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Author Topic: Lidl customer service  (Read 9258 times)

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Bigron

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Re: Lidl customer service
« Reply #30 on: 10 February 2018, 19:09:10 »

Somebody needs to read the guidance request at the top of the home page...
This has all the hallmarks of (another ) departure ;D

The forum and its topics are organic and subject to deviation, just like face-to-face conversations!  8)

Ron.
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Olympia5776

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Re: Lidl customer service
« Reply #31 on: 10 February 2018, 19:19:40 »

Back on topic.

I too had a pleasant experience with lidl.
A three in one strimmer,hedge trimmer and pole saw packed up after two years little use.
I contacted lidl customer care forwarded a copy of the receipt and a day later was called by a very well spoken German lady . She asked if I knew what the problem was and I told her there was no spark suggesting that the ignition module was faulty . I also said that the last time I had used it it had been rather tempremental whilst running and unusually difficult to start.
She asked if I was competant enough to replace some components and then agreed to send a new ignition pack and carb. 3 days later they arrived with a very nice letter hoping that these solved the problem but if not to contact her direct and she would arrange to have it collected .
Twenty minutes later engine was singing ......
Cant fault that . :y
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Lizzie Zoom

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Re: Lidl customer service
« Reply #32 on: 10 February 2018, 19:29:39 »

If you have trouble reading that Rods you can borrow my glasses. ;D

I apologize in advance, no disrespect to anyone involved.....
but this reply really did make me laugh. Not expected after I had waded through the previous posts !!! ;D ;D ;D

Yes, sorry about the large print, but the warning that I had exceeded 600 characters came up and I tried to modify the quote I was referring to. Well, it all went horribly wrong after that with me losing my temper as I typed my lengthy reply for the second time as an auto delete was actioned !!!!! >:( :(

The fact it is in bold has nothing to do with the intended tone of my post.  I just dislike people being contrascending with me when I am just trying to use my considerable knowledge in an area that paid me a very good salary due to my senior retail business manager abilities.  I can be very wrong with other subjects, but retail, no!

I would also add for Rod's benefit that in my position within a national retail company I had to justify our stock holdings  and be fully accountable for any write offs or downs (stock price reduction) sustained that ultimately reduced our profits on the P&L. If a line didn't sell well, or was fast heading towards it's sell by date, I was accountable for write downs. On the majority of our stock no Sale or Return was available, and that is why retail companies in the UK at least have to mount "clearances" , "sale's", or eventually put stock into the waste skip. If full SOR was availble the profits for us retailers would be higher, but manufacturers would have to sustain ruinious write off's themselves, and cover all the costs of returned goods.  No, the usual practice is for manufacturers to initially give enhanced discounts to the national retailer to allow for any "wastage" on their products to ensure you as the retailer still acted favourably towards them with future stock purchases. In the electronic product market that I have also considerable experience in, that was also the case, with it all being on firm sale. But as the gross margins on our printers from all the major manufacturers could frequently be as low as 5% to be competitive in a very cut throat market, we had little room to manoeuvre .  Overall though we made the high margins on printer cartridges and toners, so that assisted greatly in the efforts to produce maximum profit levels.  Once more very few products in our ranges were bought in on SOR agreements. It was Firm Sale all the way on the vast majority of our product ranges, which included furniture.

The write down of product is assessed in line with the initial margin enjoyed, and the clearance price falls in line with that.  However, it is always the policy to ensure the first cut was the best and only cut in price to gain speedy sale through.  The supermarkets now tend to send their restricted sell by or best before dated packaged product to food banks now. If SOR applied to all those goods as Rod states, then that stock would just go back to the manufacture for full credit, and thus the retailer would retain full margins; if only that was the case, retailers like me would be enjoying far higher bonuses!! ;D
« Last Edit: 10 February 2018, 19:43:32 by Lizzie Zoom »
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Lizzie Zoom

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Re: Lidl customer service
« Reply #33 on: 10 February 2018, 19:36:12 »

Having never been to IKEA (am I lucky?), I don't understand this "you can't go where you want to" thing; do the staff frogmarch you around to where they want you to go?
Also, I hear of people saying they spend ages in the store, far longer than they want to - do they hold you prisoner?  :o

Ron.

No Ron, when I had the experience of these stores it was a case of going in a queue with your trolley in one direction only. It seemed you could not escape the heavy flow of customers (which, I must admit, must reflect their popularity) and could not easily go back to where you came in.  It was just a slow slog all the way around a huge store, becoming more and more dissatisfied with all the crap you saw

Now that experience I must admit was last felt many moons ago, but I noted from the documentary shown the other day on TV that the customers were still being herded in the same way.  Never again!! ::) ;)
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Olympia5776

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Re: Lidl customer service
« Reply #34 on: 10 February 2018, 19:39:12 »

 I thought this thread was about Lidl customer care ... :-\
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Terbs

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Re: Lidl customer service
« Reply #35 on: 10 February 2018, 19:40:48 »

In reply to Bigron.....Yes, I get the feeling I am being held prisoner in Ikea. Only having been there twice, once on the North Circular and the other last year at Southampton. Swmbo dragged me into the Southampton one and an hour and a half later I managed to escape. There are no shortcuts, Elevators/stairs to not continue all the way down...you have to follow those bloody arrows. When there in November, I refused point blank to enter the store again !!!!!

Right, here is another anomaly.....If you buy something at Lidl or anywhere else...two for the price of one, etc. are they assumed to be half price, so both have a warranty.
What if buy one get one free. I assume the first is on warranty, the second not. !!!!! :o
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Lizzie Zoom

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Re: Lidl customer service
« Reply #36 on: 10 February 2018, 19:51:16 »

I thought this thread was about Lidl customer care ... :-\

Sorry about that, but as usual on the OOF threads deviate. I mentioned Aldi in the context of them and Lidl having a similar business model and objectives, so they were a great comparison to how the big traditional supermarkets are performing, along with their standards of customer care.  Ryanair was also mentioned by others as a parallel between low margin Lidl and Aldi and those who work on reduced margins in the airline industry, with costs being kept to the bare minimum. ;)
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Lizzie Zoom

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Re: Lidl customer service
« Reply #37 on: 10 February 2018, 19:58:18 »

In reply to Bigron.....Yes, I get the feeling I am being held prisoner in Ikea. Only having been there twice, once on the North Circular and the other last year at Southampton. Swmbo dragged me into the Southampton one and an hour and a half later I managed to escape. There are no shortcuts, Elevators/stairs to not continue all the way down...you have to follow those bloody arrows. When there in November, I refused point blank to enter the store again !!!!!

Right, here is another anomaly.....If you buy something at Lidl or anywhere else...two for the price of one, etc. are they assumed to be half price, so both have a warranty.
What if buy one get one free. I assume the first is on warranty, the second not. !!!!! :o


No.  You are in a contract to buy two items, and are therefore considered under trading laws to be covered by the same warranty as it would be for one. If one or both fail within the warranty or guarantee period you are covered. You are also protected by the general terms of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 that the product must be fit for purpose and perform to a reasonable level that you as a consumer should justifiably expect. 

That is it in simple terms without reciting the whole Act :D :D;)
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Doctor Gollum

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Re: Lidl customer service
« Reply #38 on: 10 February 2018, 20:21:21 »

In reply to Bigron.....Yes, I get the feeling I am being held prisoner in Ikea. Only having been there twice, once on the North Circular and the other last year at Southampton. Swmbo dragged me into the Southampton one and an hour and a half later I managed to escape. There are no shortcuts, Elevators/stairs to not continue all the way down...you have to follow those bloody arrows. When there in November, I refused point blank to enter the store again !!!!!

Right, here is another anomaly.....If you buy something at Lidl or anywhere else...two for the price of one, etc. are they assumed to be half price, so both have a warranty.
What if buy one get one free. I assume the first is on warranty, the second not. !!!!! :o
There are short cuts all over the Southampton one ???

Restaurant is just to the left of the entrance, other end of the restaurant is adjacent to the lift/ stairwell down to the next floor... Etc

The biggest bug bear is the forty minutes it seems to take to get parked :-X
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Onanists always think outside the box.

Bigron

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Re: Lidl customer service
« Reply #39 on: 10 February 2018, 22:26:33 »

I thought this thread was about Lidl customer care ... :-\

Yes, but Lidl/Aldi have had more than enough free publicity to do the thread justice, and I for one appreciate the deviation, just as I would in any normal conversation - it can always be pulled back on topic, as you have done.
Another deviation, this time a question for Lizzie:-
Lidl and Aldi have weekly Specials of limited availability. Why, and what happens to the unsold items?

Ron.
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scimmy_man

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Re: Lidl customer service
« Reply #40 on: 11 February 2018, 09:06:22 »

the unsold items go in a bargain bin
so are marked down more...
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TheBoy

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Re: Lidl customer service
« Reply #41 on: 11 February 2018, 09:55:45 »

There are no shortcuts, Elevators/stairs to not continue all the way down...you have to follow those bloody arrows
As the MK one is walking distance from where I work, I occasionally go for a lunchtime snack, so soon get to know the shortcuts.  But the staff have a hissy fit. Mongs.


Quote
Aldi/Lidl
My experience of Aldi and Lidl when items have gone faulty has not been fantastic, but also not poor either.  Invariably it just ends up as a refund, which isn't always ideal.

I had one of those cheap Aldi compressors, and also some accessories.  The compressor gave up the ghost within a year, but they wouldn't help with repair, just "return to store for refund". Which I duly got, but that left me with a bunch of accessories that were effectively no use to me, and obviously they wouldn't take those back as they weren't faulty.
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Lizzie Zoom

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Re: Lidl customer service
« Reply #42 on: 11 February 2018, 10:52:08 »

I thought this thread was about Lidl customer care ... :-\

Yes, but Lidl/Aldi have had more than enough free publicity to do the thread justice, and I for one appreciate the deviation, just as I would in any normal conversation - it can always be pulled back on topic, as you have done.
Another deviation, this time a question for Lizzie:-
Lidl and Aldi have weekly Specials of limited availability. Why, and what happens to the unsold items?

Ron.

I have not worked for either of Aldi or Lidl, but my company and the likes of Sainsbury's put the promotional stock back into the usual ranges. However, special products such as those not normally in the company range, if it cannot go back into 'stock' will usually be collected back to the company's Central Distribution Centre and sold off to a jobber, who specialises in buying up unwanted or surplus stock.  On some ocassions, as Rod touched on, the special stock is on a SOR agreement, so goes back to the manufacturer / supplier or an agent representing them who clears the stock to the market stall or 'seconds' type traders at very low cost prices.

In general though Ron you absorb the stock into your business for normal sell through if in your standard range. ;)
« Last Edit: 11 February 2018, 10:53:55 by Lizzie Zoom »
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Bigron

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Re: Lidl customer service
« Reply #43 on: 11 February 2018, 11:07:21 »

Yes, I see: but there remains a question in my mind over the concept of "specials". Why are they needed at all (marketing ploy?), and if they sell well, e.g. tools/motoring bits etc., why not carry them as normal range?
Recently, I missed out on the windscreen wiper offer - they had run out - and when I asked, was told that they had no plans for future stock. Commercial lunacy to refuse to stock something that flies out of the store?

Ron.
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shyboy

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Re: Lidl customer service
« Reply #44 on: 11 February 2018, 11:40:27 »

Specials do have second or even third runs in my experience but the problem is that you can't find out when this might happen. I presume they occur when the manufacturers offer a good deal to Lidl/Aldi to display their products on a short term deal, making it attractive for them to use them as a 'loss leader'. There can't be any incentive to Lidl to commit to re-stocking dates. The 'Ultimate Speed' brand name appears on quite a lot of electrical goods in Lidl, so it must be an ongoing relationship between the companies. The charger I bought has re-appeared once to my knowledge since I bought my original in 2015, albeit at a higher price.
To return to my original point, I can only re-iterate that my experience of Lidl's customer service is great. Perhaps if it had been a more expensive, bulkier item, a refund rather than replacement might have been a more attractive option for them or the manufacturer, and they may have wanted the item returned.
In any event, I'm a happy bunny.
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