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Anyone taking advantage of the coin shortage to raise prices?

sparkey

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I was thinking with the coin shortage it seems like the perfect time to raise prices if you are not at an even dollar amount. Is anyone else doing this?
 

Randy

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What coin shortage would that be? It's business as normal out in the Pacific Northwest. I talked to the head teller at my bank last week and she said if I need coins call and she'll order them. I think it's mostly media hype.
 

Rudy

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My bank told me that they will only provide 1 ROLL if asked. I was told that they still have my deposit from last month "saved, just in case" in the back room. It was a bag with roughly $1k in quarters (mostly dry.....but that's another story for another thread....).
 

MEP001

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Banks are saying there's a national shortage, not the media.

My changer has been getting hammered even with tokens mixed in. I'm accustomed to having an extra $500 at the end of the week, but last week I was at least $500 short. A bunch of stores here have signs up asking for exact change or for people to use CC because they don't have enough coins. It's a big deal when you're used to going to the bank and getting rolls of coins that they have on hand to suddenly having to order them and plan for such.

I've been thinking about adding a Cryptopay swiper to one side of the changer and converting it to dispense $1 tokens. That would be immensely cheaper than trying to put swipers on ten vacs. I'm currently $1.50 to start on the bays and will most likely go to $2 if I dispense $1 tokens.
 

mjwalsh

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I wonder how Representative John Rose from Tennessee is coming with his bi-partison bill or if it was just lip service when he questioned the Fed Reserve head on the potential "systemic" get rid of all cash game some merchant fee executives are playing. I think it is worth it for the general public to make it a point "along with us" to show the reasons to the politicians of both parties how these types of situations hurt them.

I deposited our bills today at the drive up bank branch. They are rationing $20 of quarters per customer per week. I gave her a check to keep the $20 of quarters separate from the deposit. I kind of laughed while I was doing it "saying to her that it would have been a lot simpler & straightforward" .... if it would just have been a $20 bill-coin exchange instead of the check or other complication.
 

2Biz

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A number of the big box stores in Southern Ohio including Kroger announced this week that they would no longer be giving change on purchases...It wasn't announced as "Temporary", it was announced as "No Longer"! I don't believe for a second there is a coin shortage. If there was, it would have been too simple to advertise through the MSM to cash in your change to help alleviate the so called shortage. But that wasn't done. There is more to this than what is on the surface.

My changer was hit hard this weekend with $20's. More than ever before...I hope I don't have to turn off $10's and $20's...

No price increase for me, for now anyway. I'm more concerned about having to go cashless and the cost associated with implementing it.....
 

JGinther

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We are converting our quarter changers to dollar coin asap to solve this. We typically deposited quarters weekly, now we are going backward by double the amount that we used to deposit. It appears we can get dollar coins because they aren't in demand since they aren't used as 'change' so I'm hoping our bank can keep supplying them and we won't need to worry about the quarters. The bank just told me that people are asking for coin now for no apparent reason. Like it's toilet paper!
 

Wash4Life

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Two of our car washes are at an even dollar amount, anyway. One of car washes does have a price ending in 50 cents, and the market there would not support anything more.

At all of our locations, quarters have been fine, anyway, although the Baltimore Area, where I'm at, is struggling with a coin shortage. We still get our excess quarters and supply them to the bank.

I can't say this for nationwide necessarily, but I believe that if banks were to open their lobbies in Maryland, this problem would go away quickly.
 

Randy

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The news media is getting everyone hyped up that they won’t be able to get coins/quarters, just like they did with the hoarding of toilet paper. I think the reason stores have stopped giving out change is it’s expensive for them to process it and it's dirty.
 

Earl Weiss

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Friend has vending route-. A lot of bank lobbies are closed and he can't deposit his quarters. I took a few thousand off his hnds the last few weeks . On FB car wsh cite several operators posted buckets of quarters they have not been able to deposit. I can see multiplying this situation by thousands of operators and you have a lot of coins out of circulation.
 

mjwalsh

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Friend has vending route-. A lot of bank lobbies are closed and he can't deposit his quarters. I took a few thousand off his hnds the last few weeks . On FB car wsh cite several operators posted buckets of quarters they have not been able to deposit. I can see multiplying this situation by thousands of operators and you have a lot of coins out of circulation.
That makes sense based on Jerome Powell's statement about the Federal Reserve needed 80% return to banks vs 20% new coins??? Coin handling fees that started a few years ago did not help one bit IMHO.
 

mjwalsh

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A number of the big box stores in Southern Ohio including Kroger announced this week that they would no longer be giving change on purchases...It wasn't announced as "Temporary", it was announced as "No Longer"! I don't believe for a second there is a coin shortage. If there was, it would have been too simple to advertise through the MSM to cash in your change to help alleviate the so called shortage. But that wasn't done. There is more to this than what is on the surface.

My changer was hit hard this weekend with $20's. More than ever before...I hope I don't have to turn off $10's and $20's...

No price increase for me, for now anyway. I'm more concerned about having to go cashless and the cost associated with implementing it.....
We are pretty sure some sneaky fellow business person came in on Sunday & got $100 in one setting. Why ... every $20 bill (brand new) had consecutive serial numbers. Exasperating ... sure we could go back on camera & see the rascal ... female or male ... but then what???

Since we staff someone almost all the time during open hours ... I am tempted to program out the $10s & $20 ... that would tend to be a last resort. A few Native Americans went ballistics (YOU RACIST) on me when I caught them getting for their rental washer & dryer & tried to steer them to their bank since the banks here all give out but ration max up to $20 per day etc.

It is a tip toe type of thing it seems when we do catch them because of the danger of antagonizing occasional customers. One even threatened to tell everyone what terrible people we are for our new "forced upon us new policy" I tell them to not leave both parties' politicians not off the hook along with asking the natives to be wary of some "photo ops" with who-ever. Does that register with them ... maybe eventually ... better than not trying to show them the truth at all. I try to avoid bad mouthing banks too much since they sometimes just go for the "what they can get away & legally allowed with" paradigm.
 
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srr5008

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Our bill changers have been hammered since all of this started. I think initially it was because people didn't want to wait in line at the bank to get change. Now it's hard to get change at the banks, so they keep on coming here. We've caught local businesses using our changers too. Put a stop to that real quick!
 

mac

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Have noticed the same thing. I will be installing touch4wash when it arrives in a couple of days. That may be only a stop gap measure.
 

STXCW

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We raised our start up price and lowered time per coin at end of May. Sales have increased quite nicely but is has been a challenge to keep quarters stocked. We are working on installing credit cards readers at all our locations and will have Beacon Mobile online in the next couple weeks. Too many people are getting used to going cashless. We can tell by the uptick in credit card purchases
 

Axxlrod

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No issue for me. Our machines only dispense dollar tokens. And we don't accept quarters. I don't have to deal with quarters.

This changes the customer's mindset from being quarter-based to dollar-based. This isn't 1982.
 

srr5008

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We just got a call from the neighboring bank asking if they could buy quarters off of us - they said they can't get their hands on any.
 

TTS

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I finally had to set the validators to reject $20's today. They were eating me alive, sometimes $100 at a time. I have a call into my bank. Should be interesting to see how their supply is.
 

JMMUSTANG

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Seems like I get most of the $20’s at night.
Started about four weeks ago I was getting $120 in $20 bills in a roll and another 4-5 more $20’s randomly at night in my acceptors.
During the week I keep around $100 in each hopper in the morning. If they get to be empty I add enough to make it no more than $70-80 at night in each hopper.
Weekends morning fills $200 in each hopper and refill as needed, $70-80 at night.
Still get some $20 at night not sure why though but I feel better.
 
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