Seasoned travelers and frequent flyers are familiar with the SmarteCarte brand which offers, for a fee, a metal cart for you to tug your luggage around the airport. (The cart itself sadly doesn't come with that extra "e".) Honestly, we'd rather haul our luggage manually than pay a fee for a cart that is typically free in places like European airports and supermarkets.
Nevertheless, SmarteCarte has designed another way to get money out of beleaguered travelers with their ChargeCarte.
We spotted this machine in the Las Vegas airport the other week. The way it works is that you plug your cellphone (any brand), iPod or MP3 player into the machine and it will rapidly charge it for 30 minutes for $3 while you wait out the delays at the gate. The machine also locks your cellphone/MP3 player into its slot so it can't be stolen. [Ed. Note: Strike that. You have to watch your own phone as there are no locks. Sorry for getting your hopes up.]
Begrudgingly we kinda like this idea simply because we have traveled so many times without our phone chargers. Now if only they had a slot for digital cameras, too; we'd never have to stress about trying to find an obscure camera battery on the streets of Amsterdam again.
Related Stories:
· ChargeCarte [Official Site]
· Airports coverage [Jaunted]]]>