Supermarkets discussion

[jon0844]

I feel a bit 'meh' about their middle aisles. As you say, get rid of the junk and sell more food. But sometimes there are bargains worth having.

It does appear random, but since shopping regularly for more than six months, you get to see there's some logic and organisation. They do have a lot of things you might go 'erm, do we need a tin of emulsion'? but more often than not they have things like toys before Christmas, exercise stuff in January and so on.

I don't see as many totally crazy products as I used to five or more years ago, when I think they just threw loads of mud at the wall to see what stuck.

I assume the Aldi buyers are quite switched on, and of course they sometimes secure some great deals that go viral and bring people to the shop just for that one item. I've noticed those Reach 'live' sites seem to do loads of ads made to look like articles on how people are going mad for a specific product that saves people money/time etc.

They do need more loose items in produce though. I just take potatoes loose and put them on the belt, but they do sell reusable bags. It's just that, as you say, a lot of stuff is in plastic.

 

[tbtc]

One problem with Aldi/ Lidl middle aisles is that (post Brexit? Suez Canal?) the supply problems/ delays mean that it feels increasingly common that they won’t have the range that was advertised in their leaflets/ website/ app - so you go in expecting something like discounted cycling gear and find that they are having to shift a load of dog-treats (which should have been on the shelf a couple of weeks ago). I don’t generally go there specifically for the weekly offers and I’m glad I don’t because I couldn’t guarantee they’d have that stuff

Now that they are fairly “mature” brands in the UK they no longer feel as “random” as we might have looked a decade ago, you learn after a while that the ranges/ offers tend to cycle round and are often relevant to that particular time (School gear piled high and sold cheap each August), with the intervening weeks filled with non- seasonal stuff like baby things.

Lidl seems better at the events because they tie it in to foods too, it always feels likes more of a “Continental” shop (than Aldi) and the “Iberian Week”/ “Polish Week” etc feels like an interesting and accessible way of trying something new (whereas a “Dog” event is no use to people in canine- free households)

Aldi overtook Morrisons last year in terms of total sales, mainly due to opening so many stores, but the decline of quality in Morrisons is a shame, it used to feel like the only one of the “Big Four” that offered something different, the homely Yorkshire butchers/ fish counter etc, it was like a culinary Department Store with various different shops inside it (ASDA etc had things like fish counters too, but they felt just like another aisle, whereas the Morrisons layout made them feel more like separate shops, an old fashioned High Street on the edges of the store). But under new ownership, it’s losing the charm it once had, as well as ramping up a few prices… No longer Yorkshire value! And as for ASDA, the “Leeds” firm now owned by people from over t’hills in Blackburn, Lancashire… Don’t get me started!

 

[SteveM70]

I feel a bit 'meh' about their middle aisles. But sometimes there are bargains worth having

Where else can you pick up a cheap angle grinder alongside your bread and milk?

 

[ABB125]

Where else can you pick up a cheap angle grinder alongside your bread and milk?

One of the most useful tools my dad has ever bought is an extendable pole from Lidl.
I occasionally buy "stuff" from the middle of Aldi if it'll come in useful, such as a cordless drill, drill bits etc. When I was going to buy said drill a few months ago, most of the ones they has were part of a range of battery-powered tools where you bought the battery separately. Unfortunately, there were never any batteries! I tried several different stores in the same area, all the same problem! Fortunately I found a different sort with an included battery.
(Incidentally, I went into an Aldi in a different part of the country a few months later, and they had the same tool range. And there were actually a few batteries available!

 

[DelayRepay]

Aldi overtook Morrisons last year in terms of total sales, mainly due to opening so many stores,

Yeah, they seem to have new stores popping up all over the place, as well as replacing/refurbishing some of their older stores.

The older Aldi stores always felt a bit grotty to me but the newer ones are very good in my opinion. I enjoy their smaller format, their prices are good, the quality is good and I like finding interesting things to try.

 

[GusB]

So what happens if you've already just paid for the item(s), and then see from the receipt that the shelf price was wrong?

Surely it has to be illegal for businesses to display misleading prices?

It is illegal. However, if there is a discrepancy, there's no obligation on the part of the retailer to sell you the item at the lower price (if the item scans higher than the advertised price).

 

[urbophile]

And as for ASDA, the “Leeds” firm now owned by people from over t’hills in Blackburn, Lancashire… Don’t get me started!

I thought Asda was owned by the American giant Walmart. Or did they sell it?

 

[hexagon789]

I thought Asda was owned by the American giant Walmart. Or did they sell it?

They retain shares and a seat on the board, but haven't 'owned' ASDA since February 2021.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

I thought Asda was owned by the American giant Walmart. Or did they sell it?

Acquired in a highly-leveraged deal by the Issa brothers from Blackburn (who had previously built up a portfolio of Esso filling stations in the North West) in conjunction with a private equity firm, TDR Capital.

 

[Hadders]

(in one case, milk. Really, there was no milk at all of any type/size in stock?)

There has been huge supply issues on milk over the last year or so, mainly down to lack of drivers at the main processing dairies. This has caused large supermarkets to completely run out of all milk on some occasions.

Speaking as a former supermarket employee, the staff assigned to the picking jobs for the delivery bit tended to be the ones who couldn't be trusted not to mess up if they were assigned to checkouts and the like, but were at least quick. Often those roles were given to new starters aged 16-17 who might not have the real world experience to understand why such a substitution is nonsensical.

It's more about who you can get to start work at 4am, sometimes earlier. There isn't a queue of people wanting that sort of job. In my experience the vast majority of onine order pickers are excellent.

I used to always do my main shops at Sainsbury's and then little bits and pieces at ASDA or Morrisons depending where I am. However since Sainsbury's removed the majority of their full tills in favour of self-service with ridiculously small packing areas a few years ago I now do main shops at ASDA. While ASDA do have a lot of self-service tills I can at least fit 4 full size bags for life in the packing area and they also have a couple full size conveyor self-service tills which is nice. I do detest the amount of ASDA staff cluttering up the isles with their trolleys (not the stock refill ones) and their fruit and veg doesn't seem to be of a too higher quality.

Why don't you use smartshop. Just scan and pack your bags as you go round the shop. Much, much faster than a self checkout if you've got more than a handful of items.

 

[Russel]

I've given up with my local Morrisons, they've gone too far with the price rises and always have stock issues, I now use Asda a couple of miles away and their prices actually seem a lot more reasonable than they was a few years ago, factoring in inflation obviously.

Asda have also launched a new loyalty/reward app too, I got my Christmas Turkey for free this year using the credit built up on the app from just doing my weekly food shopping.

 

[Silver Cobra]

Why don't you use smartshop. Just scan and pack your bags as you go round the shop. Much, much faster than a self checkout if you've got more than a handful of items.

Sadly even this isn't a fool-proof option. In the last few weeks I've encountered several customers who's Smartshop handsets have either stopped recognising bar codes for scanning or completely froze up, rendering what they had scanned up to that point completely null-and-void. I'd imagine that the hardware used in the handsets is the cheapest that upper management of the supermarkets could get away with purchasing, making it somewhat prone to this happening. Thankfully both Asda and Sainsbury's offer an app for phones for smartshop, so that can help get around this problem.

I do detest the amount of ASDA staff cluttering up the isles with their trolleys (not the stock refill ones) and their fruit and veg doesn't seem to be of a too higher quality.

That's the main problem with the big rise in home shopping since the beginning of the pandemic. I remember pre-Covid when nearly all home shopping was completed by around 8am, so you only had one or two pickers for the rest of the day fulfilling any late orders that came through. Now there are masses of them going round the shop all morning and well into the early afternoon. Not only is this interfering with the customer experience getting around the store, it's also an absolute nightmare for us replenishment teams trying to fill the shelves up, having the home shop trollies constantly getting in the way. It also means it's nigh-on impossible to have the store in a presentable state for opening for the day, as home shop will have 'pillaged' many of the shelves already. I appreciate that home shop is now a big part of the income for supermarkets now (maybe even the biggest money-earner now) so this will not change, and I also hold no ill-will for the home shop team as they're simply just doing their job. However I will be honest and say I long for going back to how it was pre-Covid. The few days per year when home shopping doesn't run, namely Boxing Day and New Year's Day, (and for last year the day of the Queen's funeral) are such bliss to work.

 

[_toommm_]

Sadly even this isn't a fool-proof option. In the last few weeks I've encountered several customers who's Smartshop handsets have either stopped recognising bar codes for scanning or completely froze up, rendering what they had scanned up to that point completely null-and-void. I'd imagine that the hardware used in the handsets is the cheapest that upper management of the supermarkets could get away with purchasing, making it somewhat prone to this happening. Thankfully both Asda and Sainsbury's offer an app for phones for smartshop, so that can help get around this problem.



That's the main problem with the big rise in home shopping since the beginning of the pandemic. I remember pre-Covid when nearly all home shopping was completed by around 8am, so you only had one or two pickers for the rest of the day fulfilling any late orders that came through. Now there are masses of them going round the shop all morning and well into the early afternoon. Not only is this interfering with the customer experience getting around the store, it's also an absolute nightmare for us replenishment teams trying to fill the shelves up, having the home shop trollies constantly getting in the way. It also means it's nigh-on impossible to have the store in a presentable state for opening for the day, as home shop will have 'pillaged' many of the shelves already. I appreciate that home shop is now a big part of the income for supermarkets now (maybe even the biggest money-earner now) so this will not change, and I also hold no ill-will for the home shop team as they're simply just doing their job. However I will be honest and say I long for going back to how it was pre-Covid. The few days per year when home shopping doesn't run, namely Boxing Day and New Year's Day, (and for last year the day of the Queen's funeral) are such bliss to work.

Does your store have a night team that pick most of the orders? The Waitrose I work at picks all the days’ ambient and frozen stock for all of the day, plus the chilled and produce stock for the morning routes. That then just leaves us picking the afternoons chilled and produce stock in the day once the first of our three deliveries comes in (for better availability).

We end up picking about 80% of our items overnight, which on the run up to Christmas was about 15,000 items over the latter half of the night shift.

 

[AM9]

Does your store have a night team that pick most of the orders? The Waitrose I work at picks all the days’ ambient and frozen stock for all of the day, plus the chilled and produce stock for the morning routes. That then just leaves us picking the afternoons chilled and produce stock in the day once the first of our three deliveries comes in (for better availability).

We end up picking about 80% of our items overnight, which on the run up to Christmas was about 15,000 items over the latter half of the night shift.

That may be true in some store, - in my local, there are shelf pickers at work most of the day, and the store is not one of the more spacious branches. Just one picker can cause chaos along a whole aisle. On a positive note, our store does have one of the highest sales per sq metre figures so should be secure however badly the market does.

 

[Silver Cobra]

Does your store have a night team that pick most of the orders? The Waitrose I work at picks all the days’ ambient and frozen stock for all of the day, plus the chilled and produce stock for the morning routes. That then just leaves us picking the afternoons chilled and produce stock in the day once the first of our three deliveries comes in (for better availability).

We end up picking about 80% of our items overnight, which on the run up to Christmas was about 15,000 items over the latter half of the night shift.

Our home shop picking window begins at 2am, but I believe most of the home shop team don’t start until around 5am to 6am.

 

[Hadders]

Sadly even this isn't a fool-proof option. In the last few weeks I've encountered several customers who's Smartshop handsets have either stopped recognising bar codes for scanning or completely froze up, rendering what they had scanned up to that point completely null-and-void. I'd imagine that the hardware used in the handsets is the cheapest that upper management of the supermarkets could get away with purchasing, making it somewhat prone to this happening. Thankfully both Asda and Sainsbury's offer an app for phones for smartshop, so that can help get around this problem.

There occasionally will be issues with any system occasionally whether it is smartshop, self-checkout or a manned checkout. It's not normally the hardware that's the issue but the software. Given the millions of transactions that these systems process every week the issues encountered are tiny.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Thankfully both Asda and Sainsbury's offer an app for phones for smartshop, so that can help get around this problem.

I used the Sainsbury's smartshop phone app for a while during the Covid period. But I eventually gave up on it because just randomly crashed too often, meaning I then had to go to the self-service and re-scan everything that I'd already scanned and packed. Having said that, that was in 2020-21, so maybe it's improved since then.

The other problem I realised was that I find it easier to pack my bags at the checkout, because at that point I have all the stuff so I can arrange it optimally, with fragile stuff/squishy on the top. That's very hard to do when you're still picking things up. Taking that into account, the smartshop app wasn't really saving me much (any?) time anyway.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That may be true in some store, - in my local, there are shelf pickers at work most of the day, and the store is not one of the more spacious branches. Just one picker can cause chaos along a whole aisle. On a positive note, our store does have one of the highest sales per sq metre figures so should be secure however badly the market does.

Why can a picker cause more of an issue than a shopper?

 

[_toommm_]

Why can a picker cause more of an issue than a shopper?

Most pickers use a big trolley that can fit eight carts that’s about the size of two or three big trolleys, so just having one of those can easily block the aisle.

Some shops really care about pick rate too, so the staff will want to get through the customers as quickly as possible.

 

[jon0844]

There occasionally will be issues with any system occasionally whether it is smartshop, self-checkout or a manned checkout. It's not normally the hardware that's the issue but the software. Given the millions of transactions that these systems process every week the issues encountered are tiny.

I find in my Sainsbury's (and a nearby one) the building construction leads to signal issues when I use the mobile app, and the advice is to use the Sainsbury's Wi-Fi service - but this often has issues both in terms of availability and logging in. You can work with it, but it's a faff and I'd not be surprised if it puts many people off.

I expect my local Tesco would be the same, but I use the handheld scanners still as they don't let you use a mobile app (AFAIK?) yet.

I've had both the handheld and mobile app freeze up, but sometimes you can recover things.

The worst experience was Asda where the barcode you show at the checkout didn't complete properly and the app moved on to say thank you or whatever, and I was asked to scan it again. I couldn't get the barcode back and the till had lost the connection, so I had to scan an entire trolley load - at a self checkout.

To be fair, staff helped and apologised and said I wasn't the only one. I don't know if they fixed the issue, but I never did a big shop there again and now I rarely go to Asda due to the trolley shortage and other issues. My wife might do a small shop after work and only get as much as she can put in a carrier bag she brings.

 

[Typhoon]

So what happens if you've already just paid for the item(s), and then see from the receipt that the shelf price was wrong?

Surely it has to be illegal for businesses to display misleading prices?

Most of the time, it is just that the shelf stackers have not changed the label, it is the wrong label for the item, or the item is in two places, and only one price was changed..

It is illegal. However, if there is a discrepancy, there's no obligation on the part of the retailer to sell you the item at the lower price (if the item scans higher than the advertised price).

I have never had any real problem getting shop staff to sell me the item at the 'shelf' price. They just want a quiet life. The worst experience was a Waitrose manager who was grumpy, telling me that they would never sell the item that cheaply. He did give me the money though!

 

[_toommm_]

Most of the time, it is just that the shelf stackers have not changed the label, it is the wrong label for the item, or the item is in two places, and only one price was changed..

I believe (and this is from memory) that UK consumer law treats the price on the shelf as an invitation to buy, with the price confirmed at checkout. But it’s good customer service to change the price if it’s reasonable for the customer to think that the price applies to that product.

I’ve had customers argue that another customer dumping one item on a shelf means that whatever price label is nearby is what I have to sell it at. Those who are nice, who pass the attitude test, I’ll help. Those who are arses (like the guy who told me I need to smile more, on Christmas Eve), I’m less inclined to help, and are more likely to receive a bout of sarcasm.

 

[Typhoon]

I believe (and this is from memory) that UK consumer law treats the price on the shelf as an invitation to buy, with the price confirmed at checkout. But it’s good customer service to change the price if it’s reasonable for the customer to think that the price applies to that product.

I’ve had customers argue that another customer dumping one item on a shelf means that whatever price label is nearby is what I have to sell it at. Those who are nice, who pass the attitude test, I’ll help. Those who are arses (like the guy who told me I need to smile more, on Christmas Eve), I’m less inclined to help, and are more likely to receive a bout of sarcasm.

Yes, you have to be reasonable about this. If the shelf label has 'Baked Beans 40p', then anyone claiming 'Artichokes' at that price needs their head examining. I have, on occasion, offered to take the misleading label down and pass it to the staff, if they are rushed,

I think you are right about 'invitation to buy' but one reason why I use 'self-service checkouts' is that I can more easily decline the 'invitation to buy' if the staff won't permit the sale at the shelf price.

 

[johntea]

Morrisons yesterday

"Offer" on J2O - 2 4x275ml packs for £5 - B&M regular price 10x275ml for £6
"Offer" on cakes (eclairs etc.) - 2 for £3.50 - Tesco regular price around £1.50 - £1.60 for the same individual items

Not that I particularly agree with Tesco essentially forcing you to have a clubcard and as a result all your data being collected in order to avoid being essentially ripped off either!

Aldi also must have a big problem with shoplifting at the moment as they warn at the door of not putting any items in bags until purchased and they may carry out random bag searches

 

[DC1989]

Is it just me that hates the Lidl/Aldi middle aisles. I'm always wishing they replaced them with normal supermarket stuff

 

[Darandio]

Is it just me that hates the Lidl/Aldi middle aisles. I'm always wishing they replaced them with normal supermarket stuff

It's a fair shout. I've always found with Aldi that I cannot quite get everything I need for a full shop so don't visit that often as I end up having to top up with things from somewhere else. But if those middle aisles increased their product range and did enable me to do a full shop then i'd probably starting going there regularly.

 

[66701GBRF]

Why don't you use smartshop. Just scan and pack your bags as you go round the shop. Much, much faster than a self checkout if you've got more than a handful of items.

There are other reasons I don't generally shop at Sainsbury's any more but when I do shopping I like to be in and out as soon as reasonably practical. With smart shop there is the risk of being delayed while they do a check on your shopping...even more so if you are a new user.

 

[jon0844]

There are other reasons I don't generally shop at Sainsbury's any more but when I do shopping I like to be in and out as soon as reasonably practical. With smart shop there is the risk of being delayed while they do a check on your shopping...even more so if you are a new user.

The best system I've used is in M&S, which is almost as close to Amazon's setup. Walk in, scan, pay on app and walk out. Sainsbury's and others also have similar setups in some shops, but you still need to go to find a barcode to scan before you can go. That said, of late, I've found some places that did the M&S self scanning have dropped it, so maybe too many people were abusing it.

After your first ten shops you should find the random scans reduce (I think people will get scanned maybe 3 out of 10 goes at first?) but it can be a pain, although now it's usually a case of them scanning a handful of items not the entire lot.

 

[themeone]

What I don't like about Sainsbury's SmartScan app is that while some stores just seem to "know" you're there, with others - most, in my experience - you have to find a QR code and scan it to announce you're presence. The code is usually somewhere near the entrance, but since I only really use Sainsbury's for a few specific items I'll often go in search of them first to see if they're in stock, then I have to go back and scan the code.

 

[DC1989]

What I don't like about Sainsbury's SmartScan app is that while some stores just seem to "know" you're there, with others - most, in my experience - you have to find a QR code and scan it to announce you're presence. The code is usually somewhere near the entrance, but since I only really use Sainsbury's for a few specific items I'll often go in search of them first to see if they're in stock, then I have to go back and scan the code.

That is annoying, I agree! My Sainburys store has just also introduced a barrier in order to exit, so you must take a receipt from the checkout and scan it at the barrier to leave the store. I have no idea why you can't pay on the smartscan app and just leave - it would also save the self checkouts for others.