in California there are fewer dropoffs in stores but the bottles tend to come from residential recycling bins, which were raided while they were waiting for a truck to pick them up.
In my experience, that's common, but so is people jumping your fence to raid your cans before you've put them out. And, should you ever try to recoup the 'deposit' by going to the recycling center, you'll spend 1+ hour in line being hounded by homeless people to give them your cans.
All of it creates way more incentive to just throw your cans in the trash so you don't have to deal with any of that.
Bay Area here. My experience at recycling centers has always been quick and painless. Took over 60 lbs of cans and a bunch of scrap copper the other week. No line, no hounding.
My experiences in Monterey (2015) and San Diego (2019) were negative. It is good to hear that the particular issue either is not universal or has improved with time.
It's still a positive, at least if the recycling system works similar to in the EU.
Here, food containers have fairly strict limits on what recycled waste can be used to make them. Returned bottles and cans are clean enough to be made into new food packaging, but ordinary household recycling waste is not.
All of it creates way more incentive to just throw your cans in the trash so you don't have to deal with any of that.