[edmccard]

A coin deposit is no more a mark of a bad neighborhood than having cart corrals in the parking lot -- like them, it is a way of reducing (or trying to eliminate) the amount of time employees have to spend collecting carts and returning them.

[drewg123]

A coin deposit is a signal that either the carts are being stolen, or that they are not being returned to the cart corral. Both are signs of a bad neighborhood in my area of the country.

[oldandboring]

This is a true statement, but I suspect the underlying goal is to reduce overhead and pass the savings on to the consumer and/or the bottom line. This is because if carts are stolen they must be replaced, and if they are not returned to the corral a worker must be paid to do it.