Bloody Lidl

Its only going to slow down the service at the tills. When the German supermarkets first opened it was a joy to have the goods thrown through the tills at speed without money off coupons, vouchers for schools and scanning loyalty cards slowing down the process.

IMO in the last few years Aldi/Lidl have starting to lose the plot with things like introducing baskets meaning that people now pack bags at the checkout. Before there was an enforced policy of putting everything back in the trolley and then go to the shelf behind the checkout to pack purchased items into bags.

It seems that they are falling into the trap of starting to do the things the same as Tesco/Sainsbury which put off some people from shopping at those retailers. It is the shoppers who abandoned the main supermarkets that are responsible for the meteoritic rise of the Lidl/Aldi empires in the UK.

and even staffing a checkout when the shop is busy.

belt = the conveyor belt onto which you load your shopping

all the supermarkets I've been to have suspended the trolley deposits.

I also miss a number of the lines of "foreign" products they used to stock. Like some tins of lentil soup/stew.

Our Lidl has those horrible plastic wheeled basket/trolleys. Which make some sense in, for example, John Lewis stores. Not in a supermarket. Painful to use.

I use a basket, sling the shopping back in the basket as it comes through and then load the rucsack on the shelf at the front. At one time baskets weren't permitted through the 'til but that seems to have changed a few years ago. Still, since mid-March I've been shopping at Waitrose - it's just /civilised/. The extra cost is mainly due to being unable to resist the goodies but the total is still less than Morrisons then pub.

You may find that local neighbourhood supermarkets where the need to drive to the store is not essential for the majority of customers still use the coin trolley system because so many make the short journey to home (but seldom come back).

The other benefit for coin deposits for supermarkets with large car parks is that customers return the trolleys to central trolley parks rather than just discarding them in the nearest free parking space.

Lidl/Aldi stores being small with car parks to match don't need any staff to collect trolleys discarded in the car park because they only have one trolley park - next to the main entrance. Customers have to return their trolley to this one collection point to free up their pound coin.

But many people seem to try and put 2 trolley loads of goods into a single basket, then load all onto the belt and ditch the basket before going through the checkout. Perhaps if they took the wheels off the baskets and they could only be held in the hand certain customers would then choose the appropriate container for their shopping.

The baskets now have transducers that set off the alarms if they are taken through the exit doors. All baskets must stay within the store.

Don't Waitrose and the John Lewis group have some financial problems from trying to appeal to their "civilised" niche market but are failing to attract enough custom?

Ah, the Waitrose customers who shop at Lidl/Aldi but wouldn't be seen dead with a Lidl/Aldi carrier bag so they bring their Waitrose bags in which to pack their shopping :)

On the floor, a pain in the back to unload; on the conveyor, too deep - I'm (was) 6' 4" and can just manage it. I usually lodge the edge of the trolley over the edge of the conveyor, hold it hard in with my abs and it's easy then - until it slips. I found that the standard basket, piled high, is about right for loading into panniers or rucsack; harder to judge with a trolley.

Used to often see Lidl/Aldi bags in Waitrose - when we went there.

Having moved, there is no Waitrose within about two hours drive - so we don't use them. Nor do Ocado deliver - at all, not just now they have switched to M&S.

Occasionally wish Ocado and Waitrose would do a postal delivery option.

Despite everything, have not resorted to Asda and Iceland.

our Lidl has 2 trolley parks - one at the store entrance level and the other at the car park level. (there is a lift and stairs connecting the levels)

I use my M&S "everlasting" bag in Lidl.

That is what we usually manage with, at other times we might take one of the shallow metal trolleys. We don't do a full shop anywhere, rather we go there for certain items - so the plastic wheeled one is usually big enough for those. Exceptionally, due to kitchen rolls, toilet rolls and an SDS drill, it was over-spilling on Saturday.

I have now written a complaint to Lidl's customer service, with a warning that if it should happen again, I will abandon my shopping and walk out.

PeterC brought next idea :

I just lift and pour it straight onto the conveyor, after taking out the more delicate items.

beep beep killfile alert

Sorry have to disagree with you there. Baskets where the user has to bend or stoop down to floor level to pick things up, have never made ergonomic sense let alone at the start of the 21st century.

The only only place they ever make sense is in their volume when stacked as compared with conventional trolleys - invented all of 83 years ago in the US.

Basically the Lidl scum management are more than happy to give tens of thousands of customers potential chronic backache in years to come *(those who are of an age that they can still reach down that far) simply so as to gain a bit more floor area,

I don't use that term lightly; but whoever was responsible for that decision really are the scum of the earth. No, nobody has to shop there its true. but they're lured in by the cheap prices.

michael adams

Back you go, I knew it could never last.

michael adams

...

no, a 5yo Japanese one - which might get replaced with a chinese one.

Several large Lidl close enough to here. I use the newest one which has self service checkouts. For some odd reason many prefer to queue up than used them which suits me perfectly. But the others are pretty good at telling you when a checkout is about to close. Queues at checkouts is the price you pay for the good prices.