Originally Posted by
GUWonder
Maybe they will go back to using money for cart release, but then it may be using contactless forms of payment/payment hold, but that’s a mess in its own right with costs of various sorts for the cart owners and users.
Originally Posted by
StuckInYYZ
That's the thing. Here in Canada, they won't give you a token or blank or whatever you want to call it. The cashiers/customer service will exchange currency for you, but if you don't want to pay, they'll direct you to a plastic basket (if available). And this is certainly understandable as too often people take the carts off-site and dump them where convenient to to the taker (often in other parking lots or dumped in ravines/sewer intakes)
coin-carts prevent parking lots from getting messy (people return to cart corral, store doesnt have to pay a cart pusher to collect carts)
in usa, a lot of stores put anti-theft on carts. if you push them too far away, the lock triggers and you can't use/push it. prevents someone from taking it away too far from store.
some stores go even more extreme (eg:IKEA, there are barricades to prevent cart from leaving building)
different priorities... we can swap/combine technologies