WELL DONE TO...

Congratulations to Lidl for announcing that they will pay the Living Wage as of next month.

I wish I could say that it had swayed me to transfer my business to them, but as I already do a lot of my shopping there, I can't say it has.

Lidl impress me as a business and as a store.

During the referendum campaign, I was insulted by one of the staff in my local Lidl, who ridiculed the YES sweat shirt I was wearing, and then insisted on telling me, in front of a queue of customers, that prices would double in an independent Scotland. I asked him if that was official Lidl policy. He mumbled no, and as he saw the black look on my face, he started to look a bit worried...

I walked from the shop absolutely furious, but without saying or doing anything. When I got home I was still so angry that I wrote to Lidl Customer Services, telling them of the incident (without mentioning the lad's name) and asking if it was going to be their policy to double prices in an independent country. I pointed out that I didn't seriously believe it was, and even if it had been it wouldn't have swayed my decision, but there were other customers who had heard the exchange.

I received, almost immediately, a fulsome apology, explaining that they had no such policy, that they would, depending on economic circumstances, adjust their prices up or down or leave them the same in the event of independence. They also said that they would arrange for staff to be instructed to remain completely neutral in front of customers in future. They didn't ask for the guys name, and I wouldn't have given it to them if they had. I see no point in getting a guy disciplined or even sacked for a stupid mistake.

I was seriously impressed with the way that the management team dealt with the situation, and I carried on shopping in the store. 

I just have one request of Lidl now. please introduce a contactless payment system as soon as you can. My bank gives me 5% cash back on the first hundred pounds spent using this type of payment every month. That's £60 a year!!!

Aldi has the technology, as does Morrisons. You need to catch up.

Put politicians on minimum wage and you'll
see how quickly things will change

It's high time that every company paid the living wage and that the living wage was, indeed, a wage you could live on. Not just here but as the illustration shows, in France too!

More random thoughts...

A real prime minister.

An unreal prime minister

A real socialist

A real two faced bastard
(not you Annabel)

A Labour health secretary worth his salt

A Labour health secretary worth diddly squat.

A man who better hope he keeps his MEP job
with the free healthcare in Belgium...
Paul Nutcase, MUP (PET)

If at first you put one over on the daft voters
carry on and do it again. They may not have got wise to you.

This was in Wales. The Welsh for Car Park is Parcio
How thick and insulting would you need to be to put up a sign
in the wrong language?
That's ASDA thick as well as Cameron's
Wet Tissue!

All good reasons Eck, but the last one is a corker.

And finally...

Wouldn't want to deliver it to the wrong place, 

would we?

A WORD OF WARNING

I popped into Lidl at lunch time to do some shopping and realised that I needed to top up my phone and didn't have much money, so to save myself 2 minutes stopping at the cash machine I took cash-back, which is something I have never done before.

The next stop was a little corner newsagents where I asked for a ten pound top up. She took the twenty note which I had just been given by Lidl and put one of these special pens on it, only to find that it was a forgery. Very embarrassing. 

Now, in a situation like that the woman in the shop is supposed to confiscate it and give it to the police (which would mean me losing £20), but because she knows me, and trusts me, she let me keep it so that I could take it back to Lidl.

I went to the till (and assistant) from where I'd got the money. Fortunately he remembered me and remembered that he had given me cash-back of £20. He had to call the manager, of course and she asked some questions. The problem was that although the guy knew he had given me a £20 note, no one could prove that it was THAT £20 note.

In the end, again because I am a regular customer and have been since the shop opened, they took my word, although clearly they had no obligation to.

So twice this morning, I was in a situation where if the shops had stuck to the rules I would have been £20 short. They would have been perfectly entitled to do that, but they didn't.

So to the woman in the newsagent shop and to the manager of Lidl I say thank you for your trust. To Lidl I'd add that it might be worthwhile investing ion some of these pens for your tills.

Of course you can't avoid accepting change if you are paying in cash for something, but at least it is unlikely that you are going to lose more than a tenner (unless you are one of these people that pays for things with £50 or £100 notes.) You can however avoid cash-back and I'd advise you to do so unless it is impossible to get to a bank, or the shop giving the cash out tried the marker pen on them in your site.

It might be useful for you to know if you live in the area around Dundee that it was a Royal Bank note and that, when I studied it, it did seem a bit too lilac... but hey, hindsight has 20 - 20 vision. 

If you have any, check them out.

SMART SCOTS GIVE IT ALDI (AND LIDL)

I remember hearing about a woman who used to take her neighbour shopping in her car. The neighbour liked to buy some of her weekly shop from one of the bargain supermarkets, but driver (a bit of a snob) informed everyone that she didn't even get out of the car.... The thought of being seen shopping in a cheap supermarket put her off.

I remember thinking that it was a shame to be so strung up on image, because the quality of the products in both Lidl and Aldi is pretty high.

Not being the kind that worries about being seen poking around in Oxfam or Save the Children (and having laid my hands on some fine brand names at a fraction of the cost of their new price, who can blame me), I've never been shy about shopping in the German supermarkets.

But until recently I wondered how they managed to make any profit. They were nearly always more or less empty, and even on a Saturday morning there was never a crush in the small car parks.

Now things are different, I suspect as a result of the 'neverendession' (to paraphrase one of the very few genuinely funny things that David Cameron has even said.

The car parks are full; the tills are all open and goods, far cheaper than the main British/American supermarkets are selling, are flying off the shelves.

Indeed according to this Yahoo article Aldi made £56.8 million in profit last year, having recorded a loss the previous year. They opened 29 new stores and plan to continue opening new ones in the coming year, creating over 4,000 new jobs (welcome, albeit most of them will probably be part time).

Lidl and Aldi concentrate on selling their own brands to the almost total exclusion of big brand names. This means no premium paid to the big names, and the savings can be passed on to the customer. In the other supermarkets only around 50% of their products are own brand.

Frequently supermarket own brands are of much poorer quality (some custard I bought at Asda was so inedible it had to be thrown out). Aldi and Lidl's brands in contrast are of very high quality. Indeed, recently a taste test organised by "Good Housekeeping" magazine found that Aldi's Christmas Pudding was the second best brand behind Waitrose. Fortnum & Mason came 29th!! And Aldi's pudding cost £7.99, whereas Fortnum's was around £29.00.

And a study by Grocer magazine found that on a shopping basket of 33 items Aldi was 16% cheaper than Asda, 20% cheaper than Tesco and 40% cheaper than Waitrose! And there is not a lot of difference in price between Aldi and Lidl.

Judging by the readers'  comments on the Yahoo article, Aldi's rise in the ranks is due in part to price, but also to the quality of service you can expect. Tesco's (the worst of all the UK chains, in my opinion), Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury and Waitrose, have all been working hard to try to maintain their market share in the straitened economic times. 

It seems they have no room for slacking.

**************
On rather a different topic I see from comments at Wings, and an article by Rod at Auld Acquaintance that there has been a debate in London about Scottish Independence, and that 336 - 5 found that Scotland would be better off in the union. 

Now, somewhere between 30 and 40% of the population wants independence, and around 20-25% is undecided, so it occurs to me that the presentation of Scots' views in the English parliament is very unrepresentative.

I understand that a further proposal put by the SNP that Scotland would enjoy a special relationship with the UK, rather like that enjoyed by Canada, Australia and New Zealand, was defeated by a similar number.

So it appears that the English (and the Welsh and Irish) don't really like us. If we go they will not be friendly towards us. But they want us to stay. 

Weird.

I can only conclude that that is because, according to them the North Sea has the potential to be the World's Global Energy hub. 

In other words they want our money.

Incidentally the 5 were the SNP members in the Commons chamber. (According to Rod, Stewart Hosie was not there due to illness. Get well soon, Stewart. You will surely be missed in London.) 

I was surprised not to have the support of the Welsh Nationalists.

A CONVERT TO MORRISON'S

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while now and as I’m fed up commenting on bad news and gloom on the Republic, I thought now would be a good time to do it.

I’ve always shopped wherever was closest. I instinctively dislike Tesco and so tended to try to avoid it, although I ended up using it more often that I would have liked because it was everywhere... you can hardly miss Tesco.

I was happy to take advantage of the low prices and high quality of Lidl and Aldi and Sainsbury’s was a welcome addition to the town. (I wish Waitrose would open a branch here).

However, when Morrison’s opened a huge superstore in Dundee I never went near it. I’ve no idea why. I had nothing in particular against Morrison’s. My brother had said the quality was high and the prices much lower than Tesco, and my mum had been saying the same thing...so eventually I gave it a bash.

It was certainly the best shopping move I ever made. In more and more difficult times with prices rising and incomes going nowhere but down; with interest on savings so low that it makes saving an expensive business, and with house prices more likely to drop rather than rise, a bargain is a bargain.

Morrison’s is clean, well stocked and seems to have attracted some of the best staff in town. The prices are way lower than Sainsbury’s and Tesco and probably a bit lower than ASDA. The range of items on sale is fantastic and all in all what the PR people would call the “shopping experience” is AAA.

OK... I was won over to the shop, but when someone suggested having a meal there I was definitely dubious. I’m a bit fussy about food quality, so a supermarket cafeteria is not my idea of where to eat out.

Well, I was wrong. Once again the service is excellent, the staff are (by and large) superb, the food is unbelievable for a shop café, and the prices are almost too good to be true.

On a fairly regular basis I go there with a mate and with a ‘meal deal’ we can eat a substantial and satisfying meal for two for less than £8. it's not haute cuisine by any means, but it's good canteen food.

It sounds a bit like "Munguin’s Republic sponsored by Morrison’s Stores", but of course it’s not. It's just me passing on a tip.

I don’t know if every Morrison’s is as good as ours; maybe we’re lucky and our store has good management, but I’m inclined to believe that it’s the culture of the company that created this kind of atmosphere.... and value for money.