"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 21:14:31 on Wed,
19 Sep 2012, Graham Harrison
remarked:
The first question Tesco ask you is "Have you brought your own bag", at
which point you can put it on the bagging area and it re-calibrates the
weighing scales.
Not in my neck of the woods. It says have you brought your own bags,
press yes, put them in the bagging area and it immediately says unknown
item in bagging area.

I went to Sainsbury later, and they ask the same question as Tesco. Very
first screen, and this time because I only had one of my own bags the
system accepted it.

How do you know it was because you only had one bag?

Went back to Sainsburys today, and the system rejected that same one bag.
The assistant volunteered the information that it was because it was too
heavy.
--
Roland Perry

So it's not that one (a number) bag was rejected but that the bag you were
using was rejected.

I find that it varies by machine, not company. My local Morrisons has
rejected my backpack in the past, yesterday a machine accepted it. Have I
used that machine before? Possibly. Might they have recalibrated it
since I last used it? Possibly. Do they have a deliberate policy of
changing the acceptable weight at intervals so we don't know what weight we
can sneak into our bags? Unlikely but possibly. Does the weight of a
backpack vary? Likely, if it's been raining or I've left the spare
"longlife" shopping bag I carry in there.

On the other hand using 2 of the "longlife" bags sold by the supermarkets
never seems to cause a problem (now watch when I do that next time!).

In an ideal world all the machines in all the supermarkets would be
calibrated for precisely the same weight and be accurate at all times so
that we (customers) got consistent responses. Likelihood? 0%!

In message , at 09:31:15 on
Tue, 25 Sep 2012, Graham Harrison
remarked:
The first question Tesco ask you is "Have you brought your own
bag", at which point you can put it on the bagging area and it
re-calibrates the weighing scales.
Not in my neck of the woods. It says have you brought your own
bags, press yes, put them in the bagging area and it immediately
says unknown item in bagging area.

I went to Sainsbury later, and they ask the same question as Tesco.
Very first screen, and this time because I only had one of my own
bags the system accepted it.

How do you know it was because you only had one bag?

Went back to Sainsburys today, and the system rejected that same one
bag. The assistant volunteered the information that it was because it
was too heavy.

So it's not that one (a number) bag was rejected but that the bag you
were using was rejected.

We were discussing why backpacks triggered the system, and my experiment
was to try a weighted bag. The weight I originally used just happened to
be a second bag. But now we know that even one relatively small hessian
bag can be overweight too.

--
Roland Perry