Aldi Arklow and clamping

fred funk }{

Just a warning to anyone who shops there. My partner was clamped there last week after being parked there for 1hr 20 mins. The allowed time is 1hr which I think is quite short. And we had to pay a hefty €120 to get it released.

The day before she was clamped she was getting a few bits in there and their card machines were out of action so she needed to go into the shopping centre to get cash from an ATM to pay for the shopping so this being the day after she went over to the shopping centre first to get cash then went straight back into Aldi and did our shopping. And when she came out it was clamped.

She was there with our 9 month old so she paid the fee immediately but if it was me I would have left it there and cut it off later that evening. So we sent in a letter to Aldi head office yesterday and await their reply but in the meantime we won't be spending anymore of our cash in there.

Aenaes

I don't think you'll gain much headway with Aldi as another company has the clamping contract.
Best of luck anyway.

BadGirl

I've seen the clamping guy there take off the clamp on production of receipt from Aldi...
You should appeal to the APCOA (i *think* this is the clamping co) head office instead and include a copy of the receipt. If your partner was doing a big shop, you can argue that she was in the store for 1hr 20min. If she only has a few things on the receipt though, they may not entertain you..

120 euro is a lot of money though

LEIN

Aenaes wrote: »

I don't think you'll gain much headway with Aldi as another company has the clamping contract.
Best of luck anyway.

Who awarded the contract?

fred funk }{

We have our receipt but we were informed that the time limit is 1 hour regardless. So as soon as you park your car you're on the clock and sometimes the queues are very long as there's only one till open. Crazy stuff.

I can see people leaving full trolleys and walking out if it gets near the hour. This must discourage customers from shopping there and push them to another shop like Lidl, Tesco and Supervalue who don't have clamping.

admiralofthefleet

happened to people that were visiting arklow for our wedding in june. popped into bridgewater and came out to see their cars clamped. do the clampers realise that people are not going to shop there again for fear of being clamped

fred funk }{

admiralofthefleet wrote: »

happened to people that were visiting arklow for our wedding in june. popped into bridgewater and came out to see their cars clamped. do the clampers realise that people are not going to shop there again for fear of being clamped

The clampers don't give a sh*t about Aldi's customers, all they care about is clamping and making as much money as they can. Aldi must care as we certainly won't spend anymore money there unless we get a refund and our family and friends won't go there either.

testicle

admiralofthefleet wrote: »

happened to people that were visiting arklow for our wedding in june. popped into bridgewater and came out to see their cars clamped. do the clampers realise that people are not going to shop there again for fear of being clamped

In that case they should shell out the pittance it costs to park in Bridgewater's carpark!

kaylden

I think the problem is that a lot of people use the aldi carpark when shopping in bridgewater. It annoys the hell out of me when im trying to get a space and i see people strolling over to the centre :mad: Use the centre carpark fgs. Yes i know they might be popping over to use an atm, before anybody says that
And it couldnt possibly take over an hour to do your shopping in aldi, i wouldnt even spend that long in tesco and its 5 times the size. The queue is never that long anytime ive been there if it is they open another till. I seriously doubt any genuine ALDI customer will get clamped.
If people dont want to pay for parking in the centre they could always use the free carpark thats almost directly behind aldi :rolleyes:

admiralofthefleet

testicle wrote: »

In that case they should shell out the pittance it costs to park in Bridgewater's carpark!

they were up from cork. didnt realise there was a carpark behind bridgewater, like a lot of people
i have to say, im moving home soon and cant wait to get out of arklow. good riddance to the kip of a place

testicle

admiralofthefleet wrote: »

they were up from cork. didnt realise there was a carpark behind bridgewater, like a lot of people
i have to say, im moving home soon and cant wait to get out of arklow. good riddance to the kip of a place

They can't read signs either, it seems.

rrpc

testicle wrote: »

They can't read signs either, it seems.

Yes, signage in a supermarket is such an unusual occurrence. :rolleyes:

I was clamped there yesterday and no, I didn't see the signs and I've shopped there every Friday for years. But then generally I'm in a hurry and usually spend no more than twenty or thirty minutes in the shop, but this time I took an urgent phone call (work related) which necessitated me leaving the store to find a private spot to continue the conversation and after which I continued shoppiing and checked out.

The time stamp on my receipt was 1 minute after the time stamp on the clamp notice.

This could happen again and has happened before (having to take a support call while shopping), so realistically I can't afford the possibility of having my pocket picked whilst doing my weekly grocery shopping.

You can't park in the Bridgewater Centre and shop in Aldi, it would be next to impossible to trolley your groceries back to your car and certainly very time consuming. Dunnes give two hours free parking there for customers and the other supermarkets (Tesco, Lidl and SuperValu) don't charge or clamp.

The manager was quite proud of the fact that the car park was half empty, he may have missed the fact that the store was as well. I may not have noticed the signs, but I did note that there wasn't the usual queue at the checkouts and the shop was relatively empty.

I don't mind paying for parking; around Arklow it's pretty cheap and your ticket will be valid anywhere in the town for the duration you paid for, so it's good value and a no-brainer. The possibility that you could be hit for a whopping €120 when you're legitimately using the car park is also a no-brainer; you just don't go there again. The evidence from yesterday indicates many people have already come to that conclusion.

shinobi2600

At the start of the year the clampers weren't around that much. But when the summer came around and more people were out and about..including people not from arklow..a lot more cars were parking in Aldi. The clampers started making a lot more money then, so since then they've been showing up quite a lot.

I live in the apartments at Bridgewater so I see it all the time and a lot of the people parking there are going off to Bridgewater and strolling the shops, seems people don't want to pay the measly 1 euro for an hour or 2 euro for a full day to park in the center. Or even just use the free gravel car park.

I agree with Aldi getting clampers in to discourage people parking in Aldi just to go to Bridgewater but I definitley think that they should change the time to 2 hours maybe as per the example above, you could get a phone call in there and not see the time go by. And there is always a queue at the tills in there. I know they call someone to open another till but its never a quick process to pay at the tills.

Oh and the worst thing which i'm only just learning from reading this thread......120 euro.....what the hell?!? you wouldn't even pay that much in most parts of the city. I've seen a few people just leaving their cars there when they're clamped and cutting them off in the night....fair play to em i say!

rrpc

shinobi2600 wrote: »

I live in the apartments at Bridgewater so I see it all the time and a lot of the people parking there are going off to Bridgewater and strolling the shops, seems people don't want to pay the measly 1 euro for an hour or 2 euro for a full day to park in the center. Or even just use the free gravel car park.

I agree with Aldi getting clampers in to discourage people parking in Aldi just to go to Bridgewater but I definitley think that they should change the time to 2 hours maybe as per the example above, you could get a phone call in there and not see the time go by. And there is always a queue at the tills in there. I know they call someone to open another till but its never a quick process to pay at the tills.

I understand the problem Aldi has (to a point). The manager I spoke to complained that the other supermarkets didn't have a shopping centre beside them, so didn't have that problem. My response was that Aldi had sited their shop in that location for the very reason of proximity to the shopping centre. It's not unreasonable to expect that your customers will take the opportunity to cross the road to buy a newspaper, have a cup of coffee or even just to use the ATM.

If you have to move your car to another car park, well you just won't, you'll drive off and go somewhere else. Some days there's a queue twenty cars long to get into that car park and the free one is nearly always full.

I used to see a neighbour of mine there every Friday, and she'd alweays go across to TK Maxx after her grocery shopping and browse around for a bit. I haven't seen her there in the last year, so I assume she's fallen foul of the same restriction and decided to shop elsewhere.

It's a dysfunctional solution to a problem that will result in dysfunctional behaviour. People will take the attitude that since they have an hour regardless of whether they're customers or not, they'll use that hour in the centre and not bother shopping in the supermarket.

If I was the manager there, I'd just tell customers that they could have parking there for a couple of hours and all they'd have to do is display their receipt on the dashboard of their car with the date, time and amount clearly visible.

Even if people were using the car park solely to shop in the centre, they'd be obliged to shop in the supermarket and spend at least a tenner.

Problem solved and no customers inconvenienced.

fred funk }{

Since we were clamped we haven't spent a cent in there. We talked to Aldi head office but they were useless, basically told us tough sh*t.

rrpc

fred funk }{ wrote: »

Since we were clamped we haven't spent a cent in there. We talked to Aldi head office but they were useless, basically told us tough sh*t.

Well I've written to them and also the clamping company. I'll see how that develops and then take it from there.

It's really no skin off my nose not to shop there, There are probably a few things I can only get there, but I can do the bulk in Lidl and Tesco and it's actually more convenient for me.

And if I want to go to the Bridgewater, I now know that I can park for an hour there without any risk of being clamped.

mrpdriver

With all due fairness leaving your receipt on the dashboard only proves that you shopped there and now decided to go shopping in a competitors shop but continue to take up a parking space of another person who wants to go shop in Aldi. You're a customer when you are in the store but once you leave its only right that you now give up your parking space to the next person. I worked in Aldi Arklow and only once say someone actually spend over and hour (plus another 30mins grace period) in the store genuinely shopping. This lady had had a stroke and was therefore very slow. She has her fee refunded. All other people when forced to be honest either were shopping in Dunnes, in the shopping centre for lunch, at the cinema etc. etc. And of course everyone claims not to have see the 10 clearly positioned signs in the carpark and another 6 signs in the store stating that clamping was in place. The only sympathy I do have for people is that €120 is excessive but this is not set by Aldi and neither do the get 1 cent of it. Its out of their hands.

Marinjohn

I shop in Aldi all the time,and if my car ever gets clamped by those vultures I will get an angle grinder and cut it off...

-===Lord Shoa =

You can always get a locksmith in and he will pick the lock for a lot less than the clamp release fee some will do it free.
Picking the lock will not damage the lock so they can't complain about damage.
And its a release fee they charge not a clamping fee.
Hope this helps some of you out.

BarryD

mrpdriver wrote: »

With all due fairness leaving your receipt on the dashboard only proves that you shopped there.

With all due fairness, if the person has shopped in Aldi, then presumably the company has benefited in terms of a profit - could be many €s. Why not be happy to let them use the facility for a bit longer, keep them coming back - unless you want to disenchant your customer base?

Mind you, having shopped in Aldi Tullow recently, I'm not so sure about the latter. Long queue, only one checkout open and the operator actually threw my purchases off the counter into the trolley. I was there shifting them in efficiently but not good enough for her or the company policy, it seems.

RiverRaider

Got nailed by the clampers Saturday afternoon last. Came out of Aldi with €46 of weekly shop to find I'd been clamped by being 7 mins over. Do Apcoa (German company who run the carpark) even attempt to justify the €120 to un-clamp? Do Aldi care that Apcoa target their legitimate shoppers? No seems to be the answer. Shop manager couldn't care less, he likes having a half empty car park apparently. I'm writing to Aldi and Apcoa but won't hold my breath. Total stitch up, Arklow Town Council & Wicklow Co Council need to know about this. Boycott Aldi! they'll never get another cent out of me.

fred funk }{

RiverRaider wrote: »

Got nailed by the clampers Saturday afternoon last. Came out of Aldi with €46 of weekly shop to find I'd been clamped by being 7 mins over. Do Apcoa (German company who run the carpark) even attempt to justify the €120 to un-clamp? Do Aldi care that Apcoa target their legitimate shoppers? No seems to be the answer. Shop manager couldn't care less, he likes having a half empty car park apparently. I'm writing to Aldi and Apcoa but won't hold my breath. Total stitch up, Arklow Town Council & Wicklow Co Council need to know about this. Boycott Aldi! they'll never get another cent out of me.

Trust me, you're wasting your time. We did all of that and nothing came of it.

The one thing we did do was send in all of receipts from all of the other local supermarkets where we now spend our money and we let them know that it was money we used to spend in their shop that we now don't.

Michelin

This clamping business is a horrendeous experience to be worrying about when all your doing is going into a small town supermarket to get budget food. I was one of the first to get clamped there a few years ago. Was on the very first day the clampers where hired. Only place I went was Aldi. It was such a crap experience had to call the cops over it. Clamp was removed eventually but it was a dreadful experience. I have not gone anywhere near that supermarket ever since. Why would I? Why would anyone??

Pablo Sanchez

If they say you can stay an hour, and you go over it (unless there are extenuating circumstances) how can you blame anyone but yourself for getting clamped?

I dont know how a person could spend over an hour in an Aldi anyway.

RiverRaider

fred funk }{ wrote: »

Trust me, you're wasting your time. We did all of that and nothing came of it.

The one thing we did do was send in all of receipts from all of the other local supermarkets where we now spend our money and we let them know that it was money we used to spend in their shop that we now don't.

Generic template reply from Aldi "Customer Service". They didn't even read my letter. Like the receipts idea, have posted them my last 3 from Tesco.

RiverRaider

I complained on Aldi's Facebook page. Much more effective than writing. Their Customer Support Department telephoned the next day from Head Office in the UK (where clamping's illegal) and they were very supportive. They didn't know about the clamping here and are investigating the Operations team in Newbridge who sent me (unsigned) generic PFO.

Michelin

RiverRaider wrote: »

I complained on Aldi's Facebook page. Much more effective than writing. Their Customer Support Department telephoned the next day from Head Office in the UK (where clamping's illegal) and they were very supportive. They didn't know about the clamping here and are investigating the Operations team in Newbridge who sent me (unsigned) generic PFO.

Good work RiverRaider!
Sounds like maybe someone in Aldi may be sensible.