this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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Why not use the European system where you have to use a coin to unlock the cart from the stack. People are more likely to return the cart if it costs them money if they don’t and if they still leave the cart out some kid or hobo will return it eventually.
Some stores in the US do this, most notably Aldi. It's kind of a pain in the ass, especially in an increasingly cashless society.
Names a European store.
They sell like coin shaped discs you can put on your keyring, dunno if that's a thing in the US though.
Yes, I know Aldi started in Europe.
My point was, they have stores in the US, and their stores in the US also do this. Which is unusual for US stores. Trader Joe's, for example (which is also owned by one of the Aldi companies) just has regular carts without the coin chain things.
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That's not correct, actually. There were two brothers who inherited Aldi, and they did have a falling out over cigarettes, but they actually split the company in two - Aldi Nord (North) and Aldi Sud (South). As the names imply, they operate the Aldi stores in North and South Germany respectively.
In other countries, either Aldi Nord or Aldi Sud operates the Aldi stores, but they do not directly compete with each other. The exception is the US, where Aldi Sud operates the Aldi stores and Aldi Nord operates Trader Joe's (which the original owner of Aldi bought from Joe Coulombe in 1979).
Huh, that sounds familiar too. Looks like I screwed this up last time I researched the history of Trader Joe’s for some post like this.
You can 3D print a tool that lets you unlock the cart, then pull the tool back out, so you don't need to leave anything (coin or otherwise) in the cart to use it.
A good option if it's available to you, as long as it's tough enough, would suck if it broke up in there.
I mean, yeah. Aldi is European but has locations in the US. They're the only store here that does this afaik. I've never seen the keyring thing but sincw no other stores need a coin I'd have to shop at Aldi a lot to justify ordering one online.
It was tongue in cheek. But it does make sense a European chain would bring that over to the US.
They give those out at the shop info where I live
Because we're not savages, and can return the carts like a civilized society.
“Civilized”
So civilized in fact, there are monetized YouTube channels dedicated to catching & shaming people for not returning their carts.
So it’s kind of like the European system in a way. Instead of getting a coin for returning an abandoned shopping cart, you can get a subscriber count & ad revenue!
That cart narc guy is absolutely obnoxious. Sure I get his angle, and perhaps some people need to be shamed into doing the right thing, but I'm amazed no one has run him over yet.
He had a firearm pulled on him once actually, he walked away very quickly while continuing the bit haha
Yeah I think I saw that, a contractor in his work van in Texas I believe
So civilised.
Well we clearly can't. Even the existence of corrals shows it's too much to return a cart to a store we just walked out of with said cart.
Can we just use the nordic system where people are not fucking savages and bring their carts back? I hate people who don't return their carts but I hate even more when I need coins to unlock the cart. I haven't carried coins since 2014.
I live in a Nordic country, we have carts which need a coin, most people have a thing on their keychain to unlock a cart, majority of carts are returned.
I need to get one of those, my local (rural) grocery stores don't have the locking shopping carts and I alway forget to bring a coin when I need to unlock one.
In fact, we are so used to taking them back that we even return shopping carts that we have unlocked without a coin.
Uh, maybe that's an unfortunate design.
My local aldi does this and still when I get there I find like 3 trolleys scattered around the tiny carpark. I can only grab like two max to take with me to the pen.
Yeah. For a lot of people a quarter is nothing and worth tossing for the convenience of not being a decent person.
Yeah for me the real value here is where the hell am I going to get another quarter. I use my phone to pay and don’t carry cash.
Whenever I go to Aldi (US) there's usually at least a couple carts with quarters left in the parking lot so I just put them back. The quarters pile up in my car until I eventually bring them inside.
Fine, they can subsidize the cart retrieval employee cost.
Also I discussed this with someone in the UK once and they pay an entire pound for a cart… we do quarters because it’s the largest denomination common coin in the US.
True. Come to think of it, at least with the coin system there is an incentive for another customer to bring the cart back.
On the flip side, where I live people sometimes bring their cart back but don't connect it to the others, so that somebody else can use it without needing a quarter. Those people are nice. :)
You can and will replace the coin with something worthless of equal shape and size.
As an American, coins are already basically worthless.
Some might think it's the price for a cheap shopping cart. In German there was a comedian who did a prank call at a store, telling them he bought 500 carts for 500€ and use them as rabbit cages.
The math ain't mathing here.
German humor is no laughing matter
Oh of course the Europeans have done it better than us
Food Maxx in the U.S. employed this in low income areas to prevent cart thefts. So, that's nice.
If you want to prevent theft then I feel like 50 cents deposit isn't going to cut it
This is how it is at about half the big grocery stores where I live in Canada
Wait is that an european only thing?
Because then we can't use it as an arbitrary metric for judging people's moral righteousness.
This was very common in Canada in the late 80s and 90s with a couple chains still doing it today.