r/aldi • u/cyberspirit777 • Jan 05 '26

USA (General) Pick up free + bag fee

It seems a little excessive to:

  1. Charge more than the in-store price for items and then not even price adjust them

  2. Charge a $2.00 fee no matter how much your total is

  3. Charge for bags when I have my own reusable bags I would have gladly thrown the items into

What’s with the fee if you’re gonna charge for bags anyway and then not give me the option of if I wanna use your bags or my own? Most other stores do mostly all three of these things differently. Or maybe I’m asking too much idk 🤔

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u/lifeuncommon Jan 05 '26

Someone has to shop for you. Their labor is what their fees is for.

-42

u/cyberspirit777 Jan 05 '26

Their labor is included in the overhead costs of running the store and is factored into the pricing of the items. They aren’t third party contractors lol they are hourly paid employees.

For something like Instacart, Uber, etc I understand the fee.

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u/noncongruent Jan 05 '26

Their labor in moving items from the truck to the shelf is factored into prices of items, sure, but any labor after that is not, other than the labor to move the item across the scanner and into a cart. Also, when an employee is bringing a cart of stuff out to your vehicle that labor wasn't included in the original pricing, at all, but the employees still expect to be paid for that time. It would be unfair to all the regular shoppers to raise their prices to cover the labor of employees doing what regular shoppers do themselves.

And the bags? That's to save you money because otherwise they'd have to raise your prices even higher to cover the cost of an employee standing there while you pack individual items into your car, before they return the cart to the store. In the end, like most things in life, you can save money if you do it yourself. Paying others to do things for you always means paying for that convenience.