Comment by unwind

Comment by unwind 2 days ago

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Larger stores in Sweden also use the coin system, even though as in the Netherlands it feels like use is declining in favor of just unlocked carts.

My favorite part of the system in larger stores is that to handle people not carrying cash (Sweden is pretty long-gone in this regard), you can usually go inside the store to get a free plastic token that fits the reader.

That always made me chuckle, since the entire point of the system is that you're supposed to be incentivized to return the cart to get your money back, so by replacing your money with a free plastic token that they hand out from a basket, they did .. something to the overall system design.

Still fun as an example of how the customer's overall experience is more important than the point of an entire security system, I think.

GuB-42 a day ago

> That always made me chuckle, since the entire point of the system is that you're supposed to be incentivized to return the cart to get your money back

It usually takes more time to go inside the store, find an employee who is available to get that plastic chip, go back outside to pick your cart and back to the store than it is to just return the cart so you can get your coin/chip back.

The point is not to stop theft, it is just to incentivize people to put back the cart where it belongs instead of leaving it in the middle of the parking lot.

Anyways, personally, I 3D printed a fake chip that can be removed without reattaching the cart and have it on my keychain. I find it more convenient, and hacking the system is fun. I return the cart anyways.

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prmoustache 2 days ago

> Larger stores in Sweden also use the coin system, even though as in the Netherlands it feels like use is declining in favor of just unlocked carts.

The coins are so that people put them back in their designated storage area, not to prevent theft. A significant fraction of the population are lazy asshole who tend to leave carts next to where their car was parked instead of walking the 10-20 meters it take to return them.

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  • JadoJodo a day ago

    It's not always out of laziness: many times I see moms buckle up their young kids in the car, unload the groceries from the cart, and then be nervous about leaving their kids in order to return the cart. A lot of them will try to park next to the cart return, but that's not always possible.

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    • prmoustache a day ago

      That is a silly excuse and I say this as a dad. If you don't want to leave the kids for 30 seconds, you return the cart with them.

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      • throwway120385 a day ago

        That's a great idea if your kid is less than 15 pounds, but it's very hard to wrangle a willful 2 or 3 year old the 100 feet across a busy parking lot and back to the car without picking them up which is a monumental task for many people. My wife has this issue because our son is more than 30 pounds which is very heavy for her. Every kid is different and people don't always have the same physical abilities as you do.

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      • JadoJodo a day ago

        I'm also a dad, but not everyone has just one kid. Many of the moms who I've seen struggling are doing so because they have 2-4 kids (1-2 newborn, 1-2 under 5).

        There are absolutely lazy people, but it's not always the case.

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        • prmoustache 15 hours ago

          So what are the probability that those 4 kids and their parents are all disabled and unable to move to the coral, and how do they manage to get a shopping cart AND be able to do their actual shopping inside the supermarket with that low amount of mobility?

          People having newborns typically use baby carriers and strollers and when using the later use the storage space of the stroller to carry a significant amount of groceries. Nobody with a sane mind woud grab 2 newborns in the same arm and throw them in an unsafe shopping cart.

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    • valianteffort a day ago

      This is even less than statistically insignificant.

      Every single person that doesn't return their cart does so out of laziness. Besides just being an asshole, the cart will take a potential parking spot that someone else later needs to move to free up, and worst of all the wind could blow the cart into someone elses car.

      Nobody is gonna kidnap her kids as she walks the cart back in less than a minute. It is simply her being a lazy asshole.

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      • JadoJodo a day ago

        > Every single person that doesn't return their cart does so out of laziness. > It is simply her being a lazy asshole.

        I can see that this is a very personal issue for you, so I'll just say this: People are complicated, and I would encourage you to have more grace for them. If it bothers you that much to see a cart left by a mom struggling with kids, you might consider offering to return it on her behalf.

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  • wildzzz a day ago

    Right, getting your quarter back is enough incentive to return a cart. If you were just planning on stealing a free cart, now it only costs a quarter.

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  • Harvesterify 2 days ago

    As a french living in the Netherlands, the first time I saw this behavior was in the US (SF and LA), it just never happens here, or very marginally.

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    • prmoustache a day ago

      I have definitely seen it in Europe. France, Spain, Italy and even Switzerland.

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      • PetitPrince a day ago

        Haven't seen that in Switzerland but most place I see where a shopping cart is really warranted (large stores, Ikea, etc.) have covered parking spots instead of open-air (and/or are smaller than those giant parking lot we can see in the US). My hypothesis is that of the panopticon: since those are smaller space that anti-social behavior is way more noticeable and will not be tolerated by peers.

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    • [removed] a day ago
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riedel 14 hours ago

Germany is a cash country and the 1 EUR thing is quite popular. However, it is more common these days that people use specially crafted tools on their keyring to unlock the carts [0]. Before that it was plastic coins because the locks had drawers. The plastic chips are actually popular just because you cannot pay with them and this will not fail to have one the next time shopping. If hacking is more convenient than the real system, it will become mainstream.

[0] https://www.amazon.de/Caianwin-Shopping-Trolley-Stainless-Re...

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eloisant 2 days ago

You probably don't want to go get a plastic coin inside each time you get to the shop, so getting yours back is still more convenient.

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Ghoelian 2 days ago

> That always made me chuckle, since the entire point of the system is that you're supposed to be incentivized to return the cart to get your money back

I always kinda doubted that part, or at least its effectiveness. Iirc a 50 eurocent coin will unlock most trolleys, which is pretty cheap for a whole ass trolley.

And sure enough, there's a lot of elderly people that just have a shopping trolley in their yard or something. This morning I found one randomly in our bike shed.

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  • seszett 2 days ago

    > which is pretty cheap for a whole ass trolley.

    It's not an incentive to "not steal the trolley", it's an incentive to put it back in its place for people who were already not planning on stealing one.

    This way the store and the customers don't have to deal with trolleys strewn around everywhere and blocking parking spaces, among other advantages.

    I think when they removed the coins during Covid they just noticed that most people were already well-behaved enough to return the carts to their places, so the incentive is just not needed anymore. Actually in Belgium, Colruyt had never had coins for their carts and it just works.

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    • CPLX 16 hours ago

      > it's an incentive to put it back in its place for people who were already not planning on stealing one.

      It’s also an incentive for anyone else.

      If I put the coin in and then leave the cart in the lot anyways, someone who wanders by is also incentivized to grab it and put it back, as they would get a free coin.

      The system is actually somewhat elegant, if you return the cart you pay nothing and if you don’t you pay a small fine to whoever does.

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    • thaumasiotes 2 days ago

      In the United States, carts are free. There is a stereotype that homeless people have shopping carts in which they keep their things.

      There's no particular need to change this, because one person can only use so many shopping carts. If you maintain the price at "free", demand saturates and people stop stealing carts.

      It's common for people to return carts to a designated area, and it's also not rare for people to just leave the carts somewhere convenient for them. Store employees periodically go around and move the carts back to the place where you expect to pick them up.

      Costco is an interesting hybrid case. They make it easy to return the carts "correctly" by providing little depots scattered throughout their enormous parking lot. Realistically, the parking lot is so large that very few people would be willing to return a cart to the front of the store, where you get the cart from if you're going shopping.

      However, people also aren't going to pick up carts from those depots deep within the parking lot and wheel them over to the store. So Costco employees still have to make rounds of the parking lot and move carts that have been left there to their correct location at the front of the store. But for Costco, you're supposed to leave the cart in the parking lot, but only in certain locations.

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      • dmd a day ago

        You say this like it’s only Costco that has return bays. I’ve rarely encountered ANY store that has shopping carts but doesn’t have return bays throughout the parking lot.

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      • netsharc a day ago

        You should actually read the comment you reply to...

        > If you maintain the price at "free", demand saturates and people stop stealing carts.

        If the price is $1, the same people who'll steal them will keep stealing them (with a screwdriver it's easy to pry your coin back out of the slot anyway).

        > it's also not rare for people to just leave the carts somewhere convenient for them

        With the coin, guess what... it will be rarer, because the people have incentive to get their coin back. At least in theory. And if someone doesn't care about their change, some enterprising kids might return the carts anyway to gain some money, and the end result for the supermarket is the same: carts at their designated return locations. The worker just has to go to 3 or 4 of these locations instead of running up and down the parking lot collecting all the stray carts.

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      • vel0city a day ago

        Those "depots" are commonly called cart corrals.

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  • ljf 2 days ago

    This brought back a memory of living in Byron Bay Australia in 1999 - there was a person who’s full time job was driving around town with a trailer, collecting shopping trolleys and returning them to the Woolworths supermarket.

    I’d never seen that in the uk - but maybe that town was the sweet spot in size where it was small enough that you could actually get home with a trolley (and it was nice and flat), and maybe the number of visitors passing through meant rules got broken more - though the trolleys were more in the suburban areas than just where the hostels were.

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    • Moru a day ago

      I still see that in our town except he drives around maybe once a year. It just isn't a problem here. Even with unlocked carts now.

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    • [removed] a day ago
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  • archievillain 2 days ago

    The coin isn’t supposed to stop you from stealing the whole cart, it’s supposed to stop you from abandoning the cart in the parking lot.

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nielsole a day ago

The plastic coin is the only coin in my wallet I won't accidentally spend. Ironically while the replacement is free in theory that single plastic holds _higher_ value to me than a regular coin it replaced.

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  • stavros a day ago

    That's what's always puzzled me as well. There are keychains with such a "coin" magnetically attached, and I've always thought "if I lose a euro, I've lost a euro. If I lose this token, I'll have to buy a whole other keychain!"

    Why would I buy something I really don't want to lose to replace something I kinda don't want to lose?

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Moru a day ago

Most places in north Sweden has stopped locking the carts. Sadly some youth took all carts and filled the car parking lot with them. And made some tiktok post about it. So it wont take long until the carts all get a lock again.

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