Pay for bags, scan my own shopping – now pay for a trolley!?

Maya123 said :

Fairdinkum said :

Unfortunately though, a few people don’t have credit cards for that to be acceptable.

Hmm I don’t think there’s any inherent right to use a shopping trolley. People get chased for not returning baskets upon leaving the store. The goalposts for acceptable behaviour can be moved. People can dump their own shopping jeeps in the stormwater drain… I mean majestic Yarralumla Creek.

Himeno said :

Maya123 said :

If the supermarkets introduced an incentive for people to report stolen trolleys; whether they are on someone’s front lawn, or in a creek, there would still be work for some trolley collectors to go retrieve the trolleys. Perhaps for each trolley reported, the person reporting where the trolley is, could go into a draw each month for free groceries.

Funny you say that.
http://trolleytracker.com.au/

I guess you haven’t seen the posters about it at the fronts of many supermarkets?

No I haven’t. I should give them a challenge and report the trolley or multiple trolleys in the storm water drain under Manuka. I’m not sure by the mess though that they would be keen to go and get them.

Maya123 said :

If the supermarkets introduced an incentive for people to report stolen trolleys; whether they are on someone’s front lawn, or in a creek, there would still be work for some trolley collectors to go retrieve the trolleys. Perhaps for each trolley reported, the person reporting where the trolley is, could go into a draw each month for free groceries.

Funny you say that.
http://trolleytracker.com.au/

I guess you haven’t seen the posters about it at the fronts of many supermarkets?

Cleob said :

Not sure where in Canberra you are shopping but we have been paying for trolleys at Kippax for a couple of years now. Both Aldi and Woolworths trolleys need coins or tokens. Not really any more inconvenient than bringing your own bags. I have an aldi token and make a habit of leaving a couple of coins in the car’s ashtray.

In cases like that, the installation of the locks to the Coles/Woolworths trolleys was due to Aldi having always had trolley locks and people going to the neighboring Coles/Woolworths and taking one of theirs instead of using the Aldi trolley.

GCS14 said :

Himeno said :

Now, the government is fining the store. Any trolley the government finds outside the shopping center carpark. results in a $7,500 fine if it has a lock and $45,000 if it doesn’t. Per trolley.

That’s pretty steep. Got a source for that?

The memo read out by the store manager at work on Monday morning when the instruction came through that we had to start locking the trolleys.

Anyway, people have already started destroying trolleys over this. The collectors bought back 2 to the store today to show the manager. 1 had had the lock box snapped off, bottom half still attached with the push bar bent. Another had the bar snapped.

The Lanyon shops have a Woolworths and an Aldi, about 100 metres apart. The Aldi has had coin-deposit trolleys since forever as part of its cost-cutting model. It’s been common to see people bringing Woolworths trolleys into the Aldi store – if you see someone wheeling around a half-depth trolley in Aldi, it’s from Woolworths, because Aldi don’t have them. Now it might be easier to get a half-depth trolley at Woolworths if people can’t bring one over to Aldi and leave it in the Aldi car park without cost.

While at the Lanyon shops today, I saw few trolleys around where I was parked towards the McDonalds end of the car park. Maybe people are returning the trolleys at Woolworths’ entrance and carrying their groceries in bags to their cars.

650+ words for an all-purpose whinge to explain that something that’s not the supermarkets’ fault when it is actually their fault.

I get that paying for trolleys is a drag, but seeing washed up trolleys dumped all over the place is also a drag. Rightly or wrongly it’s been decided that the supermarkets should be responsible for their trolleys when dumped off-site and given that nothing else has worked to date we need to see if this cash-for-trolley concept works. The fact it has been so widely implemented elsewhere tends to suggest it will.

When I was in Adelaide a few weeks back, the trolleys are free to use (Coles was the only supermarket there) but a GPS-type system attached to each trolley makes the wheels lock up if customers try to take them beyond the shopping centre car-park perimeter.

Wonder if the OP was at Woolworths Woden the other day as I saw an assistant trying to explain this new procedure to a loud, overwrought customer…

Fairdinkum said :

Wonder if this will make shopping trolley collectors loose their job as their work will now become redundant.

There will still be those who will think nothing of wasting a dollar coin and still dump the trolley, so still work for trolley collectors. After all, some people waste money on fags and the like, so what’s an extra dollar to them! Octagonalman’s $50 suggestion would likely work; though it probably wouldn’t need to be that high to work. I bet $10 would work; maybe even $5. Unfortunately though, a few people don’t have credit cards for that to be acceptable. But one day we may have a $5 coin. If you return the trolley it won’t cost you anything.

If the supermarkets introduced an incentive for people to report stolen trolleys; whether they are on someone’s front lawn, or in a creek, there would still be work for some trolley collectors to go retrieve the trolleys. Perhaps for each trolley reported, the person reporting where the trolley is, could go into a draw each month for free groceries.

I am surprised that there aren’t people offering to return trolleys in exchange for the dollar coin. Overseas I have had this happen to me. A nuisance though, being approached.

octagonalman said :

Perhaps it’d be better to have a system where it takes a $50 deposit (like Melbourne Bike Share) on your payment card. That way there’d be real incentive to return the trolley and you don’t need coins.

🙂

Wonder if this will make shopping trolley collectors loose their job as their work will now become redundant.

Not sure where in Canberra you are shopping but we have been paying for trolleys at Kippax for a couple of years now. Both Aldi and Woolworths trolleys need coins or tokens. Not really any more inconvenient than bringing your own bags. I have an aldi token and make a habit of leaving a couple of coins in the car’s ashtray.

storming over and speaking rudely to a person doing their job is not cool.

what do i think??? it’s really a first world problem. i agree with the others – you are not paying for the trolley. and again, if you’d seen the token slots for ages… well you probably should’ve realised it was coming

Perhaps it’d be better to have a system where it takes a $50 deposit (like Melbourne Bike Share) on your payment card. That way there’d be real incentive to return the trolley and you don’t need coins.

GCS14 said :

Himeno said :

Now, the government is fining the store. Any trolley the government finds outside the shopping center carpark. results in a $7,500 fine if it has a lock and $45,000 if it doesn’t. Per trolley.

That’s pretty steep. Got a source for that?

http://www.tccs.act.gov.au/territory-services/city_rangers/changes_to_shopping_trolley_legislation_litter_act_2004 failure to ensure trolleys remain in shopping centre precentor results in a fine equivalent to 60 units where one unit is $550 so that’s $33,000. However if a containment system exists (lock boxes) this does not apply

Rachel Ziv wrote, “Pay for bags”
! ! ! !
Only if you don’t take bags with you. I have never paid for a bag.

The ACT gov causing more inconvenience to your day . No doubt the pollies get Woolies/Coles home shopping and never get to experience the shortfalls of the stupid idea. Then we need too pay a committee to experience it for them and report back in 6 months ,

I wonder if the bureaucrats are under estimating the Bogans resolve to be Bogans I,m sure they are not beyond busting open a lock. But I can’t help feeling there is another lost opportunity for employing our kids along with the self serve checkouts and with all these cost saving measures I,m pretty sure the price of my groceries are’nt any cheaper but I guess the shareholders are happy.

The Government does charge for trolleys off the environs of the supermarkets but there are far more effective ways of controlling trolleys being taken outside of an area. One is a lock wheel system. Simply what it does is lock a wheel if you go beyond a line around the area determined by the trolley owner.
There are two reasons the supermarkets won’t use this:
The first is cost. This system is not cheap but is far more effective than paying 35 cents to use a trolley if you don’t return it.
The second is they still have to have trolley collectors where as with the “return to get your token/money back” system the shopper does most of that work.
You can buy any number devices that can be pulled out after the chain is released online. As there is not intent to defraud (you get your money back anyway) they do not damage the coin system in any way (the system is very primitive and most devices are made of plastic) and the supermarkets will all tell you are not being charged to use the trolley there would seem to be no law broken in using them. Children or young adults may see these devices as a way to remove trolleys and take them off site.
Why bother when you can get a device for 35 cents from Woolworths and it may well stop your car from being damaged by trolleys that get left near your car by people who seem to think the instant they leave a car parking space it becomes a trolley collection point?
The one area of this that must be addressed by the supermarkets is properly convenient bays for the return of trolleys especially for older people who find pushing a trolley up a hill difficult.

bd84 said :

You can leave your kids in the car for the 1 minute it takes to walk your trolley to the trolley bays. They will not die in that time.

But they can be kidnapped? Also, it can take a lot longer than 1 minute to get your trolley all the way back to the store, as in the case of Kippax, which has no trolley bays in the car park. You first have to cross the street and go inside the store, so you now have lost sight of your kids, something you should never do. If the car has been out in the sun while you were shopping, it could be a nice 50 plus degrees in there. You can’t obviously leave the engine running to cool them either, so there isn’t another option but to drag them with you all the way back to the store. Some trolley bays in the car park would go a long way to making it a more pleasant experience.
Tonight I noticed that there were only about twenty trolleys left in the store at Kippax, what happened to them all?

I am all for the security measures but having to drag the trolley across the car park looking for somewhere to collect your $1 token is not worth the effort. As explained already, there is no standard, so without going back to the store your chances of finding a suitable key is not so good. More trolleys will end up left on traffic islands and footpaths, especially on hot or rainy days. I guess the beggars will just make their money returning abandoned trolleys to their owners.

Himeno said :

Now, the government is fining the store. Any trolley the government finds outside the shopping center carpark. results in a $7,500 fine if it has a lock and $45,000 if it doesn’t. Per trolley.

That’s pretty steep. Got a source for that?

I lost all sympathy the moment you admitted being rude to and ranting at a staff member. No matter how irritated you are that’s not ok.
I get it can be a bit annoying to not have coins, but seriously I think you need to relax a bit and just either carry a single coin or get a token.

It’s been coming for a while when they started installing the locks on the trolleys. When that started, no one had any idea why the locks had started appearing. Found out this last Monday what the deal was (after all the remaining trolleys without locks were removed from the store on Friday afternoon pending locks being installed).

It’s caused by the government with another update to the 2004 Litter Act. Before (under the 2011 amendments), every trolley had to have a sticker identifying which store owned it, so the store could be contacted to come remove it should any be found outside that shopping centers carpark.
Now, the government is fining the store. Any trolley the government finds outside the shopping center carpark. results in a $7,500 fine if it has a lock and $45,000 if it doesn’t. Per trolley.

I feel your pain and frustration and completely sympathise with those who have young children, have additional needs or are elderly. I too have experienced discontent at the pay shopping trolley situation… out to do my week.y groceries at Belconnen, with no change on hand to get a trolley I went to an atm and withdrew cash, then had to break the notes to get coins… saying to myself “Oh well I guess I will have to ensure I have coins in the future.” However on completion of shopping, I went to return my trolley in a carpark bay, which had an Aldi trolley in it, so mine didn’t fit. Ok the next bay was for Coles trolleys, it would of been fine except the last Coles trolley in it was the smaller variety and mine was larger so it didn’t fit, the third bay had a Kmart trolley in it, again mine didn’t fit… yes 4th try lucky. Why didn’t I just forgo my gold coin? Well maybe once or twice that would be Ok, but I’m not the only one who can’t afford to ‘hire’ a trolley each time I shop? I did speak to the store manager who advised me to buy a device from the key cutting place which accesses all trolleys. Seriously though, if they are going to introduce this why can’t the stores get their act together and make all trolleys the same size so they can all be returned to any bay? Hmm local IGA is looking more appealing.

I agree that supermarkets needed to do something to rid the ‘burbs of discarded trolleys, but they need to take one more step,
I have lost several dollars after trying to return large trolleys to the holding bay, only to find small trolleys in the bay making it impossible for my trolley chain to reach the coin return apparatus because I can’t push the trolley in far enough. Would a 2nd lane for smaller trolleys be possible?
I’ve resorted to online grocery shopping and it’s saving me money with fewer impulse buys.

Kippax have had this system in place for years now, and it’s great. No longer do you see an empty car park, go to pull in, only to realise that someone’s left a trolley sitting in the middle of it.

Here’s a pro tip for you though. If you’re short a dollar coin, just head into the self service registers, and do a $1 cash out. You don’t pay any fees, and although their default options are for larger amounts you can key in your own amount. I’ve done this a few times when I’ve been caught out, works brilliantly.

I regularly shop at Woolies in Dickson and always wonder about the beggars there… not just the ones that are talking on their mobiles while having a ciggie … but more the fact that a lot of people would probably be willing to ‘pay’ $1 or $2 to have someone help with their groceries and return the trolley – while I am occasionally a sucker for some beggars I would have thought many of them are missing out on a ‘business’ idea…

No there isn’t another solution. The government has tried the gentle approach for years and it didn’t work. We get 10 to 15 trolleys per day abandoned in our street. The number is already dropping. It actually saves money as ALDI found years ago. That is one reason they are so cheap. They also don’t have self checkouts for the same reason. If you are so rich you can shop at Coles and Woolies the carrying a dollar coin wont cause a problem.

Serina Huang said :

100m or longer is a long way to go when you have little people who are tired and cranky and want to go home. Many shopping centres are not really designed with young families in mind, even though often (but not always) it the mother who does the shopping. I can see why online shopping has become so popular.

My former local shopping centre has coin slots. Pre kids I actually used to walk to the supermarket avoid driving, but logistically this is no longer so easy with two little people in tow as the distance is too far for them.

You can leave your kids in the car for the 1 minute it takes to walk your trolley to the trolley bays. They will not die in that time.

The lazy people who just dump their trolley in the middle of the car parks or think they’re entitled to walk they groceries all the way home in the trolley is exactly why we now have the coin/token system.

They’re probably the same self-entitled fools who used to demand a plastic bag for their one chocolate bar or loaf of bread.

Unfortunately we can’t legislate against idiot people, and legislate the object instead.

“It makes me sad that this is the way of the future. If (apparently) we can only walk as slow as our slowest community members, then we must all find a dollar in our pockets to compensate for slackos that dump them in the park.”

It’s also the way of the past, and the present – and this dismal reality explains quite a bit about the ever-growing size and cost of government. The fact that the resultant bureaucracy (not to mention associated consultancies etc. etc.) helps to keep so many people in the manner to which they have become accustomed, is one of the reasons why views along the lines you have expressed are usually not well-received in this town……

100m or longer is a long way to go when you have little people who are tired and cranky and want to go home. Many shopping centres are not really designed with young families in mind, even though often (but not always) it the mother who does the shopping. I can see why online shopping has become so popular.

My former local shopping centre has coin slots. Pre kids I actually used to walk to the supermarket avoid driving, but logistically this is no longer so easy with two little people in tow as the distance is too far for them.

Serina Huang said :

The really difficult bit, when juggling kids, is getting the trolley back so that you can get your coins returned. Most trolley collection are a long way from the car, so you have to go out to the car with kids in tow, but your groceries away, then put the kids back in the trolley (or make them walk) and return the trolley. These days I opt for small shops using a bag, and yes that is a challenge with two kids but easier than using a trolley.

So what did you previously do with your trolley when you were done with it? Leave it lying around in the middle of the carpark for someone else to navigate around and return to the trolley bay in the carpark? Most trolley bays are no more than 50-100m from any park at shopping centres.

Why do we as a society always expect that we should receive things for free? Especially when we do nothing to justify this convenience previously offered by stores, but instead make their lives harder for them in return by leaving trolleys all over the place, tossing our rubbish, berating checkout staff when they did pack your bags for you, etc

Best belly laugh I have had in a while. Thanks

FYI you are not paying a brass razoo to use the trolley. You are making a deposit that says you will return it to a collection point at which point you will get your money back. Oh and if you are the first trolley everyone I’ve ever seen either has an old trolley chained to the front of the pay or they have a chain connected to the bay to connect to to get your money back.

As for buying $5 worth of tokens clearly you don’t understand the system. You use a coin or you buy one that you attach to your key ring and use again and again.

Kind of bad that the government has to legislate this kind of thing but you can thank the drop kicks who think it is their right to push their shopping home in a trolley. And I’ve seen them come from all walks of life. Druggies, students, oldies you name it. This at least gives them some incentive to either return the trolleys or a fiscal penalty for doing the wrong thing.

And of course nothing new what so ever. Aldi has been doing it for as long as I remember and Coles and Woolies in certain areas for years too.

GCS14 said :

Until you can convince people to stop dumping trolleys all over the place, this is the best solution we have for open air shopping centres.

Agreed. They can be found dumped in all sorts of places. Creeks, bushland, blatantly left outside houses; even blocking the storm-water tunnels under Manuka. The mind boggles on the effort to get them into that last place.

Woolworths have tokens for the trolley for 35c that go on the key chain.

I don’t see how this can come as a shock unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last 10 years. This has been introduced before by Colesworth and comes and goes like the tides. Buy a keyring token from Aldi or an trolley key on eBay.

And it’s not the government’s fault or the shop’s fault. It’s the slackers who dump trolleys everywhere. Once again the few ruin it for the many.

Serina Huang said :

The really difficult bit, when juggling kids, is getting the trolley back so that you can get your coins returned. Most trolley collection are a long way from the car, so you have to go out to the car with kids in tow, but your groceries away, then put the kids back in the trolley (or make them walk) and return the trolley. These days I opt for small shops using a bag, and yes that is a challenge with two kids but easier than using a trolley.

If I haven’t been able to park close to a trolley bay, I put the kids in the car, leave the doors open, and do the bolt. (By the time I got to no. 3 they could no longer all fit in a trolley). It’s a fine art, but really only takes a few seconds. Returning trolleys to bays is a principle I hold dear 😉 and I hope that others make the effort as well, gold coin incentive or not.

That said, the carpark dash is the least of my worries when out shopping with 3 little terrors, so I avoid it where possible and order online.

Until you can convince people to stop dumping trolleys all over the place, this is the best solution we have for open air shopping centres.

This isn’t really new – Aldi have done it in Canberra forever (but like everyone else, I would just grab a woolies trolley from downstairs if I needed to shop there). When I moved to Australia nearly 30 years ago, I remember mum grappling with the concept in Armidale, NSW – mind you, $1 and $2 coins were quite the novelty for us too 🙂

I noticed Woden Woolies had a staff member standing by the trollies to assist people, so perhaps your feedback was passed on.

As for coins in a cashless society, you will unfortunately be using coins again once your kids go to school…schools are really on board with apps and electronic payment systems, even for canteen orders, but once you hit walkathons/raffle tickets/school fetes, or if trying to get a 6 year old to decide what they want from the canteen hours in advance doesn’t work (it usually doesn’t), then you will be using coins 🙂

A simple solution is to shop online. It’s still fraught with problems, but I’d rather stab myself in the eye than take 3 kids grocery shopping!

This is not a new thing. There was another post about the inconsistency of this system – and there definitely does seem to be loopholes. Coles seem to be largely immune to these rules, with no coin required at Kaleen, Belco or Gungahlin. In fact – we usually grab a Coles trolley to do our Aldi shop at Belc/Gung. Otherwise, the Aldi key tag works on all trolleys that require a coin.

Furthermore, in the last few years I’ve probably made $20 from people too lazy to return the trolley to the collection bay.

What’s hilarious is that we are about 30 years behind on this – the UK and Europe have had this in place since the early 1990s. Tip: buy an Aldi token and attach it to your keychain. That’s exactly how I’ve been tackling it.

The really difficult bit, when juggling kids, is getting the trolley back so that you can get your coins returned. Most trolley collection are a long way from the car, so you have to go out to the car with kids in tow, but your groceries away, then put the kids back in the trolley (or make them walk) and return the trolley. These days I opt for small shops using a bag, and yes that is a challenge with two kids but easier than using a trolley.