Helpful Tips for Preventing Shopping Cart Damage to Vehicles

We’ve all seen it—a shopping cart on the loose banging into a parked car in a parking lot. Parking lot accidents happen, but damage caused by shopping carts is easily preventable. Being aware of your surroundings can save you from headaches and costly auto body paint service. Below, a local auto body shop in Visalia, CA shares a few helpful tips for preventing shopping cart damage to vehicles. We’ll look at tips for businesses, as well as tips for vehicle owners.

Businesses

As a business owner, you want your customers and their vehicles to be safe. To keep customers’ cars safe in your parking lot, make sure there are no rogue shopping carts in motion or left anywhere but in the cart return area. An unhappy customer may not return, especially if their vehicle sustained significant paint or body damage:

• Provide shopping cart returns: Customers are more likely to put their shopping carts back if there’s a cart return or storage area close by. That means placing cart returns throughout your parking lot and having plenty of cart space at your storefront. If your parking lot is huge, you should install cart corrals in every row of parking spaces.
• Label return areas: If your business’ cart corrals are not labeled clearly, customers may have a difficult time locating them—especially if your cart corrals blend in with parking spaces. Posting signs high above return areas is the best way to direct customers with empty shopping carts in the right direction.
• Retrieve carts regularly: Ultimately, many shopping carts won’t be returned to corrals or the store. Be sure employees are collecting shopping carts throughout the day and putting them back where they belong.

Car owners

No one ever says, “Wow! I really love this new scratch on my car’s paint!” Other, less pleasant words generally spew out of people’s mouths! Luckily, there are ways you can protect your car from scratches and dings when parking when shopping carts are in the vicinity. Read on to save yourself from an unnecessary trip to an auto body shop in Visalia, CA:

• Park further back: You might encounter fewer random shopping carts if you park your car further away from the store, in less popular parking sections. While this can keep your vehicle away from abandoned carts, carts may still roll wildly through the parking lot toward your car.
• Avoid parking on downgrades: Since unsecured shopping carts tend to roll, scan the parking lot and avoid using the spaces that lean downhill or are set in grooves. Also, while strong winds could send carts in any direction, it’s harder for wind-driven carts to climb uphill. Although parking on a downgrade is a good preventative measure, it doesn’t guarantee shopping cart damage won’t happen.
• Park next to cart returns: Why park near a cart corral with a barrier? Because if a corral is nearby, people are more likely to place carts in that return instead of somewhere randomly in the parking lot.

If your vehicle has paint damage, contact an auto body shop in Visalia, CA that you can trust. Call Tom’s Body & Paint, Inc. today!

Categorised in: Auto Body Shop

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