Hacker News Reader

Comment by nerdawson | Hacker News Reader

> To combat this, grocery retailers in Europe, such as Aldi, Tesco and Lidl, have coin locks on their carts.

Thankfully I haven’t been to a Tesco in as long as I can remember where the trolleys have been coin locked.

Coin locks were made for a different era. When everything is contactless, there’s little reason to carry cash. If you aren’t paying for things in cash, you don’t have change you can use for a trolley either.

View on HN

Odd, the large Tesco near me has no coin required for the trolleys. However, the Lidl and Sainsbury's do. I don't carry cash, but I keep a few pound coins in the car just in case.

At least with Sains', if you ask the security guard near the door he'll unlock one for you anyway :)

You can just keep a coin with you. You don’t need to be paying in cash to have a 1€ coin in your wallet. But as others said, it’s common to use a token instead of an actual coin.

People often use little plastic coins. Even though it's worthless piece of plastic they want it back and thus deliver the carts back as well.

Even more if in your childhood memory it is engraved as something fun. As a child, and I believe others too, getting and returning the cart with the little coin your parent gives to you was cool.

My parents and me were living near a large supermarket in the very early 90s when coin carts were introduced. I spent the first afternoons with my little BMX bike at the parking lot, looking for carts where people, unused to the new system, forgot their coins. Or I simply offered to return the cart. If I remember correctly, in one afternoon I made somewhere around 25 DM. I invested the proceeds into LEGO pirate sets, of course.

You can unlock the cart with the tip of the sn european key. No coins needed.

Huh, I have to try this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com