4 Lidl Checkout Mistakes That Cost New Jersey Shoppers Every Week

About 80% of what fills Lidl’s shelves is its own private label.

Those labels keep prices low, but no discount grocer is perfect.

These are the Lidl checkout mistakes we think cost New Jersey shoppers the most.

Note: This is general information, not legal advice. New Jersey’s bag and pricing rules are subject to change, so confirm the current details with the New Jersey Attorney General’s office.

1. Skipping the Lidl Plus Scan

Lidl keeps its best prices tucked inside the Lidl Plus app, not printed on the shelf tag.

A cashier can’t apply a member-exclusive price until a shopper scans the app, or types in a phone number, at the register.

Either method works, but one of them has to happen before the total prints.

Skip that step, and the register just rings up the regular price.

Full price. Every time.

The same scan also banks Lidl Points toward the app’s rewards, so a shopper who forgets it loses twice, once on the item in the cart and once on the points that never land.

For a New Jerseyan running the same Lidl loop every week, that’s a discount that disappears, one trip at a time.

2. Walking up Without a Bag

Lidl has never given away a free bag at checkout, in New Jersey or anywhere else it operates.

Not once.

New Jersey’s 2022 bag law adds another layer on top of that, barring any store Lidl’s size from offering even a paper bag: A first violation draws a warning, a second rises to $1,000, and a third or later violation reaches $5,000.

None of that fine lands on the shopper, but the small fee for a bag at the register does, every single trip.

New Jersey’s ban only targets single-use bags, which is why Lidl can still legally sell a thicker, reusable one at the register.

3. Handing Over Paper Coupons

Lidl’s registers turn away manufacturer coupons entirely, the kind clipped from a Sunday circular or printed off a coupon site.

That surprises a lot of regulars who spent years working paper coupons into a normal grocery trip.

No exceptions.

Lidl negotiates its own low price straight from the source instead, skipping the manufacturer-coupon system many supermarkets run.

A New Jerseyan who still tucks a stack of clipped coupons into a wallet before a Saturday Lidl run hands the cashier something the register was never built to scan.

The savings Lidl does offer live inside the Lidl Plus app instead, not on a paper coupon nobody at the register can ring up.

4. Forgetting to Activate Coupons

Lidl Plus doesn’t apply every coupon sitting in the app automatically, even once a shopper scans the phone number or app at checkout.

Each coupon needs its own tap first, activated under the app’s Coupons tab before that shopper ever reaches the register.

Not during. Before.

Skip that tap, and the discount just isn’t there when the total prints, scan or no scan.

That trips up New Jerseyans who assume an open Lidl Plus app at checkout is the whole job.

The app’s coupon lineup also resets weekly, so an activated deal from last week’s trip doesn’t roll over into this one.

What Lidl Points Redeem For

Lidl Plus doesn’t stop at member pricing.

Every scan at the register also banks Lidl Points toward the app’s Rewards Marketplace, a rotating catalog of free products and money-off coupons.

Lidl only counts points toward a shopper’s first five purchases in a single day, a cap that rarely comes up outside a stockpiling run.

Nobody redeems those automatically.

A shopper who never opens the Rewards Marketplace can rack up points for months without ever cashing one in.

New members start with a 50-point welcome bonus just for signing up, a small head start toward that first free item.

Free is still free.

For a New Jerseyan making the same Lidl run every week, that unredeemed pile is worth checking before it’s forgotten entirely.

New Jersey Just Cracked Down on Hidden Pricing Tricks

Lidl shoppers in New Jersey now have a new consumer law on their side, aimed at a pricing trick nobody could see happening at the register.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed the Fair Price Protection Act in July, banning “surveillance pricing,” the practice of using a shopper’s own data to set a different price for the same item without them knowing.

It doesn’t take effect until August 2027, and it carves out ordinary loyalty programs like Lidl Plus, since every member scanning the app gets the identical deal instead of a price tailored to what that one shopper has bought before.

New Jersey’s one-year freeze on new electronic shelf label installations starts that same day, running through August 2028 while regulators study how those digital tags affect prices.

Not banned. Just paused.

Existing digital tags keep running in the meantime, since the freeze only blocks new installations from going in.

Lidl hasn’t announced any digital shelf-tag rollout of its own, and the freeze is aimed mainly at chains like Walmart, which has said it plans to swap paper tags for digital ones across every store.