h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's worth noting that some of the older type of trolley, where they are still available, depend on an open slot with a depression in it: load your coin into the depression, close the drawer, and the trolley is released.

Provided the lever underneath the coin-bed is activated, you don't need a pound coin. A standard 20p piece will do the job. Despite having seven sides, it is large enough to activate the mechanism. Try it sometime.

I got scammed this way in a very inventive way.

Went to release trolley with £1 in hand. A couple of kids - young teenagers - who appeared to have completed a shop - suggested I took over their trolley rather than go to the trouble. If I gave them my pound I could reclaim theirs when I took the trolley back. OK: you take it as read there's a pound in there, there has to be to activate the mechanism.

I thanked them, completed the transaction, did my shop.

Took the trolley back and linked it to the chain on the one in front of it in the stack.

What's this.....

20p.

After a "you little ****S!" moment, I had to laugh. Being scammed for 80p isn't the end of the world, and you have to admire ingenuity. (OK, to make it work you'd need to pull the trick a few times and run the risk of your faces being known and retribution being delivered. But as I say, sometimes the lesson is worth paying 80 pence for...)

Ah, now see, if you had had a shopping trolley token that would never have happened, as you would have said something along the line of 'no thanks, I use a token'.

Although I have exchanged my token with another shopper. It was at Aldi's I was impatiently waiting for a small shopping trolley to be brought back (they've got plenty small ones now, I'm little and can't reach the bottom of the big trollies) I approached a woman who was bringing back a small trolley and she said she had a token, I said so have I, are you emotional attached to yours (I have some special trolley tokens) she said no, so I offered her my token, which she agreed and I took her trolley.

Emmily