Has Lidl become a bit of an outdated model?

[ARunByFruiting]

Or is it just my local one?

They used to be a no frills, quick shop where the staff at the check out scanned your goods really quickly and you were in and out. Now it seems to take forever to get through the check out (unless the store has self service check out that seem to be much quicker).

Sometimes if you've only got a few bits someone will let you go on ahead of them. Today I waited nearly 15 minutes as only 2 tills open and the queue was a mix of big (trolley full) shops and small shops and the staff are so much slower at scanning the goods and getting people through. It's so tedious and puts me off going in there as they rarely open a 3rd till and the whole process is just so slow with no other choice but to wait.

In other supermarkets, unless really busy, it is so much quicker and you have the option of self scanner as you shop, a mix of trolley self scan, basket self scan and the odd manned till. It takes about a quarter of the time to get through the tills to pay. So have Lidl fallen behind the others? (This is where everyone comes on to say theirs has 30 self checkouts and speedy gonzales working on their manned tills! 😁)

Our Lidl will open an extra checkout but if never stays open for long. I'm fed up joining a queue only to be told that it's closing.

No Lidl in Australia, only Aldi, though they're much of a muchness.

They've introduced self-scan in lots of stores, but you can't self-scan alcohol, that has to be done on the usual belt model. Possibly this is Australia because the rules about sales of alcohol are different anyway.
In brief, alcohol has to be in a separate section, a little walled -off from the rest of the store. In some supermarkets, it's in a different building entirely.

I digress.

Echt , Do they still have drive through off licenses in Australia? I went there in 86 though, so may have been something that’s now disbanded or just in the one area I was visiting !

@echt I always thought your user name pertained to a small Ne Scottish village?
I live in Ne Scotland that why I thought of the village.

Yes I remember back in the day you had to shove all your shopping quickly into the trolley, then go pack it into bags at the car. As it became more mainstream to shop there -and I was spending probably around £200 weekly for my large family -I, along with others I’m sure, thought bugger this, and started fast and furious packing in real time while the items were being slung through the till, near missing my head (the ‘Lidl/Aldi challenge’
Now I pack in the same way I do in Waitrose /Tesco- leisurely, according to food group etc, without any craziness.

In the deprived area where I work, ( I’m a social worker) they had to remove the self service tills due to huge amount of shoplifting.

Depends on the store. My local is a naice modern one with self checkouts that you don't need a receipt to escape from, we shop there about 3 times a week and the app is amazing for discounts and free stuff! The free bakery/fruit spin is great.

However I called in a different one for bread and milk the other day and my heart sank when I saw it was manned tills only. I practically sprinted round to get to the till before the trolley shoppers got there first.

To answer your question, no.

Netto and Kwik Save had that model, too. Must have been so difficult for staff.

Yes me too.

Or I'd pronounce eight as echt

Oh the irony of you abruptly telling OP that if she doesn’t like it not to use it, to then go on and tell us your ‘beef’ with Lidl. So clearly you don’t like it but still use it? Yet you’re telling OP to do the opposite?!

Agree I think some people are just impatient.

Echty pound.

Poond.

I’ve just returned from Lidl, which I only go to as the Raku salad/poke bowls are YUM (and the bakery section). The checkout are still super speedy - I had my bag set up and still needed both hands to keep up with the checkout out woman. They had four check out lines open and the self check outs had a line. It was busy but I’ve seen it busier.
I wish they delivered though, and as PP suggested, a self scanner too.