To be pissed off with resellers? Aldi Yarn Event

[peesoff]

I’ve recently started crocheting, I’m on maternity leave and enjoying teaching myself. I went into Aldi last week to see they had their yarn event on. It’s apparently only on twice a year, once in Spring and once in Autumn. My local Aldi had completely sold out but the Aldi near my mum’s still had some in stock. I’d bought 8 skeins in the hope of making a blanket. I’ve of course ran out, but I’m now seeing it sold on Vinted and EBay for 4 times the cost

It was only £1.29 in store and I’ve seen listings for £20 upwards for 4 skeins on vinted. Yes I should have bought more, but AIBU to think it’s just selfish. It’s obviously not just surplus, they’re buying with the intention to sell on for a ridiculous profit.

You could always send a message to aldi on one of their socials - they may not be aware this stuff happens, I know in my also on some popular items they restrict the amount that can be purchased, maybe they would do that?

I don't know what you can do about that - they can't really limit how much people can buy because you reasonably may need to buy 8 or 10 or 20 balls/skeins to make a scarf/jumper/sweater and not risk playing yarn chicken or actually running out.

But then they can't stop resellers...

YANBU. Our local Aldi and Lidl where we lived last year were notorious for people doing this. I don’t think the shops care tbh as long as the stuff sells.

This is supply and demand in action, I'm afraid.

You should have got more than you thought you'd need.

Maybe that person doesn't need it anymore but they see other people selling it for 4 x retail price. Why should they sell it for cost price when they can make a bit of money?

Wouldn't they just get back in the queue and buy more?

This had been a thing with Aldi for years now, a few years ago it was a big thing with wooden toys, hardly anyone who actually wanted them for a child could get them due to resellers buying up all the stock and selling at inflated prices. Aldi don’t care as long as they are selling the stuff and to be fair why should they?

A bit like with ticket touts, if everyone just refused to buy from scalpers (of any kind) then the practice would soon die out.

Unfortunately human beings aren’t logical and so here we are.

This has been happening for years with Aldi yarn. But after buying loads the first year I was crocheting, I realised it's not the good anyway, so I don't bother anymore.

Stylecraft is better quality and a similar price imo.

I agree that the Aldi yarn is very good value - and lots of it is 20% wool so it's brilliant value.

I impulse bought two cakes which I may not use, the Rainbow Yarn in the blue colourway and the Ombre Yarn turquoise. Happy to pass on at cost price if you're interested.

It’s possible but I doubt it. Looking through the accounts it’s pages on pages of marked up wool. It’s people with no use for it filling trolleys to sell on for profit.

DP is with you though. Times are hard and people need to make extra cash. I’m on SMP, certainly not rolling in it, and was enjoying using the Aldi value yarn. I can’t imagine making it inaccessible to people like me. But this is probably why I’m poor and shop in the reduced section

And yes, I should have bought more but I’d miscalculated what it’d take. It looks like I will now have a nice warm scarf instead

That is so annoying! This happens every year with tk maxx and the Halloween stuff. My house has a halloween gothy décor all year round I love getting new bits every autumn but 99% of the time the stuff I would really like is scooped up by scalpers and on vinted for 2x if not more the price. Some of them cant even wait to get out of the store to take the picture to upload. There was 2 paintings i really wanted 1 is on vinted for 3x the price and the other that was £30 in store was for sale on vinted for £75!! But i would rather live without than pay it.

@peesoff what is it exactly that you need?

It’s people with no use for it filling trolleys to sell on for profit.

They are really are pulling the wool over our eyes

I love the reduced section too!

A scarf sounds lovely.

They are just glad the sooner it’s out of their shop the better always better to buy too much.

Oh that’s interesting. I wasn’t aware it was a thing until recently. That’s good to know, I’ll keep an eye out for the next drop so I can fill my trolley and flog it for quadruple the price

I’ll have a look at stylecraft, thank you.

There’s an Aldi destash page on Facebook where people are only allowed to sell for the original price. It’s an active group so hopefully you can find what you need.

If you can't beat them, join them.

Halloween gothy decor sounds amazing. I agree, it’s better not to feed into the madness to be honest.

I spotted a lovely pumpkin baby fleece and sleepsuit set in Sainsbury’s/TU. They were £12 online. Checked vinted and found an account selling multiples of each size for £21.

I’d just see it as a lesson learned and switch to Stylecraft, OP. Its well priced, easily available (if you buy from Wool Warehouse you can use the code from the back of the crochet magazines and get a good discount) and they make an effort with the dyelots so you can usually get more to finish a project of you need to.

Hi :) I’m looking for the pastel baby yarn, it’s a chenille type material, chunky 5 weight yarn.

I remember seeing this this year too. Lots of reasonably priced toys being bought up and sold on for a lot more.

I think it happens a lot with children’s toys at Christmas.

I’ve just taken a look at wool warehouse. Thank you

Yes, unfortunately, resellers often spoil the situation with popular toys. It's good that Aldi keeps its prices affordable — so there's still a chance for real parents to buy a gift.

Aldi yarn always ends up with a big frenzy and people boasting about the 100's of skeins they've bought, generally followed by 'I hid it from my DH tee hee hee 🙄' etc.

It's not even good quality stuff..

Get yourself onto WoolWarehouse website and buy the Yarnsmith acrylic - really good stuff in over 100 colours, use discount code SC70 to get 10% off.

Aldi yarn isn't that amazing - I like the ombre cakes and have a few machine knitted blankets with tubes of them going in opposite directions so it's worked out like a plaited checkerboard which look lovely, but the general balls of stuff are meh and yep, check out Stylecraft - for basic acrylic - it crochets really nicely.

I'm sick of everything being scalped and resold. I like to collect Pokemon cards - just a nice fix of some shiny pretty cardboard when I've got a spare bit of money and that nice dopamine hit of unwrapping a packet... but that's been absolutely decimated by the resale brigade to the point I've not been able to even think about collecting the last few releases because it was more of a website queue than for Taylor Swift tickets.