At Coles, we want to make the shopping experience as convenient as possible for our customers by providing clean and well-maintained shopping trolleys for use in our stores and car parks.
In fact, over the past two years Coles has replaced the majority of the trolley fleet to improve the shopping experience for our customers across Australia. Each year we also invest significant sums of money employing specialist trolley contractors who are responsible for conducting regular street runs to collect any trolleys that have been removed from our stores and car parks.
To help encourage our customers to keep Coles trolleys in our stores and car parks and to ensure timely collection of any abandoned shopping trolleys, Coles has:
- Reviewed the coverage, frequency, number and effectiveness of the contractors used for our trolley collection street runs and established more stringent performance measures for these contractors where required.
- Made trolley collection services the responsibility of our Coles Store Teams, wherever we can.
- Consolidated the trolley collection services provided so to geographically optimise the collection service and invested in more trolley contractor street runs in areas of high trolley abandonment.
- Introduced new technology (where possible) to assist in identifying hot spots for abandoned trolleys such as GPS satellite devices and hot spot location mapping.
- Introduced a new 1800 TROLLEY (1800 876 553) number and 1800Trolley@coles.com.au email address to assist community members report any abandoned shopping trolleys with collection within 24 hours.
- Issued new signage and leaflets to our stores with the 1800 TROLLEY number to remind and encourage our customers to report any abandoned shopping trolleys.
- Included the 1800 TROLLEY number on Coles customer dockets and on all of our shopping trolley handles.
- Provided regular instore radio announcements to promote better trolley care.
- Undertaken local marketing initiatives such as media releases, letterbox drops to promote the 1800 TROLLEY number.
- Trialling a Carttronics wheel lock containment system at a number of sites (where appropriate) to help keep our trolleys within our stores and carparks.
Coles continues to work closely with local councils and the community to manage our trolleys; but we need our customers' help to return their used trolleys and report abandoned trolleys so we can collect them within 24 hours.
Should you wish to provide feedback to Coles on this issue or to report a Coles abandoned shopping trolley, please do so through our Abandoned Trolley Form, 1800 Trolley (1800 876 553) number or via email 1800Trolley@coles.com.au