Shopping Carts on Notice
By Eric
Time: July 7, 2022 at 2:53 PM
Location: 800 block of Bath Street
Event: Abandoned World Market Shopping Cart and city action
Comment: IMO another example of the city being unfriendly to local businesses. Though I suppose “city combating evil capitalists littering city with shopping carts” could be another take.
My Action: Called the number, complained to bureaucrat, and did personal business. Then returned to post this and return the cart to World Market.
41 Comments
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Jul 08, 2022 10:10 AMWhere's Bubbles when you need him?
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Jul 08, 2022 10:15 AMLINA24 - Deeeeecent lol
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Jul 08, 2022 10:38 AMSacjon - thanks! B-)
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Jul 08, 2022 10:40 AMEric, way to take action! i.e. "Do it yourself". Gotta love that there's an official pre-printed form for these actions? It says the Owner of the cart, do they actually contact said owner, or is just a piece of paper?
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Jul 08, 2022 10:49 AMBicyclist, would you like to return to where you left your bicycle and find it had been seized and taken away? This process is to give people a chance to move on or to show abandonment. Not that hard to figure. (72 hour notice is put on cars parked in residential streets prior to citation or towing.)
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Jul 08, 2022 04:03 PMRHS A shopping cart off the premises of a business is stolen property. A 72 hour notice of towing is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Who is seizing bikes? Probably the same people stealing shopping carts. Also business owners need to do better securing their carts and retrieving them when they are stolen. They should be fined by the city if carts are left around town. There used to be a guy with a truck who would pick up random carts and return them. Local stores paid him per retuned cart.
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Jul 09, 2022 10:22 AMThe 72 hour notice is required by SB Municipal Code. It is the law and affords people an opportunity to move their car before it is towed. That seems fair to most I think, not ridiculous. Businesses do have an obligation to pick up carts if they allow them to be removed from their property. Last I heard there is still a cart pick up service btw. And using a cart to transport merchandise home and then abandoning it (it that is what happened here) is not theft which requires the intent to permanently take possession of the stolen stuff. (Hence "joyriding" versus grant theft auto.)
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Jul 08, 2022 11:12 AMThey are stolen carts. They don't belong to the bums.
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Jul 08, 2022 11:58 AMLMAO, they really go to the effort of placing a notice on them? That's the city for you and most government agencies, the same ones in charge of solving our homeless crisis (let's just buy a motel to house them all). They burn down the freeway, railroad shoulders and almost a bowling alley, why would we ever think they couldn't burn down a motel. But shopping carts, should have seen how many there were at the 101/154 intersection when it was cleaned up, guess what, they are back in there. A lot of good the orange safety fencing did to keep them out. We stop catering to them and they will go to other places. (disclaimer: these thoughts are my own, do not shame me for that)
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Jul 08, 2022 11:59 AMThis is hilarious! They won’t do anything to stop shopping cart theft, but they are all for impounding the stolen carts once they are abandoned. Way to avoid the root cause of this problem!
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Jul 08, 2022 12:09 PMI'm glad they are doing this. It's not unfriendly to a business
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Jul 08, 2022 12:57 PMSounds like California justice: punish property owners because someone stole their stuff and abandoned it creating an eyesore. The problem is not the store but the individuals who steal the carts.
If this is too punitive the it will only be a matter of time before shoppers get charged a hefty deposit for a shopping cart only to be redeemed if you your return your cart. $50 deposit per cart that you forfeit if you don't return it? Leave your cart for someone else less fortunate than you to redeem?
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Jul 08, 2022 01:05 PMThere was a Safeway on the Peninsula that only had a few carts that could only stay in the store. Each had a metal pole, like a short flagpole, that was taller than the store's doors so you couldn't wheel the cart outside. Irritating, but it worked to keep carts off the streets.
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Jul 08, 2022 02:06 PMRoss Dress For Less at 5 Points and near Costco have the same "flags" on their carts to prevent them from being taken out the door. Commercial (well-built) stainless -steel grocery carts cost hundreds of dollars. Lesser-quality carts can be picked up for a bit over a hundred, maybe a bit less in bulk. The City of Santa Barbara could buy a few hundred carts to give away to street people....could be used as a platform to display art by artists and/or advertising. I'm not positive about this, but I (me) believe there are tracking devices in the store carts to track where you used it to go around the store, and how much time you spent in front of the cereal, meat, or......cookies!
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Jul 08, 2022 03:22 PMomg LOL there are NOT tracking devices on carts. i think i just hurt myself laughing so hard. that's a good one. wow. man you people sure love to come up with some seriously stupid ideas and comments....about a ditched shopping cart LOL!
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Jul 08, 2022 03:50 PMIt's always the smart one for some reason who cannot think outside the box. Keep laughing Giggles:
One of the special application areas of the object tracking technology within IDENTRACE is the shopping cart tracking.
Following the carts in a retail shop IDENTRACE can determine the order and the place of the selection of purchased products, which tells much more about the selection habits of customers than the currently available methods that could build only on the set of purchased goods at the cashiers. This valuable information about the way how customers select products in a shop is used as an input to the CUBEA Customer Behavior Analysis System, which applies geospatial data mining algorithms to recognize meaningful behavior rules. Learning these buying habits can help to optimize product placement and other promotion and marketing actions in the retail shop, which finally can lead to a measurable increased revenue.
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Jul 08, 2022 04:09 PMThis is hilarious. Why would they have tracking devices on carts that can’t leave the store? They don’t need to know where people are spending time because they know what people have bought. It’s called inventory. But thanks for making me laugh today.
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Jul 09, 2022 08:29 AMWhat a blessing it must be to be so easily amused. A plastic pinwheel twirling in a gentle breeze, no doubt, entertains you for days.
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Jul 09, 2022 08:37 AMIf you have the store's app on your phone then that's the tracking device.
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Jul 09, 2022 10:21 AMSmart & Final downtown has automatic wheel lock if you try to take it beyond parking lot. Pricey probably for the company, but cheaper in the long run.
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Jul 09, 2022 12:26 PMCouldn’t you tilt the cart if you really wanted to and pop a wheelie out of there with it?
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Jul 09, 2022 02:18 PMThey already had those at the Rite Aid on Milpas few years back and quit doing it, so evidently not the the best idea.
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Jul 09, 2022 04:47 PMSB-Stoner: You certainly could do that, but difficult to maintain any kind of balance if you have anything in the cart. Would have to be empty, or you'd have to be quite strong to keep it in "wheelie" position for any length of time (more than say 5-10 minutes). Soon as that pup drops down, wheel is locked. If you really wanted to get into it, you could:
- cut the locking wheel off
- rest the locking wheel on another wheel/cart
- push the cart with the locked wheel (this would be difficult, and would take you a lot of extra time to get to wherever you were planning to go)
- go to Trader Joe's where they have realllllly/reallllllllly nice carts and put the cart with the locking wheel inside the TJ's cart
- possibly load it into the back of a truck/SUV
- other ideas that I have not thought of....
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Jul 09, 2022 11:18 PMSo does Grocery Outlet on De la Vina. It must be affordable, at the least in the long run. It sure prevents many issues.
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Jul 09, 2022 11:22 PMIf you or anyone reading this believe this about data collection, and own a smart phone, I hope you brush up on what is and can be collected from you. All of us need to be aware of the lack of privacy of online information; how granular the data may be and how free the legal sharing of it is. Medical data too.
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Jul 08, 2022 01:14 PMThey are going to hold a shopping cart hostage because they found it stolen, ditched in a creek or at a lovely roadside encampment. If stores get fed up, they will take carts away as they really are only a courtesy to shoppers, not guaranteed. Who pays the price then, us of course, the ones that return the carts (or leave them in the parking lot to have the employees collect).
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Jul 09, 2022 12:27 PMCarts are a courtesy to shoppers? I don’t see it that way. Yes, I suppose we could each have to bring our own cart, which would be a nuisance. But the cart is what allows customers to gather large quantities of merchandise to buy. The carts are not just a courtesy: they allow and encourage people to buy lots of stuff.
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Jul 08, 2022 02:19 PMWe were in Whitehorse Yukon and the store had carts that had a slot to put a "looney" 2$ coin in it to use and it had brakes that would not let it leave the store parking lot perimeter. You got your looney back when you put the cart back in the rack.
I would say 10$ around here would keep carts on premises.
Old tech really.
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Jul 08, 2022 03:03 PMI've reported an abandoned car on my street several times....never got a sticker, sign or any other notice. The car is inoperable, windows open and full of leaves and dirt from the wind. It has been there for at least a year. Must have been a business giving out plastic straws that caused the full might of the city not to investigate.
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Jul 08, 2022 03:33 PMThis is kind of interesting: https://newspress.com/52-cart-pickup/
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Jul 08, 2022 10:17 PMIs it POSSIBLE that when the cart was posted it had items in it, and that the owner of the items took them and left the empty cart?
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Jul 09, 2022 06:52 AMThere was recently a citizen led drive in the town of Truckee, CA to provide low income residents with high quality shopping carts so they could navigate the rough roadways and harsh weather conditions to carry their things. It was a small thing, but a humanitarian act.
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Jul 09, 2022 07:49 AMSome stores already put out shopping carts whose wheels cease if moved too far from the store. Grocery Outlet on DelaVina and SantaCruz Mkt on Hollister are two. Outright theft of shopping carts for personal use and shopping carts to transport groceries home then abandoned won't go away until such measures are universal. A segment of our society believes anything not locked tight is up for grabs.
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Jul 09, 2022 08:48 AMOne Adam Twelve... One Adam Twelve....
LoL
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Jul 09, 2022 09:36 AMEvery airport has the system where carts cost a coin that is refunded when they are returned to the dock. Pathetic that we have to ask businesses to add the expense of such security. AND that they have to pay to have the carts sanitized after the bums steal them.
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Jul 09, 2022 10:36 AMIf I were sitting on a bench for over 72 hours, would I get towed away? "Hey!! I was meditating!!"
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Jul 09, 2022 10:47 AMWow. What a waste of our tax dollars.
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Jul 09, 2022 10:49 AMThis is a perfect example of how out local SB politics has gone wrong, way wrong. What a joke.
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Jul 09, 2022 04:37 PM.City employees will go after shopping cart offenders , but will violate and not enforce zoning laws. It starts at the bottom and goes to the top, and I am not talking about steam from the dogpile.
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Jul 09, 2022 02:39 PMThe person who gave me an arrow down for my comment has no sense of humor. No wonder SB does not get too many standup comedians here in SB to perform at the SB County Bowl, the Arlington Theater or Granada Theater.
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Jul 10, 2022 08:01 AMNext in crazy-California- When you STEAL a car, you get a 72 hour timeframe to park it somewhere with the keys in it and walk away... That the City of SB is "processing" these stolen carts is INSANE.