Are you too snobbish to shop at Lidl ? You might be giving your money away !

laughing_cow

I don't live near a Lidl but when I was driving past one a couple of months ago I thought I'd give it a try because I'd heard so many good things on this board.

Oh dear, never again. Maybe I was unlucky but the branch I visited was grubby and cramped and I couldn't find anything I wanted to buy! All the fruit and veg was manky or tired looking, and not particularly cheap. I 'price checked' a couple of branded items (Lloyd Grossman pasta sauce) I'd bought that week in Tesco and Lidl was actually more expensive. A large proportion of the store was taken up with crisps, snacks, biscuits, cakes and fizzy drinks - stuff that I very rarely buy.

The aisles were so narrow that it was impossible to get past anyone so I had to go at a snails pace round the store behind a large family who stopped every 10 seconds. There were lengthy queues for the tills which backed up along the cramped aisles so people were constantly jostling and trying to get past. After going through this palaver for nearly half an hour, I looked at the beans in my trolley (all I'd chosen :rolleyes: ) and decided that this was really no way to spend my time. I abandoned the trolley - by this point I no longer cared about getting the £1 back from it (not moneysaving I know, but I'd lost the will to bother!)

Sorry, not for me, I hated it! If I want cheap I'll go to the market or one of the Asian supermarkets.

sammyjammy

Sally14 wrote:

I love Netto! :j

Now Netto is one place I won't go unless its really empty, its a scary place to go around where I live, Aldi and Lidl are just full of people wanting a bargain from what I can tell now Netto really is full of people I'd rather not mix with it (I mean that jokingly of course!)

pudding06

Aldi and Lidl are just full of people wanting a bargain

yep - that'd be me then lol


my biggest problem is making sure my oh doesnt by anything from the weekly specials - i'm always dragging him away from the electrical stuff etc.

pudds

kaka72

Hi. I have found that Sainsburys is by far cheaper than Aldi for most of the basics we buy.
Things like pressed fruit juice look cheaper but the amounts differ.
We never buy our fruit and veg from a supermarket.........we have a local fruit market type store that is really good value.
Also rarely buy processed food which is very cheap in Aldi.
Things that look similiar normally are not if you look at the ingredients.
It is true we all want to save money but don't presume Aldi etc. will be cheaper.
p.s my cat loves their cheapo food and until we found this out would only eat whiskas so we have saved some money!!

stevenshell

I guess, as with everything, people have their own experiences and preferences of using different shops.

I shop around a fair bit - I use tescos the most, simply because it is the closest to me, bar Iceland, but I feel that they sell an awful lot of processed stuff, and I don't really buy that sort of food any more.

My parents have been shopping in Aldi for years now, and my dad raves about the place, my mum used to gripe as she said a lot of it was old toot but over the years, they've learnt which things are nice to buy, and which aren't. I used to always screw my nose up at Aldi, and take the mick out of my dad for shopping there, but as I've "grown up" and had to stick to a tighter budget, I've bought stuff there, and we perhaps go once a month, usually on the way to my parents, as it is closer to them than it is to us. The store we use has just had a face lift and is a lot bigger (although the car park is rubbish, and we got blocked in the other day when we went!) I bought their "luxury" bacon as at 1.69 , I think it was, is a lot cheaper than tescos, I also bought a chicken as it was only £2.07 and again, cheaper than tescos for the same size chicken. However, as been mentioned before, there is that lack of the BOGOFs which I so love! :T And I don't often see reduced stuff like I do in tescos - it's where we tend to gravitate when we first go in store!

Tried Lidl a few times now - not bought anything major - crispbreads as they were recommended on another thread here, and their sunflower spread was good and lasted us ages. We bought fruit and veg when it was half price and didn't have a problem with it being mouldy or not lasting long. My gripe with Lidl is that it is a dank store (at least the one near me is), really quite dark and not laid for ease of shopping - stuff piled high, tight aisles where they have the "specials" in, and no cheaper I don't think, than Aldi (which I prefer of the two )

I get both the Aldi and Lidl newsletters, and if there are good buys on some of their non-food items I'll pop along if there is something I want.

Nettos - heard that it was a good shop, found it to be terrible!! Staff were rude, and it was all higgledy piggledy, so we didn't actually buy much from there. There isn't one near us, and we visted there on the way to a relative.

Kwiksave - ours has turned into a somerfield now, and avoid that shop because I think it is over priced - ditto with the co-op.

Asda - Been a few times, but don't like it all that much, and don't find it any cheaper than Tesco, ditto with Morrisons - spent £80 in there once and didn't feel like it was worth it!

M&S - if I could afford to shop there I would as their food is nice, especially for a treat!

Sainsburys - I get confused in there :rotfl: as I am not used to the layout so impulse buy therefore wasting money!

I sometimes buy from the local butchers - but it isn't always cheaper - same goes for the local bakery - I guess cos they're smaller they can't compete as well. I find the local market (for fruit and veg) to be a bit of a false economy as the produce goes off a lot quicker than when I buy it in the supermarket. That being said, I do grow some of my own!

So that's my experience of grocery shopping.... I also feel that if you spread your shopping around - driving from store to store, you're wasting the money you "save" on petrol (and time).

In answer to the original question - are you too snobbish to shop at Lidl? - no I'm not - we like what we like, if it comes from Lidl, Tesco or M&S it doesn't really matter - besides, I think a lot more goes on paying for the packaging than anything else!!!

SammyD_2

I use Lidl when they have half price fruit and vegetables. Otherwise I don't shop there.

Reasons: always crowded with narrow aisles and big queues, don't take credit cards, dubious labelling on some of their products (eg cheese labelled vegetarian also states it contains rennet), many of my basics are the same price or more expensive than Sainsburys (eg tinned tomatoes, kidney beans), have had dubious milk from them in the past and they don't have the range of goods I need.

Also, I know people say the nappies and wipes are as good as brand names. In my opinion, they are not.

Plus sick to death of all the men in large cars who park on the double yellow lines outside my local Lidl while their wives do the shopping. (We do have a free carpark at the Lidl which they could use). It makes it impossible to navigate with a trolley, espcially with children in tow.