ONE woman has answered Lidl shoppers prayers with her nifty life hack for those impromptu food shops when you’ve forgotten your £1.
Sophie Valentine, a mum who goes by @lookinsidemygarden on Instagram shocked her fans when she resorted to using a key instead.
A recent clip shows the influencer force her house key into the slot usually reserved for pesky £1 coins that customers often fail to bring.
She’s seen pushing her Yale key into the opening with a bit of force and this unlocks the mechanism, giving her full access to the trolley.
Sophie wrote: “I can’t believe this worked… Does anyone else get to the supermarket and forgot your coin?
“Or like me your special coin sometimes doesn’t work? So I thought I would try my luck and BOOM we’re in!
“Now I can fill my trolley with 26,000 snacks for another week of the holiday munches!”
Customers raced to the comments to thank her for sharing the trusty life hack.
One said: “Wonderful tip! Thanks for sharing. I usually keep a token or a £1 coin with me, but sometimes I don’t bring it in.”
Another added: “Game changer”.
However, not everybody was impressed – and some thought she was asking to break her keys.
Someone penned: “Seems like a good way to end up with no trolley coin and no key!”
Another joked: “Hahaha some people now have fingerprint recognition to open their house door. Good luck.”
But others offered some helpful advice: “use the round side of the key” and “you can do it with the other end of your key too – shouldn’t damage the key teeth then”.
A few years ago we reported that you could even use two 20p coins in place of a £1 to trigger a trolley open.
Usama Shamsan has discovered that by placing two 20p pieces on top of each other, you can trick a trolley’s money mechanism into thinking you’ve inserted a pound.
He posted a video of his supermarket hack on social media with the caption: “When it’s hard times and you don’t have a pound.”
The video racked up nearly 3,000 likes and was shared a whopping 66,00 times.
But hacks like these have been criticised as supermarkets use £1-coin trolley locks to stop them rolling away as well as being pinched by vandals and thieves.
