Spent the past couple weeks in France visiting my wife’s family, and was surprised that most of the stores had the coin locks but were not using them, as in they had all been disconnected so you didn’t need to use a coin to release them. I think the only store we needed coins at was E.Leclerc.
Interesting. Presumably, enough of their customers now show up without the appropriate coins, due to electronic payment methods being available otherwise, that they decided to not require coins.
Here in Germany, where we hold onto cash a bit more dearly due to our Stasi-past, I don’t know any shop where I can take a shopping cart without sticking a coin in…
Yeah there’s a few in Canada too that still use the coin. They usually will give you a coin to use if you go to customer service and ask. Most places just gave up though and abandoned that system. I wonder if it was costing them more to try to maintain or something. I’d imagine that people who have a cart tend to buy more, whereas if they’re forced to use baskets because they don’t have a coin, they might not buy as much. I know that’s the case for me at least.
A local shop here only has shopping carts, no baskets. You can get smaller shopping carts, and in fact even shopping carts for toddlers to push around, but you still need a coin for those.
And yep, I’ve genuinely been stood in front of that shop and went back home, because I didn’t have an appropriate coin. I think, even twice already.
I could have bought a small item to have them hand me out coins and then done another loop with the shopping cart, but yeah, there was just no way, I’d waste that much time.
I mean, I said “coin” but really I didn’t even mean “coin” as in “currency” but “coin-shaped piece of plastic that I have for this purpose”. The system has been in use here for decades now and I’d imagine that people using currency for carts are the exception. We all have the plastic substitute coins on our keychains. Was there a lot of pushback against the “coin operated” carts in Canada that nobody bothered with distributing replacement chips?
Spent the past couple weeks in France visiting my wife’s family, and was surprised that most of the stores had the coin locks but were not using them, as in they had all been disconnected so you didn’t need to use a coin to release them. I think the only store we needed coins at was E.Leclerc.
Interesting. Presumably, enough of their customers now show up without the appropriate coins, due to electronic payment methods being available otherwise, that they decided to not require coins.
Here in Germany, where we hold onto cash a bit more dearly due to our Stasi-past, I don’t know any shop where I can take a shopping cart without sticking a coin in…
Yeah there’s a few in Canada too that still use the coin. They usually will give you a coin to use if you go to customer service and ask. Most places just gave up though and abandoned that system. I wonder if it was costing them more to try to maintain or something. I’d imagine that people who have a cart tend to buy more, whereas if they’re forced to use baskets because they don’t have a coin, they might not buy as much. I know that’s the case for me at least.
A local shop here only has shopping carts, no baskets. You can get smaller shopping carts, and in fact even shopping carts for toddlers to push around, but you still need a coin for those.
And yep, I’ve genuinely been stood in front of that shop and went back home, because I didn’t have an appropriate coin. I think, even twice already.
I could have bought a small item to have them hand me out coins and then done another loop with the shopping cart, but yeah, there was just no way, I’d waste that much time.
I mean, I said “coin” but really I didn’t even mean “coin” as in “currency” but “coin-shaped piece of plastic that I have for this purpose”. The system has been in use here for decades now and I’d imagine that people using currency for carts are the exception. We all have the plastic substitute coins on our keychains. Was there a lot of pushback against the “coin operated” carts in Canada that nobody bothered with distributing replacement chips?