Talk:Aldi/Archive 1

Aldi Logo
There is a mistake on the right bar: it's not the Aldi Nord Logo, it's in fact the Aldi SUED Logo. Please have a look on the image filename by clicking on the gif image. Generally, all Aldi Sued (=South) logos contain orange/yellow colours while it's counterpart Aldi Nord always uses blue. Greets from Germany. Anonymous

Neutrality
Hello!

I really have serious concerns about the neutrality of this article. To me this looks like a company profile from a company brochure that was added sentence by sentence, not to attract too much attention at one time. An enzyclopedia is not a place to host biased content about a company.

Hey, I would like to find out how you other guys see that.

Have a nice day,

User:doxTxob


 * I edited this article to incorporate Portugal's recent openings. I honestly didn't notice any bias or "company-brochure" speak. If anything, there are common opinions that "everybody knows" but which, for an encyclopedia, should be fundamented/referenced. Also, as a private, low-profile company, I even doubt that you could extract any info from them, same as for their competitors/copycats Lidl and Tengelmann/Plus.--maf 13:03, 9 August 2006 (UTC)


 * It sounds pretty factual to me, and often not in favour of ALDI, either. I don't have concerns about neutrality.  Have a good day.  Nickg1980


 * Sorry, yesterday I was a bit in a hurry. I will try and make clear what I mean saying that the neutrality of this article (at least in my opinion) is doubtful. Here is a short list of examples that I would consider not neutral:

What you may find in an Aldi store:

- One reason for Aldi's "success" ... - the success needs to be explained, better dropped out of the sentence.

- created some kind of "hysteria" in Germany - I don't say it is not true but this is not speech appropriate for an enzyclopedia

Low price philosophy:

- appears to show that" ... - see hysteria. "appears" is found several times used inappropriately. Either it IS or it IS NOT - facts - observations that just "appear" to be are not facts and do not belong in an encyclopedia.

- Consumers believed - same topic again. That is hearsay and does not belong in an encyclopedia.

- Aldi shops were often ridiculed - needs proof

...and much more. That's what I meant with lack of neutrality.

Altogether I find many words/phrases that are not exactly appropriate for an enzyclopedia. They exaggerate facts. Additionally I find that there are no sources cited.

There is a lot of good stuff in the article. The facts seem to fit well, they just need to be verifyable and written in a matter of fact manner. And to make that clear: Facts that are common knowledge do not need proof, the rest does.

My suggestions:

1) The structure of the article should stay as it is.

2) There need to be sources mentioned for all the alleged facts.

3) The text should be heavily copy-edited to reach a style of "matter of fact" language.

I would take part in point 3 to help out with the language but I do not like to disturb your work on this article. The best idea would probably be to copy the article somewhere to work on it. I would think this could be done paragraph by paragraph copied to a user page to work on it. Once some agreement can be reached on that paragraph it goes back to the main article.

Is there any acceptance for this suggestion?

Would someone like to help clean out the text?

Are there any voluteers to check out the sources and integrate them into the article?

Are there more suggestions to make this article better?

Take care all and let me know your opinions!

DoxTxob 18:59, 9 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi User:doxTxob,

Can I start by saying that I really like your style of writing on talk pages. I believe that too many Wikipedians are interested in having their view only on paper and not enough in disucssing articles. It's a pleasure to chat with you.

One reason for Aldi's "success" ... Although there might be no definitive way of defining whether or not ALDI is a success, it has been built from one store to what it is today. It must be a success, that, in my mind, cannot be questioned. You can, however, question the reason given for why it's a success. Why do you think it is?

created some kind of "hysteria" in Germany Living in the UK, I'm not aware of the hysteria referred to. "Hysteria" in itself is appropriate in an encyclopedia or Wikipedia if it was indeed so to that extent. The matter of extent, I cannot answer.

appear, Consumers believed and Aldi shops were often ridiculed Lots of things are valid in an encyclopedia but are not proven facts but generalisations. (A popular Sichuan dish is twice-cooked pork or The Labour government in the UK during the early 2000s have been a dissappointment to many of the population.) Neither of the aforesaid can be factually proven, but they are appearances which are held by a substantial percentage of people. Appearances, in my opinion, are valid assuming that they are held by about 75% or above of people who have an opinion on that matter.

Thanks again for your manner in discussing this. It is a refreshing pleasure to have such a friendly discussion with you.

Nickg1980
 * I second Nickg1980's words on doxTxob's approach but I'd suggest to keep it simple: a) add a "needs quote" to facts that you find unsubstantiated, b) remove personal opinions, which is the hard part, of course. To describe a fact in potentially subjective words counts as personal opinion or not? Anyway, imho do any changes live on the article. As for making this a "perfect" and pristine article, coherent, consistent and congruent (the three C's of encyclopedias), I think time will take care of it, if the entry is of enough interest.--maf 12:24, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Hello!

Thanks a lot for your comments. Yes, maybe it is better to edit the live article. What I am thinking is to edit the article paragraph by paragraph. That would make it easier for everyone to follow what is going on. And in case of different opinions it would be easier to undo changes.

Once that is done the parts lacking sources can be marked.

Please check the changes in the history of the article.

First paragraph: Few changes, added reference section.

History: No changes.

Regions where Aldi operates: No changes.

What you may find in an Aldi store: I made a few changes and restructured the first paragraph

Low price philosophy: I cut some words out for a more formal style. The advantage is this: Before it said something appeared like this or that. Now it either states that something 'is' or 'is not', both facts that can be proven with citations.


 * Advertising policy: No changes.


 * Checkout system: One minor change.


 * Reputation: Few words cut out.


 * Business practices: Few cuts, re-wrote a sentence, cut last sentence (inserted in Trivia)


 * Aldi talk: Changed URLs to references.


 * Trivia: Added sentence fron business practices.


 * Competitors: No chnages.


 * Aldi brands: No changes.


 * References: This section was added.


 * External links: No changes.

This is what I would like to suggest as changes to the text itself. Please understand this as a suggestion only, as a basis for a discussion. What I have basically changed is to cut out a lot of words that blow up the text and make it more matter of fact. As stated above, items that appear to be cannot be proven but "is" or "are" items can. I would really appreciate your comments.

Have a good day, DoxTxob 20:56, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Hello again,

I have removed the POV tag from the article, because I do not think anymore that the article is biased. It still has a lot of facts that are not referenced. I will go through the article later and mark what facts might need references.

Enjoy your day,

DoxTxob 17:32, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Card Acceptance
"As of May 2006 the Aldi chain in the UK upgraded their debit terminals to accept all types of debit and credit cards at no charge to the customer. This was done to also facilitate the chip and pin security measures that have been implemented by the customers card issuer." - ALDI does not accept credit cards, and indeed, not all of its stores have upgraded to chip and pin yet. There is some limited acceptance of electron and solo cards now but only in those stores which have been upgraded to chip and pin.

Logo in the Netherlands
I believe the aldi sud logo is used in the Netherlands
 * No, it isn't; the Aldi Nord logo is. 130.89.167.52 15:55, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Language Cleaning
This article needs some general grammatical fixes, it was obviously written by a non-native speaker of english, I even saw the word "Ist" instead of is back there somewhere. I'd do it but I'm lazy. --Anonymous 2005.12.15

Aldi and Wal-Mart
Does anyone know if Wal-mart and ALDI has partnered or has Wal-Mart bought ALDI? I had heard a rumor that this may have happened.


 * Nope. And ALDI is way too expensive for a hostile takeover.


 * Is it possible the original author misheard ALDI for ASDA, which was taken over by Wal-Mart in 1999? -- Deadlock 29 June 2005 11:59 (UTC)


 * Additional info: The ALDI companies are still entirely holded by the two Albrecht brothers and thus are not for

sale. BTW this regularly makes them into the Top 10 of richest persons worldwide.


 * There has never been any discussion of Wal-Mart buying Aldi. It's simple confusion with Asda. (There was for a time talk of Wal-Mart buying Metro AG, but that's an entirely different matter). ProhibitOnions 14:33, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

Cart Deposit
Another item of note: ALDI requires a quarter to use their shopping carts, which is then returned when the cart is returned. Also, they "don't hide the cost of our grocery bags in the price of our products, the way other stores do" (according to their FAQ), which translates as, you have to pay for bags or bring your own. These are other examples of ALDI being a no-frills store. -- Birdhombre 19:27, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I did not put this in the article because both things are very common in Germany; almost any big store does them. But if that isn't common elsewhere it should be put into the article that ALDI adheres to such customs abroad. Lady Tenar 2 July 2005 10:29 (UTC)


 * There are a lot of these examples. i.e. in Germany (South and North) and Austria ALDI doesn’t accept credit cards or anything like this. Some time ago (1-2 years maybe) they changed from entering the prices to a scanner cash desk. But back to topic: ALDI is highly profitable so why should they sell to Wal-Mart? Also Wal-Mart and ALDI are very different companies. Wal-Mart is a normal American company. ALDI is a German privately-held company. They don’t publish numbers. They have no public relation activities. I read some interesting things on the website of the German business magazine "Manager Magazine". -- ckorff


 * These practices are already mentioned in the article.


 * A deposit on shopping trolleys is far from unique to Aldi in the UK; in fact it's fairly rare that a supermarket chain of any size larger than a convenience store does not charge a deposit. I'd fix but I'd like to ask here whether this is, as stated, uncommon in the US as if it is I'll reword accordingly. Tonywalton 21:09, 10 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't recall ever seeing Sainsbury's or Tesco require a deposit, though I think there was one at Kwik Save (hence "largely"). Perhaps there are some neighbourhoods where there's a problem with cart theft where they do it. Can you say where you have seen this?


 * I'd find it easier to say where I've not seen it, at Tesco, Sainsbury, even Waitrose. Let me think... er... None. I'm happy to concede that that's only a small sample (I've not visited all the supermarkets in the UK!) not all supermarkets in the UK do this, but it is very far friom being exclusive to Aldi, or even unusual. Tonywalton 11:50, 15 August 2005 (UTC)


 * (I can think of one Asda store that does require a deposit on trolleys, but I didn't think all its stores did this.)

OTOH, all German stores requires it, though, even Wal-Mart (it also has the entry barrier gates). German retailing is not known for its customer-friendliness.

In the US, I think it is indeed only Aldi that does this. There's a plaque explaining this policy outside the store.

ProhibitOnions 10:12, August 14, 2005 (UTC)


 * Anyone know what the reason that they require a deposity on the carts is? Wal-Mart and Target tend to hire cart-pushers, who are responsible for making sure that all the carts are returned to the store where people can get them easily, but I've never heard of anyone wanting to steal grocery carts... What would they use them for anyway?

User:Anonymous 2005.12.15


 * I live in the U.S., and it's very common for local supermarkets to have employees drive around and collect shopping carts. Customers tend to walk the carts home with their groceries in them (and then don't take the carts back to the store).  Of course, this is more common in urban areas...but, I live a town of 100,000 people.

User:Anonymous 2006.01.26


 * Junkies and the homeless in Germany steal shopping carts all the time.


 * The deposit makes you put the cart back in the proper place, so Aldi doesn't have to waste staff time collecting them, as staffing is always at a minimum. ProhibitOnions 23:48, 26 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah - the prices are kept lower when they don't have to hire people to collect the carts. People either bring the carts back themselves or someone else does to collect the quarter.  They also charge for shopping bags, so that way people take home empty boxes with them, so they don't have to pay their staff to break them down.

It is curious that the aticle contains no mention of unions especially considering the emphasis given to this in the Lidl article. That is all.

In Australia, ALDI is the only supermarket that does this. You use a $2 coin, which is quite a large amount of money considering. User:solidenterprises

Overall Revenue
The article currently states revenues of 45M. This is obviously wrong as on a base of 7000 stores revenues would be in the billions. Also since it is a privately held company this information would only ever be a guess. Lumberjack Steve June 8 2006
 * The yahoo article says 37000.00 M, now Wal-mart said it revenue is 312427.00 M which makes it 312.427 billion USD. So Aldi's revenue is infact 37 billion USD, all this sound to me like a classic billion/milliard confusion.159753 21:45, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Contradictory statements
''In the United Kingdom, Aldi (just like its rival Lidl) is often the center of jokes regarding the wealth of a person, particularly with the younger generation. Many consider it to be demeaning to shop at Aldi, and as a result a lot of students will not admit to shopping there if they do. Actually this is untrue. ALDI and Lidl have almost accrued a cult status amongst students in the UK. Whereas in their younger days they may have mocked it, many students have come to favour ALDI and LIDL and things such as "£1 shops"''

Doesn't make an awful lot of sense. Students either like or dislike Aldi... you can't say its demeaning then not true...

What should we do here? 84.9.77.70 22:34, 17 June 2006 (UTC)


 * This looks like opinion, not fact, so either put in a proper reference or mention both opinions separately. --maf 13:03, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I deffently disagree with the reputation section of this article... Aldi is extremely popular in Australia, and since it has gained acceptance most people are welcoming of its quality. The neutrality of this is questionable, as there are a certain subsection of people who prefer not to shop a foreign owned stores, opting for Coles Myer or Woolworths. Increased interet rates and petrol prices have tuned once negative nay-sayers to evangalists.


 * It has never been true in the Germany neither. Aldi was accepted in the middle class for a long time before reunification and was known for its quality standards. --84.142.134.161 21:57, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

..............

I'm on the side of it being seen with some snobbery, even though I don't hold to that myself and have and will happily shop there. Usually their stores are found, as the article states, in more run down areas (and also, in student-heavy university districts), presumably a deliberate ploy as they realise they are more likely to get good customer numbers there, rather than locating in e.g. Mayfair. This also means they are inevitably associated with penniless young academics and heroin-addicted unemployed single mothers, regardless of what the truth of the matter is, and for many people concerned with their image and what their shopping says about them, they're far more interested in bringing home a bag marked M&S than one with an Aldi or Lidl logo, so long as they can reasonably afford to shop at the more expensive store with the supposedly superior food and clothing (in my experience: often but definitely not always so). Though a new Aldi has recently opened up in my town (replacing a Sainsburys, and adding fuel to a fire started by the arrival of Wilkinsons that the area is going rapidly to the dogs), I know of no-one except my grandmother - herself pleasantly surprised at the high quality, albeit humble nature, of the produce - who will own up to having shopped there. But someone must do, as it's business is thriving.

All I can do on that subject is refer you to a song entitled "Never Going Back to Aldi's", by M J Hibbett... do a lyrics hunt and the common sentiment may be revealed.

Also, other points: Paying for the plastic bags. Never minded doing this even when a strapped student. The 6p (as they were) bags were far superior to Safeway's rubbish - easier on the hands (wide handles), very sturdy and long lasting (usable for several trips and could take some knocks), large (a week's shopping in just two of them) and, of course, promoted good recycling / sustainable consumerism practice. Want to save a precious 12p on your groceries (good for another pack of noodles and a tin of spaghetti hoops)? Take along the two bags you've already got, rather than throwing them away. Mind you, the 3p ones were rubbish, worse than typical "free" bags (if you were really that short, better to scrounge around the streets for any old discarded shopping bag and bring it in), and the 10p ones so huge they were only suitable for those going directly from trolley to car to house.

No own brand pickle? I'm sure I never saw Branston in there. In fact practically NO branded goods at all; if there was a product gap in their lines, it was usually promptly filled. I've definitely had discount store sandwich pickle from one of these german places and marvelled at it's inexplicably meat gravy-like taste drowning out most of the usual tarter flavours, eventually coming down on the side of "tesco's ownbrand is much nicer and only a few pence more, i'll just buy three jars next time i can scrounge a lift over there". The one branded thing they DEFINITELY had, though, was Pom-Bear snacks. Don't know why. They're horrible.

Their own brand cola, lager and vodka are, like the pickle... "interestingly" flavoured (not bad, just unusual). But make for incredibly cheap piss-ups that would make white lightning-swilling chavs jealous. As is the wine, perfectly good at £1.99 for 70cl, so long as you're going to swill it fairly quickly before it oxidises at unnatural speed or you start to wonder what the acidic tang is all about. Probably still better than the french "table wine" that comes in kegs.

Just don't ever be tempted to try the cans of Cola Shandy, even when it is dropped to 2p per 330ml tin in desperation to sell the vile stuff (or like me, you'll reach the dilemma of having bought 12 of them, and making the difficult choice between throwing away perfectly good ethanol whilst skint, or downing it with a pinched nose)

The produce, and many of their own brand tinned/other long lasting items are often superior - or at least interestingly different - compared to large supermarkets, as they appear to buy them either in a similar manner / market to a local greengrocer, or just at pot luck, probably from the same suppliers who make the big-name products, but in a guaranteed "high volume exclusive sale" kind of deal. E.G. very nice lettuces and tomatoes, jaffa cakes with CHERRY flavoured filling (oh. my. god... as the americans say, "crazy delicious"), UHT milk, tinned mushrooms etc. Give the curry sauces a bodyswerve though, you may as well make extra strong bisto, stirring badly so it lumps a bit.

Love their electronics offers - I am sitting in a room with a chunky ownbrand (SuperVision.. worst name ever!) DVD player and full 5.1 surround sound system that cost about £140 all in, which was an incredible bargain for 2001 when it was bought, and has never less than impressed with it's quality, reliability and capability. Even if the main unit IS the size of a south american dictator's summer house. Also multimeter, battery chargers, car products like crawler trays, socket sets and footpumps.. it's all good :) Sometimes it does fall apart after a couple years, but if you just need something instantly and don't care if it lasts, it makes sense to pay £10 for a well featured model instead of £25 for a basic one.

Damn, I've got a hankering to go out there and get my browse 'n' buy on. Good job they're shut.

Most of my observations are largely Lidl based, given that when I was studenting my house was within 2 minutes gentle stroll (or 5 minutes difficult struggle with overloaded bags full of tinned toms) of one, and the first/third year halls not much further - whereas Aldi was up the other end of town (still only a half mile, but it counts). Did go in a few times however, and noted that, other than logo, the places were almost completely interchangable. Heck, they sometimes had the same Medion Laptop offers running simultaneously.

Basic, scrappy places, but deserve legendary status for business acumen (see a need, fill a need) and keeping many cash strapped peoples lives running in a bearable fashion without them having to resort to eating nothing but porridge.

---tahrey

Logo
Why is only the Aldi Süd logo shown? Is it because that's what's in the US, or some other reason?Gaterion 22:36, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Corporate structure
Can anyone shed any light to the somewhat strange corporate structure, with Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd running parallel operations in Germany? Also - why aren't they using the same logo? Don G. 12:00, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Wrong information
Aldi was founded in 1913! Not in 1948! The facts on the aldi.us-Homepage are meant to the compandy of Aldi, U.S.. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.138.94.135 (talk) 18:43, 4 January 2007 (UTC).

Assessment comment
Substituted at 20:13, 2 May 2016 (UTC)