Check-out hassles

Highly qualified retail analysts have produced copious reports about the economic trends and dramatic shifts in shopping habits behind the slump.

But, just in case anyone from Sainsbury’s, Tesco or Morrisons happens to be reading this, can I offer some advice?

Having done regular big, family shops for more than 20 years now, I consider myself as much of an expert as any highly paid consumer trends expert when it comes to working out what is wrong with our supermarket giants.

And my number one piece of advice is: scrap the vouchers and loyalty cards. Please just sell us what you’ve got at the best possible price and preferably as quickly as possible, which is what the increasingly successful smaller discount stores like Aldi and Lidl do so well.

The big supermarkets have all made grocery shopping such a stressful, and unnecessarily time-consuming, ordeal.

So called ‘loyalty’ cards - which exist largely to help supermarkets keep track of our personal shopping habits - are nothing of the sort. How can they denote loyalty, when most of us are so unashamedly unfaithful we own one for every other supermarket in our area, along with all the other chain stores in town?

As a result, we regularly find ourselves standing behind someone rummaging about in their purse at the check-out to find the loyalty card related to that particular store, in among all the others. Or even worse, the person holding up the queue is you.

Once the loyalty card has been found, the shopper at the head of the queue then has to sift through a pile of largely worthless paper vouchers to find one which may, or may not, shave a few pence off their bill.

Some of the vouchers relate to getting a reduction off a particular product, others need to be swiped to add extra points to your loyalty card.

And then, in very small print, there is a ‘use by’ date which will have run out by the time you manage to fish this particular scrap of paper out from all the others now clogging up your purse.

Once the vouchers have been read, approved and scanned by the check-out operator, the milk that you have in your shopping basket has probably curdled.

Last time I was in Tesco, my huge shop earned me some ‘bonus stickers’ along with a sticker ‘collector card’ which, once full, would entitle me to 60percent off a set of suitcases I don’t want. I don’t want free dough balls at Pizza Express either.

 I would rather just pay less for my groceries.

Recently I earned a £5 voucher from Booths supermarket which was out of date by the time I tried to spend it, which made me feel more disgruntled than if I’d never got the voucher in the first place.

So often, ‘special offers’ leave me feeling cheated. Because I am always forgetting to hand over my ‘£5 off’ voucher for No7 Skincare when I buy face creams in Boots. And I can never find that ‘20% off printer ink cartridges’ voucher I got when I last shopped at WH Smith the next time I go in.

Apart from the fact it’s impossible to keep on top of every dated voucher from every store you shop in, there simply isn’t enough room in my purse.

And, as if that weren’t bad enough, receipts have now started offering the chance to win further discounts or vouchers if you go online and give your supermarket some feedback. I wonder if I would still be in with a chance if I say I just want them to stop pestering me.

In the meantime, those feeling increasingly exasperated by the queue at the tills caused by that little old lady who is certain she had a voucher for two pence off her pint of milk in her purse somewhere, can always, of course, head for the self-service check-outs.

But here, they may have to endure even more of an ordeal. For, even if the most annoying phrase in the English language - ‘Unexpected item in the bagging area’ - does not ring out throughout the store, you can be sure something else will go wrong.

And that will entail an assistant -  whose job you have felt pressurised into doing for free - appearing to publically identify you as an incompetent idiot, while the queue of people waiting to use this supposedly speedy form of payment grows even longer.

Lidl and Aldi don’t let customers pack bags at the check-out. Shoppers chuck their goods straight into the trolley and move to special bagging areas at the side of the store to pack things away.

These no-frills retailers don’t pretend to be our new best friends, offering gifts or pleading for our loyalty. They simply cut prices. And shopping there is quick and fuss-free.

And I don’t think I’m the only shopper who finds the long-established convenient stores far too inconvenient now.