Snooty answers and annoyed looks: In retail, customers often have to put up with something. There are unfriendly staff everywhere. But the problem seems to be particularly pronounced at Netto and Lidl.
Every employee can have a bad day. This is human and should not be taken personally. It only becomes alarming when the unfriendliness becomes a permanent problem and angry customers vent themselves on the Internet. This is exactly the case with Netto and Lidl.
Netto and Lidl for complaints about unfriendly staff at the front
In an evaluation by the complaint portal Reklamation24, the two discounters are in first and second place (source: Complaint24). But that’s no reason to celebrate, because the top 10 includes the complaints about rude employees. By far 1st place is net. In the period between January and December 2022, the portal counted 1,096 complaints.
Thus, net customers complained more than twice as often about rude staff as in second place Lidl. Here there was 507 complaints. Third place goes to parcel service provider Hermes with 317 complaints.
Remarkable: Complaints about rude employees are particularly high at discounters. Almost half (39 percent) of all complaints that Reklamation24 counted in connection with discounters were based on this.
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Not a representative picture, but numbers worth considering
According to their own statements, Reklamation24 is the largest complaints portal in Germany and has over 250,000 users. But the full truth also includes: The employees at Netto or Lidl deal with hundreds of thousands of customers every day. The total of slightly more than 1,600 complaints at the discounters are therefore not a representative image. Nevertheless, Netto and Lidl should give these numbers food for thought.