Aldi - checkout assistants calculate change!

norricorp

I was overcharged in Aldi yesterday and noticed that the receipt did not show the amount tendered. So I emailed Aldi at their customer.services address which was rejected as it thought my email was spam. One way of keeping down emails. So I phoned instead. And Aldi do not enter the amount tendered - assistants at the checkout are expected to calculate the change themselves. And get it wrong in my case.
The customer services person said that Aldi had done that for that last 30 years but why not let the system calculate it? The answer was that they have always done it.
So, no matter how small, best to use a card in Aldi and save the assistant having to use their arithmetic skills.
Aldi still have a way to go in meeting normal service standards .....

duchy

I used to work in a pub where the landlady insisted we not only calculated the change but also mentally added upthe drinks instead of ringing them in. It was tough at first (and when prices changed) but it was incredibly accurate. If a customer challenged the price of a big round and we rang it in manually to check the price it was always right. As she said if you relied on the till blindly you tended not to notice mis rings and it was too easy to massively over or under charge. With stock control now linked to POS equipment it couldn't happen now but it did wonders for my mental arithmetic skills .

Contrast that with the lass in a 'spoons who informed me she needed me to void her transaction as she'd rung the tender in as ten pounds rather than twenty so couldn't work out how much change to give ! I looked at her in amazement and then had to show her how to "count on" to make the correct change.

I've never noticed my local Aldi doing it as I normally pay by card but to me it makes perfect sense. Any cashier who struggles with what change to give shouldn't be working there anyway.

Unlike you I see it as a positive for the customer not a negative.

VfM4meplse

In that case I'm glad to be a credit card user.

It does explain an interaction I witnessed last week. A Chinese lady with hesitant English was counting her change after the checkout and nicely challenged the Eastern European sales assistant about the change given. She wouldn't accept an error until the next customer - who happened to be black - who overheard the conversation intervened, and confirmed the original customer was shortchanged.

I was a bit taken aback that the SA didn't take the Chinese customer seriously but listened to an obviously English accent.

SpammyTheSpammer

VfM4meplse wrote: »

...
It does explain an interaction I witnessed last week. A Chinese lady with hesitant English was counting her change after the checkout and nicely challenged the Eastern European sales assistant about the change given. She wouldn't accept an error until the next customer - who happened to be black - who overheard the conversation intervened, and confirmed the original customer was shortchanged.

I was a bit taken aback that the SA didn't take the Chinese customer seriously but listened to an obviously English accent.

Sorry, not sure what the nationalities of these people indicate here?

Stevie_Palimo

SpammyTheSpammer wrote: »

Sorry, not sure what the nationalities of these people indicate here?

It does not mean anything at all it was simple reference to the situation that they encountered so they told the story as is rather than a shortened version of events.

Nothing wrong with that and I would have done the same.

SpammyTheSpammer

Stevie_Palimo wrote: »

It does not mean anything at all it was simple reference to the situation that they encountered so they told the story as is rather than a shortened version of events.

Nothing wrong with that and I would have done the same.

Thanks for explaining

DCFC79

Nothing new really.