Futuristic ALDI, what the hell?

[BlackFriYay]

I've just nipped into an Aldi in Greenwich to grab a couple of bits and feel like I've just stepped into the future.

When you enter you're met with electric barriers which you have to tap your card on in order to enter. When you tap, aldi takes a £10 holding charge which goes towards your shopping.

As soon as you pass through the barriers you are picked up by some high tech smart camera which follows you around the shop.

Whatever you pick up from the shelves is added to your shopping bill, unless you put it back exactly where you picked it up from.

To leave, you have to tap your card on the barriers again at which point a code is sent to your online banking. You then scan a QR code and enter the 5 digit number on the banking transaction, at which point you get your receipt on screen.

Apparently the receipt process is slightly simpler if you have the Aldi app, which I don't.

There wasn't one member of staff on the floor, just the security guard at the front whom was baffled as to why the whole thing confused me.

Who else has come across this? It was completely bizarre. Have I been living under a rock?

Yeah I live in a shit village in a shit part of the country, Aldi is seen as easy picking they just waltz in and walk out with whatever the fuck they like . Presumably it's a first step in stopping that. If you've got the means to pay you get in if you haven't fuck off seems fair enough to me .

How exact does it have to be when you put items back? I’m imaging a hotel mini bar where you have a rummage through and accidentally spend £8 on a tiny tube of Pringles. Not great for someone who needs to pick everything up to check ingredients for allergies, or to avoid UPF or whatever.

Every Aldi I’ve ever been in has been like a jumble sale, and the whole point of going is to have a rummage through the middle aisle of random crap. I can’t see how this method would be accurate at all.

Amazon has very quietly dropped the roll out of these kinds of stores because the tech didn't actually work.

It's supposed to be AI monitoring cameras to track what's bought but it turned out the error / confusion rate was so high they needed a small army of real people (in China I think) monitoring screens to manually update purchase details.

I thought that was pretty funny.

Honestly, Aldi in London loses an insane amount of money due to shoplifting, so much so that the stores are barely profitable. Thieves target particular items such as baby formula, meat, cheese, washing tabs etc. that are then sold door-to-door.

Obviously it's shit if this becomes the only option, but they're a business, not a charity/social enterprise, and aren't obliged to continue a loss-making business model.

We'd be better off focusing our ire on the underfunding of policing to match population growth. Shoplifting is basically legal nowadays, you can't get police to attend.

Name changed as announcing where I live

I live very close and I love this Aldi. Pop in, get the app out and scan my code to get through the barriers. Get what I need. Walk out. Pretty much everyone I know locally use this Aldi and have the app.

To answer a few of the questions

No aisle of shite sadly

If you go in a group you just scan the code for each adult. My toddler likes to go through by himself first though…

One camera doesn’t follow you around as such, there are loads of cameras which track what you pick up/put back.

Never been charged for something I’ve not touched but once I got charged for something I put back. You can just raise it on the app and they refund you. In the early days I was getting quite a few freebies but haven’t for a while now.

I’m surprised you only saw the security guard. There is normally about 3 other members of staff helping at the gates or restocking the shelves.

The app only puts a £1 hold on. Never tried the card tapping thing so couldn’t tell you.

It’s generally quiet, maybe because it’s a quick and efficient shop! And maybe previously because you had to have the Aldi pay and go app with an account set up.

There is a little sainsburys across the small parking lots if you want to use cash… talking to you Piers Corbyn 🤣 https://www.indy100.com/politics/piers-corbyn-aldi-strawberries-cash

I think it’s quite depressing to suggest that those who are currently elderly are less wise than younger generations. The thing about being young is that it’s easy to adopt new technology. The people you disparage may well have been very techy a few decades ago, programming on their personal computers in the 80s when it was cutting edge, or fixing their car engines when that was still possible.

But age comes to all of us. We’ll all be left behind by new tech as we get older. To turn a blind eye to companies excluding elderly people because you think we’ll be wiser than them and more tech-savvy when we’re older is to be a turkey voting for Christmas.

I’m fine with retailers offering both high-tech and low-tech options when we shop. I’m not fine when they impose changes than exclude whole groups of people.

There an article about this recently, apparently they actually have lots of people watching you on CCTV. It’s very creepy.

I am in my 40s and can't afford a smartphone... Ironically that's why I shop at Aldi.

Things need to become more high tech to foil shoplifters. Shoplifting is getting out of hand, so something needs to be done. Ds has shopped in one of the Amazon stores like this and he says it's fine.

Bit unlucky if you're elderly in Greenwich and it's the only one you can walk to now that you can't manage a train.

@fedupdontknowwheretoputmyself the only way to stop shop lifting is to go back to the small corner shop on every corner and separate butchers/bakers/green grocers etc and you have to ask for your goods over the counter.
I can't really see modern society wanting to go back to that. Can you imagine the queues?

You’re not paying £10 to shop it’s a hold that goes towards whatever you buy and if you don’t buy anything it is released.

Amazon has a similar concept Amazon Go but I don’t recall there being any hold they just charge you for whatever you bought. It is also for smaller quick items not proper weekly shopping etc.

I also see this concept complementing the standard shops not replacing them.

I can't think of anything worse. It sounds miserable for those of us who actually like seeing people.

If this is the way forward with everything, then universal basic income needs to be implemented ASAP.

I can see why there’s a thing about putting goods back where they should be. People can be quite random about where they put goods they’ve changed their minds about and some will obviously be wasted

Indeed! I was in Aldi locally today and someone had put sausage rolls back in the Aisle of Tat.

They don’t have people sitting earning everyone on CCTV it’s all run by AI technology. Ofcourse there will be staff and security behind the scenes same as a typical store but they don’t have a lot of people just sitting there staring at CCTV screens, that defeats the purpose of efficiency if they are just moving lots of people from being on the floor to watching CCTV.

I've seen stores like this. I've intentionally never used one, but I also avoid self-checkouts and those scan-as-you-shop gadgets too. I hate them all.

What’s more annoying is posters calling car parks parking lots 🤔

I absoutely hate the sounds of this! I understand that most people have access to phones / online banking but some people still do not. And what of someone didn't have £10 in their bank and just wanted to pop in for milk, pasta and bread to tide them over until pay day?

I've decided to abolish shopping in New Look now - for a couple of years its been the standard "can I take an email address for the receipt?" Normally I respond by saying "no thank you, can I have it printed please?" Usually all fine and they give me a printed copy. I went in there yesterday and after I paid the assistant says "just to let you know, this till no longer prints paper receipts, so I'll need to take an email address" my response "ok that's fine, I just won't get a receipt" (sale item, a £5 t shirt for gardening) the assistant then said that I had no choice but to get a digital a receipt, and I wasnt allowed to refuse one in case there was anything wrong with the product. Reluctantly I gave my email address as I had already paid at this point. I know its not a huge deal but to be honest its the principle. I also can't be bothered to stand there spelling out my email address that contains my unusually spelled name in front of a queue of people when i just want to quickly leave. Yeah I know I could make a new email address specifically for this, but honestly, why should I have to??

@springsummer120 I completely agree about New Look. Same thing happened to me.
Also it might be just an email address, but you actually don’t know who is listening in, it’s still personal data that can be compromised.

There's a sainsbury's literally next door. These shops are a gimmick, the tech isn't there yet. Got a few years to master tapping a card on a card reader.

Gosh, I can remember when there were no bar codes and the girls on the checkouts had to key in the prices. There was always a very long queue too, of people taking things off the belt and saying to her "how much is it now? Oh. Take this off as well. And this". It took forever to get served.

Hardly just tapping a card on a card reader though, is it!

How does this meet DDA? If your sight is poor how do you know you are returning the item to the exact spot you are supposed to?

I’m hoping some people may decide to become carers. We’re desperately short in this country and it’s a job that will never be replaced by robots.