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>depositing a quarter for a cart eliminates the need to pay people to collect carts Years ago when I read the bit in Freakonomics about the daycare that instit
by blotter_paper 7y ago
>depositing a quarter for a cart eliminates the need to pay people to collect carts
Years ago when I read the bit in Freakonomics about the daycare that instituted an additional charge for picking kids up late to discourage the practice but found that the rate of late pickups increased instead because parents felt like they were paying for the service of extra daycare thus alleviating the guilt, I immediately thought of Aldi carts. Do Aldi carts get stolen more per use than Price Cutter carts because people have to pay a quarter for them? I know that's both not what the quarter is for and not what it is attempting to discourage, and I'm not claiming it necessarily does have this effect... I just wonder if people can somehow rationalise taking carts easier when they have to pay something for it.
- Maxion 7y agoVirtually all grocery stores in Finland works with this principle. Coin for a cart. It works remarkably well, people want their coins back.
- seszett 7y agoIt's a whole euro though, so maybe it's high enough that it has more effect than a quarter dollar. Though not all stores have a deposit for carts, Colruyt in Belgium doesn't for example, and I don't see carts lying around.
- blotter_paper 7y agoI've seen it work! If I hadn't, I might question it. My comment wasn't wondering whether there are more carts left in the parking lot of an Aldi or a Price Cutter, it was wondering if more carts get taken off property entirely and used for other purposes. If that's your goal, a quarter is pretty negligible. Years ago I worked at motel near an Aldi and a WalMart, and saw a good number of both companies' carts left in the parking lot. More WalMart carts, for sure, but they also get more traffic. I used Price Cutter as an example instead of WalMart because I think some people have a special hatred for that particular company that might make stealing from a WalMart easier to rationalise for other reasons (I'm not making a value judgement about that, just stating it as something I've anecdotally observed). Efit: s/anf/and
- Galaxeblaffer 7y agoYou don't pay for the cart, when you put the card back you get your quarter back.
- RandomTisk 7y agoOwning a shopping cart at the house would be the epitome of low class in my opinion.
- blotter_paper 7y agoPutting aside your classism and focusing on the observation of human behavior, I've seen people do this who regularly used the same stolen cart to get groceries (sometimes from different stores). I've also seen people use a cart to get their food back home and then just leave it nearby without the intent of further ownership, even bringing more carts from the same store and putting them more-or-less next to each other rather than push an empty cart back to the grocery store.
- apexalpha 7y agoTo be honest I live in Europe and it's more about getting the quarter back so that you have one for the next time rather than 25c.
- Doxin 7y agoEven if someone leaves their cart around, someone else is bound to drag it along if they are gonna pass the cart corral anyways: it's free money.