, the condensation is already ruining the sticker,” said Yadobler.
The Redditor also shared a video showing one such can getting rejected at a Return Right reverse vending machine. They explained that the cans were rejected because the machine was unable to read the “defaced” barcodes.
On one occasion, Yadobler said they hauled 27 cans to a reverse vending machine, only for all of them to be rejected.
The Redditor said that they had “given up” on buying such drinks, but claims their father has a routine of purchasing chilled drinks from the supermarket.
Yadobler explained that they brought the issue up to a staff member from the supermarket, but received a seemingly dismissive response: “Aiya, just peel it off. It’s because you bought cold drinks.”
The Redditor pointed out that the BCRS initiative aims to make “return and deposit redemption seamless”, but argued that the supermarket’s act of pasting their in-house barcode “defeats the entire purpose of the scheme and passes the cost of their lazy POS system onto consumers.”
Took about 2 mins to fully peel off in-house sticker from each can
When Stomp visited the supermarket chain’s outlet in Toa Payoh, the refrigerated cans were found with in-house barcodes pasted over the BCRS ones.
Three canned beverages bought from the store were later brought to a nearby reverse vending machine. With the supermarket’s in-house sticker intact, all three cans were rejected.
The in-house stickers were also challenging to peel off, as Yadobler alluded to in their post, requiring about two minutes per can.
The cans were eventually accepted after the entire in-house stickers were scraped off, exposing the BCRS barcode underneath.
When Stomp asked if the barcode placement was intentional, staff at the supermarket confirmed that they were given instructions to paste the in-house sticker over the BCRS barcode.
However, they did not disclose the rationale behind the move.
Stomp has reached out to Yadobler for comment.
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