Borrowing Trouble

Only 25 cents stand between Dottie Pratt and a set of new dishes from Big Lots.

The dishes cost about $20 but she has that covered with her credit card. It is measly pocket change threatening to sabotage her shopping plans.

"When did they start charging people to use a wagon?" she asks in frustration while digging in her purse for a stray quarter.

Pratt is referring to the trial program launched by Big Lots at 4731 Spring Mountain Road about two months ago requiring shoppers to deposit a quarter before using one of the store's carts.

Without it, she has only her slender, 58-year-old arms to carry her purchases and that's not doable. The dishes, and Halloween decorations, will have to wait.

"We just lose our carts so much we didn't know what else to do," a Big Lots worker says of the program. "I wish there was an easier solution."

So far, it has helped. Sort of. The store started with 100 carts fitted with a lock that releases when a quarter is inserted. Now it has about 50. Before, it lost carts at a much higher rate, says the worker, who declines to be named.

Shopping cart theft -- and it is theft, though it is rarely prosecuted -- is a major problem for retailers and grocers, say store representatives and Brian Raymond, a spokesman for the California Shopping Cart Retrieval Corp., a company that retrieves carts for local stores as well as city and county governments.

Most think homeless people take carts and that's sometimes true, but shoppers are the main culprits, Raymond says. Theft is rampant in high density, urban areas where people are more likely to walk to do their shopping, he explains. The areas around Tropicana Avenue and Boulder Highway, and Maryland Parkway and Sahara Avenue are two problem areas for the valley.

In 2002, Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Clark County passed ordinances addressing the mandatory containment of shopping carts. Businesses whose carts were found in places they didn't belong were at risk of being fined, as much as $25 a cart in some instances. Stores had to install some kind of containment system or have a cart retrieval plan. Residents can report abandoned carts by calling the appropriate store.

Target stores send out crews to sweep neighborhoods, fetching the carts that have gotten away, says Christine Bouchard, store team leader for Target at 278 S. Decatur Blvd.

Raymond rounds up wayward carts from Las Vegas neighborhoods and returns them to businesses for a fee. The $3 or $4 is cheaper than replacing them at $50 to $200 per cart. But the loss and retrieval is a cost often passed on to customers, Raymond says.

Some stores use the Cart Anti-theft Protection System, or CAPS, an electronic containment system that locks a cart's wheels when rolled beyond a fixed point. It can be expensive to install, Raymond says, and isn't 100 percent effective at stopping theft.

Since her store installed the CAPS wheel locks a year ago, Bouchard has seen a drop in cart loss. The store previously lost about 25 percent of its 200 carts every couple of months; that has been reduced to almost zero, she says.

Many retailers have to rely on retrieval companies and luck to hold onto their carts. Others use a long pole attached to carts that prevents them from being pushed out of the store. The deposit method is popular and successful in Europe, Raymond says. California retailers used it in the past but Big Lots is the first in Las Vegas that he's aware of.

Big Lots customers don't like it.

"There have been a few blowups over it. People say they don't have a quarter or they say they'll never shop here again," a Big Lots worker says.

The point of charging a deposit is to encourage the return of carts to corrals and keep them in the parking lot, Raymond says, so people can get their money back. But in urban areas where residents don't drive and use the carts to push their purchases home, a quarter isn't likely to thwart them. If they want the cart, they're going to take it, he says.

"There are just different areas where, oh my god, you can't keep a cart in the store," Raymond says. "And then there are other areas where you think it would be terrible and they never lose a cart."

Pratt isn't going to let a little quarter stand in her way of some new plates. Letting out a sigh, she watches grocery shoppers trickle in and out of Lucky's next door before spotting a cart in the middle of the parking lot. It seems to call out to her.

"Thank goodness. I'll just use that one," she says.

Contact reporter Sonya Padgett at spadgett@review journal.com or 702-380-4564.