House or store ban for bottle collectors in the supermarket
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am a branch manager at a large supermarket chain in a branch at the main train station of a major city in Bavaria. We have daily problems with bottle collectors who bring us dirty and contaminated bottles that they have collected in trash cans at various subway or train stations, some of which are contaminated with feces, insects, slugs, dog feces, or urine, which accumulates in these trash cans.
My question:
I read a post here (or in a similar forum) where a lawyer (specializing in media law) responded to a question about the legality of issuing a ban approximately as follows:
... simply lacking the intention to purchase by the person entering the store is sufficient to justify a ban, or he even said there is no need to justify the issuance of the ban, it should certainly not be arbitrary, but as I said, reasons such as a lack of intention to purchase or aggressive behavior would suffice.
Can I or my substitute (deputy) expel a person from the store because, for example, they regularly come only to drop off bottles collected from trash cans, or do we have to put up with everything in sales? I am not talking about customers who may have had a party over the weekend and therefore bring in, for example, 50 to 100 bottles or cans on Monday, I mean those who obviously earn their living by collecting deposits and living off social welfare...
For example, yesterday evening a woman was here, to whom I said kindly when I noticed that she had a huge bag of dirty bottles: "I'm sorry, we cannot accept such dirty bottles, that is not a household quantity, you only come to drop off bottles and not to shop!"
She responded loudly (shouting): "Disabled people are discriminated against here, I will go to the mayor and the newspaper, wait and see, you will read about me in the newspaper! Do you even know what it's like to have to collect bottles all day for a few cents to have some money?"
I did not respond further and avoided her.
We have problem cases every day, "normal" paying customers have also approached me and asked if we could do something about these people, they can't even get their 2 bottles returned during their lunch break because there is always some needy bottle collector blocking the bottle return machine for minutes.
Can I ban these people from the store or not?
Are they in the right? Do we have to accept dirty bottles or cans, often with residual liquid inside, which then damage our bottle return machine, the last repair cost 1000 euros because it was rusted.
I have the backing of the management in principle, but when push comes to shove and someone officially complains, we in sales are the ones who get the blame.
I know that according to the Packaging Ordinance, we are obliged to take back all disposable deposit containers and refund the deposit of 0.25 cents, but does this also apply
