Right, the Mint doesn't take the coins back, but the Fed does, and now the billion+ coins sit in the Fed vaults, because few people want them. Although trivial on the scale of things, this is money that could have otherwise been deployed to community banks to lend out.

Congress was well intentioned in mandating the issue of the coins, and the Mint was well intentioned in initiating the direct ship progaram, and the coins are more efficient than dollar bills, but there was no way that this was going to succeed without the elimination of the dollar bill.

P.S. It will be interesting to see what the Fed ultimately does with its inventory.