Lidl has paid out £25,000 to a shopper after wrongly accusing him of breaking the rules of a 5p Christmas veg offer.
The shopper was accused of attempting to buy more than the permitted quota of packs of 5p shallots at Lidl’s Whalley Banks store in Blackburn in December last year.
Lidl’s discount Christmas veg offer comes with a limit of three packs per customer per veg, which deters other retailers from buying larger quantities to resell in their stores.
The shopper accused Lidl of racial profiling and filed a claim for £25,000 under the Equality Act, using the government’s online civil money claims service, after being refused service at the store.
Lidl failed to file defence within the time limit and a County Court judgment was made in the shopper’s favour by default.
“While I was at or near the checkout area, I was suddenly approached by a male member of staff and accused of coming into the store twice that morning,” said the shopper, who chose not to be named. “This allegation was completely false – I had only entered the store once.
“As a person from a minority background, I experienced the incident as racial profiling. Being stopped, challenged, and denied service in that way made me feel I had been singled out because of my race.”
He said the accusation was made in front of other customers and staff and the incident triggered a panic attack related to a recognised mental health condition. A store manager who was summoned “walked away without resolving anything”.
The shopper said he received a “generic” apology from Lidl seven days after the incident, but felt this insufficient to address the harm caused. He filed his claim after the matter remained “unresolved for several months”, in which he had “repeated contact” with Lidl and even contacted his MP for assistance.
Lidl paid the £25,000 claim after court enforcement officers attended its head office in Tolworth, south west London, on 15 June. The discounter was also ordered to pay £1,250 costs.
“This entire incident began over three packs of Lidl’s 5p Christmas vegetables – specifically the 5p shallots – with other shopping,” said the shopper.
Cut-price veg has become an annual battleground to win the Christmas shop, with supermarkets scrambling to undercut each other in the week leading to 25 December. Aldi, Lidl and Morrisons set a new low of 5p in December 2025.
A Lidl spokesperson said: “We are committed to fostering an inclusive, welcoming environment for every customer and colleague. We have a zero-tolerance policy towards discrimination of any kind, and we take any allegations of this nature extremely seriously.
“While we are unable to comment on individual legal proceedings, we can confirm that, due to an administrative error made by a third party, we were regrettably unable to submit our defence for one of the sets of proceedings within the required time frame and as such a default judgment was made.”
As the judgment was made in the claimant’s favour by default, no court made a finding of discrimination against Lidl or its employees.
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