Do-it-yourself bankruptcy

Some years ago (when my Mum was still alive) we were visiting her, and she got a mailshot through her letterbox saying that a new Tesco had opened and their prices were the cheapest in the area.

So I suggested we drove there and took a look. I watched the distance clock up on my speedometer, and it was nearly 10 miles away. We got a trolley and went up and down every aisle. Now my Mum used to work in a grocers shop before she retired, and this was in the days when customers served themselves and before barcodes became readable at the checkout. So the person on the till had to look at the price stuck on each product or memorise them, and enter them in the till.

Mum had an excellent memory. Although after she retired and moved to her new address, she was then a shop's customer not a member of staff, she went round shops adding up the prices in her head so that she knew by the time she got to the checkout what the bill would be.

So we went round the whole Tesco product range and Mum was saying "I can get that cheaper back home" to nearly everything, and if it was the same price she was going to buy it in her local shops out of loyalty. We went round this big supermarket and the only thing that Tesco did cheaper was a block of strong cheese. So our big trolley arrived at the checkout with just one item. Mum, being Mum, had taken along the flier she had received, and pointed out to the checkout person that it was supposed to be the cheapest in the area, and it wasn't. The only thing cheaper is in the trolley. The one item was paid for, and full marks to the checkout person, the Manager was called over to explain the flier. Apparently "The area" was a 5-mile radius and Mum's shops were beyond that distance.

Since then, I have always treated Tesco's claims as being suspect. It is not a shop I frequent.

you don´t , you get a paper one, and you can have a paper one if you want anyway, its a switch in the app..

... but unlike Sainsbury's or Tesco if you don´t have a Smart device you can´t get a Lidl Plus card, and you can only get the "Normal" prices.

So I see this week Belgium Buns are £2.37 for 3 without Lidl Plus, or £1.58 with the app. I know you need to buy a quite a few buns to buy a smart phone but just wanted to show how we are both been exploited...

Dave

Andy Burns snipped-for-privacy@andyburns.uk wrote in news:mkcqfhF7osmU1 @mid.individual.net:

Just push through, they do 'give'. They do alarm but who cares. Becoming more common in Lidls these days although I have seen them in a large Sainsbury's near me too.

Since we're both on UKLM I feel a rant on false imprisonment coming on.

I have stopped shopping at Tescos as the clucard price seems to apply only to necessities that I end up buying elsewhere. I've started avoiding Sainsbury's for similar reasons.

So if I don't have a 'smart phone, I can't get discounts at Lidl? Another reason not to shop there.

In our town, there is no Lidl, and the standard procedure of large numbers of shoppers is to go to Morrison's first, then go next door to Tesco's for the few items that weren't available at Morrison's.

Trying to get out of a supermarket when you are not buying anything can be harder than getting through airport security

True but lidl/aldi tend to be much cheaper than the other main supermarkets even without any additional discounts. The app offers me discounts on a few products each week but it doesn't persuade me to buy items I don't usually buy. The offers are often only valid for a few days and even if it's something I usually buy it doesn't persuade me to visit more regularly. I may take advantage of perhaps 2 or 3 offers a month giving perhaps 10% off each item. Lidl don't do the double pricing game (£2 for 1 punnet of fruit but £3 for 2 punnets - they will price at £1.50 for one)

Even though the traditional main supermarkets claim to price match aldi/lidl prices it is only on a small selection of items.

You will probably find soon all loyalty cards becoming digital so you will lose out in every supermarket without a smart phone.

It may be culture shock if you have never shopped in aldi/Lidl before and you will not find shelves packed with 200 different varieties of baked beans. There may be only one own brand on the shelf. In many cases I've found what they sell to be better quality than some of the UK leading brands. There is a good reason why the German supermarkets have become popular and it's not just price.

Moreover the Lidl app is quite choosy - it doesn't work on my wife's ageing iPhone. You'd have thought they'd want to make it as accessible as possible.

That's what I expected, the ASDA ones show how to push them open, not clear how the Morrisons "star trek" type open though ...

Then they won't work as loyalty cards any more. I've had a 'smart' phone for a few years (donated, not bought) but I refuse to fill it up with software of unknown provenance. I hate trying to use the Internet on such an awful device, but I'll do that in preference to adding a company's spyware to my phone.

It's mostly just price. Yes, some things are better, some are worse but it only takes one try to find out which. Aldi does a fake Hobgoblin cheaper than the real thing and pretty much as good. Lidl does an instant decaf coffee which my wife pronounces about the best available, I don't drink coffee.

It's the same with any supermarket or even "brands" especially if labelled new and improved. Mr Kipling doesn't make good quality cakes, Aunt Bessie doesn't produce everything in her farmhouse kitchen with unchanged recipes passed down through generations. Items promoted by celebrity chefs are so packed so full of salt you would be able to tell if they had used any quality ingredients. Some things are down to personal taste but all supermarkets sell a mix of what I consider to be crap, some medium quality items and some higher quality items. Price sometimes is not an indicator of quality.

There have been TV programs where the lidl/aldi versions of items have been compared with leading brands in blind tasting tests. The German supermarket goods faired well.

my wife ended up throwing away the Lidl de-caf instant coffee. Apparently, it tasted disgusting. Gold Blend Decaf (if you can find it) is actually drinkable.

Gold Blend is Nescafe, isn't it? That's the one my wife likes least. A matter of taste, though not that it matters, the Lidl Gold has come out well in a Telegraph test some time ago.

I've never found an de-caffeinated coffee to be drinkable :)

Which Gold Blend? There is more than one brand with a "gold blend" - it's just a generic name. Even Lidl do a Gold Blend own brand coffee.

I've also yet to find a 0% alcohol beer that I like.

One pommy nut cast expat here who is also a nudist, carrys a battery angle grinder with her at all times when on a train because our latest suburban trains in Sydney only allow the pax to open the doors manually when central control allows that even if the train has crashed.

The trains are done like in case the crash has brought down the overhead power line and that has not tripped automatically

When we find something we like they go & change the recipe. This then involves extended shopping trips & taste tests to find the next least worst option. New &/or improved is marketing hype for we have found a way to make the product cheaper at the expense of the customer.

I did once get an "improvement" reversed.

For many years, Cheeselet biscuits has been my "picky-bits" of choice at Christmas, and one year the old favourite was on the shelves as "New, Improved Recipe" Cheeselets. So I bought them.

To my palate, they tasted awful. So I wrote to the address on the container explaining that there was nothing wrong with the expiry date or the packaging but describing the contents as "Improved" was a complete misnomer. They tasted nothing like how they used to taste, and thanks for the disappointment I experienced at Christmas. You have just lost a customer.

I clearly wasn't the only one. Those "Improved" products stayed on the shelves for ages. However, around late summer, alongside the "Improved" version remnants of stock appeared another item marked "Original Recipe". I bought one out of curiosity, and they were the original taste back again. Approaching Christmas, the original recipe version was replaced by Treeslets - the same original flavour in the shape of Christmas trees. The Improved" recipe has never been seen since.

Jim

But things like Original Coca-Cola are nothing like the original. Is it any more than sugar water with burnt sugar colouring these days? Where is the the Cocaine? :)