Good and Bad Buys at Lidl and Aldi stores (***Please don't expire***)

Brie

Well here's a thing!!

Chaos in Lidl yesterday - a sign by the entrance saying cash only and one of the staff saying the same to people going in.  I needed a number of things but only had £9 on me so was aiming for the bare essentials - strawberries and chicken.  Got to the tills to discover they were taking cards but they had to be cards, not phones or watches or whatever else.  So went round the shop again and back to a queue of 30 people at the self service.  There was one staffed till also working but it was cash only as the SS were all card only.  Scanned all my stuff including my Lidl Plus freebie only to discover that Lidl Plus wasn't working.  Got removed as wasn't an essential, paid and exited.  

Got home and decided to grump a bit at Lidl - easy to do on their app as there is a contact form on there.  I was polite, said what the problem was, asked if they could add my points to the app for me, asked also if they could extend the vouchers I couldn't use and were about to expire.  And then added if they could do either of those things I would be happy if they gave me a gift voucher that I could use for the food bank.  Polite salutation and expected a response sometime next week.

Imagine my surprise to get an email back in an hour with this......

Thanks for getting in touch. I'm sorry, we can’t add this missed receipt onto your monthly tracker. Each week I have a £20.00 voucher to give away as a Random Act of Kindness.  You made my day today, so I‘m sending it to you to give to the food bank.

Isn't that lovely!!  It's good to complain (politely) sometimes!!!

Rosa_Damascena

Brie said:

Well here's a thing!!

Chaos in Lidl yesterday - a sign by the entrance saying cash only and one of the staff saying the same to people going in.  I needed a number of things but only had £9 on me so was aiming for the bare essentials - strawberries and chicken.  Got to the tills to discover they were taking cards but they had to be cards, not phones or watches or whatever else.  So went round the shop again and back to a queue of 30 people at the self service.  There was one staffed till also working but it was cash only as the SS were all card only.  Scanned all my stuff including my Lidl Plus freebie only to discover that Lidl Plus wasn't working.  Got removed as wasn't an essential, paid and exited.  

Got home and decided to grump a bit at Lidl - easy to do on their app as there is a contact form on there.  I was polite, said what the problem was, asked if they could add my points to the app for me, asked also if they could extend the vouchers I couldn't use and were about to expire.  And then added if they could do either of those things I would be happy if they gave me a gift voucher that I could use for the food bank.  Polite salutation and expected a response sometime next week.

Imagine my surprise to get an email back in an hour with this......

Thanks for getting in touch. I'm sorry, we can’t add this missed receipt onto your monthly tracker. Each week I have a £20.00 voucher to give away as a Random Act of Kindness.  You made my day today, so I‘m sending it to you to give to the food bank.

Isn't that lovely!!  It's good to complain (politely) sometimes!!!

Lidl CS is fast to respond, particularly if you make contact via W'App and are always pleasant I find.

I went into Lidl again this lunchtime to buy some more cherries whilst still on offer. I had a good hunt around as the ones I hoovered up this week were the Kordia variety and I wanted to get hold of more. There were 3 different species available today: Vulcano, Korvic and Piccolo. Well I wasn't interested in the anaemic looking latter, but bought some of the others so I could compare and contrast to the one remaining pack of Kordia in my fridge:

rhcp

Warm weather has delivered the UK's biggest cherry yield in at least three years, a supermarket said, as it introduced larger pack sizes of the fruit for sale due to their abundance.  A good time for the cherry lovers.

Hammer_Time

sorry not Lidl or Aldi, Farmfood has the same size cherries for 29p.

Brie

Pleased to have come across the chap discounting raspberries (50%!!!) today so got 2 packs of those and some vanilla ice cream.  So that's afters sorted.

Also got 12 jars of jam, 2 multipacks of cheesy puffs and 2 multipacks of chocolate chip cookies for the food bank.  And that didn't come close to £20 so I'll have to go back and spend some more!!

Rosa_Damascena

Hammer_Time said:

sorry not Lidl or Aldi, Farmfood has the same size cherries for 29p.

No way!!  

harz99

Aldi had 200g of Karina cherries for 99p as part of their Six offer yesterday, very nice too, one pack devoured last night and another for tonight.

On a different note the 1kg packs of baby potatoes emanating from Cornish growers have been consistently poor with pock marks and damage, unlike the Suffolk grown variety which don't seem to be available at the moment🙄

Rosa_Damascena

This Lidl offering is delicious and Nova 3, so not ultra-processed. What is undeniable is that it is very sweet:

Rosa_Damascena

I'm going to have a bit of a moan about Lidl - the branch that serves as shoplifter's central has installed a receipt exit gate to exit the self-service tills. I can understand why they needed to, but it is a proper pain to use if your arms are full!

Cornucopia

Rosa_Damascena said:

I'm going to have a bit of a moan about Lidl - the branch that serves as shoplifter's central has installed a receipt exit gate to exit the self-service tills. I can understand why they needed to, but it is a proper pain to use if your arms are full!

(My) Morrisons have a similar receipt gate on the self-service till area, but theirs is operated remotely by staff, rather than by scanning the receipt - at least for the moment.   That seems like a better idea than Lidl's version.

I imagine the future of it is an AI-based system whereby cameras follow you from payment to exit, operating the exit gate accordingly.