Easing Germany's tough laws on shop opening hours was meant to be a great boon to consumers, who are now allowed to shop until 8 p.m. on weekdays and until 4 p.m. on Saturday afternoon. But, as shoppers prepare to hunt for bargains in the winter sales next week, there are signs that many stores are returning to their old restrictive ways after just over a year of the new system.
In the bad old days, most Germans made a frantic dash from work every day to get to the shops before they closed at 6 p.m. Sleeping late on a Saturday morning could mean a weekend without the most basic requirements such as bread and milk because all shops had to close at lunchtime.
The result was a nation of bad-tempered shop assistants and disgruntled shoppers, to say nothing of the bewildered foreign visitors who never ceased to complain about the restrictions.
Defenders of the old system warned that extending opening hours would lead inexorably to unlimited shopping and the end of the traditional German Sunday of empty streets and long, bleak walks for all the family. But new figures show that German shoppers are reluctant to change the habits of a lifetime and that few regularly take advantage of the longer opening hours.
More than half the population say they seldom shop after 6 p.m. or on Saturday afternoons and a quarter claim they have not taken advantage of the changes even once.
Shopkeepers complain that, although more than half of them have extended their hours, only 14 per cent saw sales increase last year. Trade unions claim that, despite promises that longer hours would mean more jobs, most shops are drafting in cheap, part-time staff to cover the extra opening time. They argue that introducing flexible opening hours has only served to confuse shoppers, who yearn for the certainty of the old restrictions.
Most stores will stay open until 8 p.m. until the winter sales end in early February but many are expected to return to early closing after that. Large department stores will probably continue to open late but many smaller shops now feel that the extra service to customers offered by longer opening hours is something they cannot afford to continue.
Consumer groups insist that the longer hours are an unalloyed blessing and that German shoppers simply need more time to become accustomed to them. They say the fall in consumer spending has nothing to do with longer opening hours but is due to rising unemployment and growing job insecurity.
They want opening hours to be extended further to 10 p.m. on weekdays and 6 p.m. on Saturdays, a proposal that has the backing of Berlin's economics minister.
The chief beneficiaries of the remaining restrictions are oil companies such as Shell and Esso who run increasingly profitable 24-hour shops at many service stations. A legal loophole means that these shops are permitted to sell anything a traveller might reasonably require.
A glance along the shelves suggests that travellers' needs have expanded in recent years to include wine, beer, spirits, tobacco, magazines, books and newspapers - as well as a vast array of food. Some service station shops even offer fresh bread and croissants on Sunday mornings, much to the annoyance of Germany's traditional bakers.
Meanwhile, the new opening hours have done nothing to improve the mood of shop assistants, most of whom remain blithely indifferent to customers' wishes. Instead of complaining about the daily, last-minute rush, they now grumble about their long working day. If current trends continue, they will not need to grumble for long and Germany's shoppers will soon return to the old, hectic, ill-tempered pattern they endured for so many years.
