To think Aldi staff need to stop being jobsworths over 6p bargains?

This is all bullshit on the part of the store. If the product has been wasted, it gets marked accordingly on their scanner and removed from sale. You can’t “waste” something and then sell it for 6p, it wouldn’t even go through the till.

I wouldn’t be surprised in this situation if you had been prevented from buying them because staff wanted to buy them and they are coming up with various plots and schemes to get stock which should have been wasted for themselves.

It's amazing how many people on this thread don't seemingly care about getting the staff in trouble if there's a bargain in it for them. I can guarantee you they don't want the balls for themselves (they won't be allowed to buy items already marked for waste / charity anyway) and they also don't care if op gets them or not or how much she pays. What they are trying to avoid is a bollocking at best and a disciplinary at worst. It's not that complicated. I can tell exactly what type of customer every poster on this thread is.

I would assume they don’t go to waste, they just have a program where they are either allocated to sell on somewhere else, or kept for next year / season.

They weren’t supposed to be sold, you were told as much. I’m not sure why you made a whole hoohar about it.

Who do you think you are? A struggling mum wanting the 6p toy x 10. No, you are the entitled cheeky customer. Throwing out insults.

I'm not disputing it as I've never worked in the sector, but if that's the case the system seems ridiculously inflexible to me.

I think we need to get over these 6p items….

It might be a dsft rule but if they are going to get in trouble themselves for allowing it. its not the staffs fault
And its not cruel

This is where self serve checkouts would have been useful. So unbelievably petty, I would have been embarrassed to have to explain this bs rule to a customer.

The only person that has posted who works for Aldi said they would potentially face a disciplinary for doing this. Surely that's enough information we need.
It's easy to form opinions and tell others how they should act or make accusations of their motivations when it's not our income at risk.

if a price is wrong I think the shop has to legally sell it at the price is shows

This is a commonly held but incorrect belief.

Yes. I think it's called Invitation to Treat.

Yes, Invitation to Treat

Yeah your right. This is a classic example of why customer service is so non existent now, as there is no basic common sense anywhere. The correct thing would have been to honour your sale. Then upon realising "THEIR" error, go and remove the remaining balls that were on sale.

Interestingly I wonder what trading standards would have made of this? as I am pretty sure that would have been against their rules. I would have told them I was reporting them to trading standards and that usually puts the fear of God into any retailer. I certainly would have stood my ground because what you describe is highly unethical and unprofessional, especially because the scanner was scanning a different price to the sticker.
Also anyone on here siding with the retailer is contributing to this county's abysmal customer service reputation. Thinking the retailer is in the right in this situation is precisely why retailers can get away with treating customers like dirt, because silly members of the public think it is OK and fine.

The staff weren’t being “cruel”, they were doing their jobs and explained that they would be in trouble if they let you continue with the purchase. I have no idea why you think “being a mum” is relevant. They may also be mums? Working and needing to keep their jobs to be able to pay for things like food and rent for their own children.

If you have an issue with Aldi, fine, but you are being wholly unreasonable to criticise the staff.

People aren't largely siding with the retailer. They're posting in support of the staff who might face disciplinary action if they don't do as they're instructed to do.

I used to work in a charity shop and would get charity donations from supermarkets/retailers. We got stuff from Tesco, Amazon, Quiz, we got a load of BHS stuff when they shut down.

Why would they send it to landfill when they could donate it to charity as a tax write off?

Because people make mistakes? I work in a different supermarket, we get price changes every night, they can vary between 20 and 300. Occasionally we might miss one, I'd assume that the shop got a list of what to remove and missed one.

People aren't siding with the retailer, they're siding with the staff.

What trading standards rule do you think has been broken?

So they’re not labelled and it’s just price adjusted on the system? It seems odd the person even spotted them going through the checkout then.

If they donate it then the cost doesn't go into the wastage budget but if it's reduced to silly money then the difference between that & the original price goes into their wastage score which the team are under pressure to achieve.

They did the right thing & let your normal purchase go through the till at the silly price but then stopped you going back for me. They don't have to sell it to you & all offers can be withdrawn at any point.

I don't see how it's cruel on your children's birthday party as you didn't want them in the first place - you went back for them because of the silly price. Can the children still have the party without them? It's probably more cruel on the charities & people they support as they miss out on the treat.

They probably get a list of what to remove and missed it, especially as the price on the shelf wasn't changed. When you have thousands of products then one is probably easy to miss.

You are being unreasonable.

If the items were scanning at 6p, that means they would have already been wasted in the inventory systems, which means they were not for sale. Leaving them out on the shop for was an oversight that they were alerted to by you buying the item. They were able to then intervene before you bought more.

They can't just sell items that are marked as waste, it would mess up the inventory and could cause paperwork problems. Everything has to be accounted, something missing from waste would raise questions.

The rule for not selling wasted items will be strictly enforced. The staff don't want to be accused of wasting items and then buying them themselves at 6p, so the rule has to exist.

There are a lot of rules and regulations in retail, to protect the business, the staff and the customer.

It isn't always common sense, but don't blame the staff.

I would have told them I was reporting them to trading standards and that usually puts the fear of God into any retailer.

It really doesn’t. Said as a retail manager, we know our policies are built around the legislation and those words have no effect on us. We may simply say that is your right, go ahead and we certainly lose no sleep over it.

In this particular instance:
“The legal breakdown relies on these elements:

• No Statutory Obligation to Sell: No UK legislation—including the Consumer Rights Act 2015 or the Sale of Goods Act 1979—forces a shop to sell to a customer. These acts only dictate what happens after a contract is legally formed (e.g., that the goods must be of satisfactory quality). 1, 2, 3, 4]
• The Common Law Precedent: The specific mechanism that allows a retailer to decline a sale is the concept of the Invitation to Treat. In English contract law, placing an item on a shelf is merely an invitation for customers to make an offer. 1, 2, 3]
• The Binding Ruling: This was explicitly solidified in the UK courts by the landmark case Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain v Boots Cash Chemists (Southern) Ltd [1953]. The Court of Appeal ruled that a contract is not completed when a customer takes an item off the shelf, but rather when the shopkeeper accepts the customer's cash or card at the till.”

Despite the dramatic flair to your story, they were not jobsworth....they were just doing their job, the one I suspect they need to pay for their homes and families. If you had glanced upwards, you would have noticed the the CCTV filming the whole interaction. Years back I worked for JDs and there was a 2p tolerance on cashing up, if tills were wrong I could be sacked over 2p! In the current jobs market, there will be hundreds that could step into their roles, so they were correct to apply the rules, and you are just being entitled and a bit ridiculous

I remember decades ago a local supermarket used to give some out of date food to a homeless charity my mother worker for, well they did until they informed it was illegal. The manager informed my mother that they would have to throw the food out, although he did tell her exactly when it would be left out so she could pick it up.