Supermarkets, self checkouts and honesty

[SirRumpole]

My wife prefers self checkouts, absolutely hates going through an assisted checkout, I think it is mainly because she hates lining up with people, nearly as much as talking to people.

She could always pretend to be texting on her phone, like I do.

 

[sptrawler]

She could always pretend to be texting on her phone, like I do.

She hates phones as well, she is happiest when reading, doing crosswords or sudoku, followed closely by gardening and cruising. Lol

 

[noirua]

Tesco puts £1.25 Cadbury chocolate bars in anti-theft security boxes

Tesco customers in Newham, east London have to approach a member of staff if they wish to purchase chocolate bars which are locked in security boxes.

www.dailymail.co.uk

London Borough of Newham - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Craton]

Oh my, sign of the times eh?

Similar to elsewhere e.g., Russian cheese snack albeit 2yrs ago and more recently here, with GPS trackers on meat.

 

[farmerge]

Interesting article on TV tonight. Cole and Woolworths are now proven to be ripping Mr and Mrs Shopping Trolley off at the checkout.
Aldi has been declared cheaper by about 25% .
Well, well, well. Didin't we already know that the big two were thieves.

 

[sptrawler]

I think Woolies is trying anything to stop the loss of customers, my wife says they are pricing themselves out of business, Aldi over here is tearing them another one.
The Son and DIL travel 60km into Bunbury to Aldi to shop once a week and reckon they save $220 over shopping at Woolies in Collie.
I think Woolies is miss reading the audience, it will be interesting to see if the 'elite' CEO, has connected with the working class customers.

That post was from January, I'm surprised that anyone goes to WOW and COL over Aldi, when I queried the wife about it, she says it boils down to smugness people like brand names.
Your spot on @farmerge .

 

[The Triangle]

Interesting article on TV tonight. Cole and Woolworths are now proven to be ripping Mr and Mrs Shopping Trolley off at the checkout.
Aldi has been declared cheaper by about 25% .
Well, well, well. Didin't we already know that the big two were thieves.

I wasn't aware that Coles sends armed soldiers to peoples houses, drags them into the shop, and forces them to put groceries in the cart and purchase them...

Apple is ripping you off. Sony is ripping you off. Samsung rips you off. Gucci rips you off. They're no special TV presentations on them.

All the small communities in Australia have either IGA or some other Independent grocer none of them have coles or woolies. So if you're anywhere where there is a coles or a woolies there is a pretty big chance there's an IGA or an aldi right near you. In perth you can go to spud shed as well.

 

[farmerge]

That post was from January, I'm surprised that anyone goes to WOW and COL over Aldi, when I queried the wife about it, she says it boils down to smugness people like brand names.
Your spot on @farmerge .

After questioning she who is never wrong about Aldi.
She doesn't favour them over any of the others.
I wouldn't know what is what in a supermarket as She has banned me ( ) from these centres.
But Aldi she says whacks a surcharge on credit card transactions at the end of purchase.
No doubt the others have a hidden charge in their till receipt somewhere.
It matters not as She uses cash to do the shopping.

 

[macca]

After questioning she who is never wrong about Aldi.
She doesn't favour them over any of the others.
I wouldn't know what is what in a supermarket as She has banned me ( ) from these centres.
But Aldi she says whacks a surcharge on credit card transactions at the end of purchase.
No doubt the others have a hidden charge in their till receipt somewhere.
It matters not as She uses cash to do the shopping.

Locally, we have all of them and most frugal shoppers buy the basics at Aldi then go to others for speciality stuff.

Aldis basics are quite good quality in the goods we use

They do charge 0.05 so half of one percent to use a card, cash is FREE

 

[frugal.rock]

frugal shoppers buy the basics at Aldi

Did someone say frugal?
I'm still finding gold coins in the garden next to the trolleys.

 

[Value Hunter]

As I mentioned to Knobby, Coles and woolies haven't reduced staff levels because of self checkout, they just serve customers in different ways, eg picking online orders etc.

Nonsense. Big business have reduced staffing. The cost savings have just been added to their bottom line.

When you go to a busy Mcdonalds for example despite the proliferation of self serve checkouts wait times for food are probably longer than they were 10 - 15 years ago, because all the large corporations are trying to minimise front line staff rather than redeploy them. The staff that were removed from the checkouts were not added to the kitchen. Some of the cost savings went to absorb higher costs of doing business and the rest probably went to margin expansion.

Recently I went to a busy Commonwealth bank branch they told me they had customers that had already been waiting 2.5 hours so I ended up going to a different branch. This is despite the continued growth of online banking. I recently called CBA because I had to do some banking over the phone. Wait time was over an hour. Redeployment of staff my ass.

I would say its been going on for years that large corporations have banked any cost savings from technology improvements/reduced staffing as higher profit margins.

Post global financial crises (2008) consumer demand growth has generally been sluggish and many of the large corporations have grown their earning per share through a combination of cost cutting, share buybacks (in the U.S.A.) and acquisitions rather than traditional organic revenue growth.

 

[Value Collector]

Nonsense. Big business have reduced staffing. The cost savings have just been added to their bottom line.

over the same time period that Coles and woolies have introduced self checkouts, they have also introduced home delivery and click and collect, these easily offset any labour reduction from the self checkout.

I have no idea why you are talking about McDonald's when I was talking about Coles and woolies, but one thing I noticed with McDonald's now is that they assemble the burgers to order now, and there are so many more burger options. Gone are the days of walking into mcdonalds and them having burgers lined up in the heater, with only 3 options and the drink choice limited to soft drink or milk shake.

Now, people are ordering one of 16 burger types, thats made fresh and they want the Big Mac sauce on it instead of the mayo and they want a chia latte with a mocha shot for the drink. its no wander wait times are a little longer than before.

As for banks, experiences vary I guess, that same bank will offer a private banker to sort your stuff out for you, and give you a different number to dial with no wait, I have had a banker drive to my house with a form to sign to save me a trip to a branch, so in some ways customer service is getting better and better IMO.

 

[Value Collector]

Interesting article on TV tonight. Cole and Woolworths are now proven to be ripping Mr and Mrs Shopping Trolley off at the checkout.
Aldi has been declared cheaper by about 25% .
Well, well, well. Didin't we already know that the big two were thieves.

You would think if they were ripping people off, they would be making more than 2.5% net profit after tax on their sales.

Aldi, is definitely cheaper, but they are cheaper for a reason, eg smaller stores, with smaller range, less staff. I shop at Aldi sometimes for certain things, you can't really compare them to Coles and woolies.

 

[Value Collector]

They do charge 0.05 so half of one percent to use a card, cash is FREE

legally cash has to be free, other wise Aldi would pass along the cash handling fee too I bet.